The Family Tree of the Flood Stories

1 What Scripture says

Genesis 6–9: God judges a violent world by a flood and saves Noah, his family and the animals in an ark, then makes a covenant with all life.

2 What evidence we might expect

Earlier and later versions of Mesopotamian flood stories.
Evidence of direct literary borrowing between them.
Physical flood deposits in Mesopotamian cities.

3 What ancient sources survive

Sumerian Flood Story (Eridu Genesis)

Language: Sumerian
Composed: Early 2nd millennium BC or earlier
Oldest surviving copy: A Nippur tablet, c. 1600 BC (Penn Museum)

Hero: Ziusudra, who is granted eternal life afterward.

Atrahasis

Language: Akkadian
Composed: By c. 1700 BC
Oldest surviving copy: Copies by the scribe Ipiq-Aya, c. 1646–1626 BC; a fragment from Ugarit, c. 1200 BC

Hero: Atrahasis. Also the "Ark Tablet" (British Museum, c. 1750 BC) describing a round boat.

Source: W. G. Lambert & A. R. Millard, Atra-hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford, 1969)

Gilgamesh, Tablet XI

Language: Akkadian
Composed: Standard version c. 1200–1000 BC, attributed to Sin-leqi-unninni
Oldest surviving copy: Tablets from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, 7th century BC

Hero: Utnapishtim. Several lines are adapted directly from Atrahasis.

Source: A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (Oxford, 2003)

Berossus, Babyloniaca

Language: Greek
Composed: c. 290–278 BC
Oldest surviving copy: Quoted by later authors

Hero: Xisouthros (Ziusudra).

Genesis 6–9

Language: Hebrew
Composed: Debated
Oldest surviving copy: Dead Sea Scroll fragments; complete in the Leningrad Codex (1008)

Hero: Noah.

Shatapatha Brahmana 1.8.1 (Manu and the fish)

Language: Sanskrit
Composed: c. 1st millennium BC
Oldest surviving copy: Medieval manuscripts

Hero: Manu, warned by a fish.

Greek Deucalion story

Language: Greek
Composed: Attested from the 5th century BC (Pindar); retold by Apollodorus and Ovid
Oldest surviving copy: Ancient papyri and medieval manuscripts

Heroes: Deucalion and Pyrrha.

4 What discoveries exist

Archaeologists found thick flood deposits at Ur, Kish, Shuruppak and other Mesopotamian cities. Leonard Woolley believed his Ur deposit was "the Flood," but the layers at different sites date to different centuries, so they show repeated severe river floods rather than one event. The deposit at Shuruppak (c. 2900 BC) is interesting because Shuruppak is the flood hero's city in the Mesopotamian stories.

The flood texts and their dates

When a story is set, when it was composed, and when its oldest surviving copy was made are three separate questions. The line style shows how each text relates to the others.

Text	Hero	Set in	Composed	Oldest copy	Relationship
Sumerian Flood Story	Ziusudra	Before kingship resumed	Early 2nd millennium BC or earlier	c. 1600 BC (Nippur tablet)	Oldest known written form of the Mesopotamian story
Atrahasis	Atrahasis	Primeval age	By c. 1700 BC	c. 1646–1626 BC (Ipiq-Aya's copy)	Same Mesopotamian tradition, retold in Akkadian
Gilgamesh, Tablet XI	Utnapishtim	Primeval age, told to Gilgamesh	c. 1200–1000 BC (standard version)	7th century BC (Nineveh)	Adapts lines directly from Atrahasis
Berossus, Babyloniaca	Xisouthros	Tenth king before the Flood	c. 290–278 BC	Quoted by later authors	A Babylonian priest's Greek summary of the tradition
Genesis 6–9	Noah	Tenth generation from Adam	Debated	Qumran fragments; complete AD 1008	Shares the Mesopotamian story's world; very different theology
Shatapatha Brahmana (India)	Manu	Primeval age	c. 1st millennium BC	Medieval manuscripts	No established historical link
Greek Deucalion story	Deucalion and Pyrrha	Age of bronze	From the 5th century BC	Ancient papyri; medieval manuscripts	Possible contact with Near Eastern stories; not established

5 How interpretations compare

Traditional reading

One real catastrophe, many memories

The agreement of the stories reflects a real event, which Genesis records truly.

Scholarly reconstruction

A Mesopotamian tradition reshaped

Genesis knows the Mesopotamian story and reshapes it to teach one righteous God, moral judgment and covenant.

Source: I. Finkel, The Ark Before Noah (2014)

Scholarly reconstruction

Separate local floods

Distant traditions (India, Greece, the Americas) arose from people's experience of floods in many places, not from one event.

Modern speculative theory

A lost advanced civilization

Some writers argue the flood stories remember the destruction of an advanced Ice Age civilization.

Assessment: No archaeological evidence of such a civilization has been found; the end of the last Ice Age did raise sea levels dramatically, which is documented and sometimes discussed as a background to flood memories.

6 The strongest supported reconstruction

The Mesopotamian flood texts form a documented chain of copying and adaptation over two thousand years. Genesis shares the story's outline while differing deeply in meaning. Whether a single historical flood lies behind them remains open.

7 What remains possible or unknown

Which flood, if any single one, lies behind the Mesopotamian memory.
How Genesis' account relates historically to the Mesopotamian texts.

8 How this material came to us

Sumerian → Akkadian (Atrahasis) → Gilgamesh XI (adapting Atrahasis) → Berossus (Greek). Genesis: Hebrew → Greek, Latin and every later language. The Mesopotamian texts were lost for two thousand years and rediscovered from 1872, when George Smith read the Gilgamesh flood tablet.

What the evidence shows

Independently documentedGilgamesh XI adapts lines from Atrahasis.
Source: A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (Oxford, 2003)
Independently documentedMesopotamian flood stories are older than the oldest surviving copies of Genesis.
Independently documentedFlood deposits at different Mesopotamian sites date to different times.
Not independently verifiedAll flood stories descend from one historical event.