Atrahasis v. Noah

While reading Foster’s account of The Flood, I could not help but continually form comparisons of this flood to biblical stories. In many ways, the two accounts of Noah’s Ark and the Mesopotamian flood contain many similar elements and customs, although the religious values vary.

In the beginning, the mankind was created so that the labor-weary gods could shoulder their work onto the humans. They decide to create humans from the body and blood of the god who instigated the war, Aw-ilu. Already, the human species is created from the flawed remains of a disloyal god, creating a parallel to the biblical idea of original sin. The rest of the “sinning” gods who also rose up in rebellion must undergo a sort of baptism in the blood of the god for the “purification” of their deeds.

Although humans did undertake this task, they were extremely “clamorous”, and the gods were unable to get the rest the hoped for. They therefore took various measures in order to destroy and reduce the human population, the last of which was to bring a seven day flood upon the Earth. The only person to survive was Atrahasis, who gathered his family and many animals into a ship, closed the door behind them, and remained there until the storm of the gods abated. This of course immediately draws a connection to Noah’s Ark, in which God sends a flood to punish the sinners of earth, and gives Noah the task of creating a boat to save both the animal and human populations. Although there are clear similarities between the biblical story and the Mesopotamian legends, there are also very important differences. For example, in the Bible God decides to destroy human kind due to the moral grounds that the Earth to continue its corrupt and violent state. Conversely, the Mesopotamian gods simply wanted the noise to cease so they could sleep and found destruction to be the fastest and easiest solution, showing no regard for human life.