Noah

Most people will have some passing knowledge about the famous bible story of Noah and the flood. This story occurs in The Book of Genesis chapters 6-9. In case somehow, you aren't familiar here's the cliffsnotes:

• The events are said to occur 10 generations after Adam
• At this point all the humans are pretty much the worst, except one, Noah
• So, God shows up to Noah and is like "yo, people here suck, so I'm going to flood the entire planet and start over. But you're pretty neat so I'm giving you this heads up, you should probably make a raft or something"
• Noah of course goes on to build the ark and fill it with his family and two of each animal.
• Rain falls for 40 days and 40 nights and water was said to rise up some like 30 feet
• Noah, his family and the animals lived aboard the boat for 150 days until "God remembered Noah ... and the waters subsided".
• It is said that Noah's ark would come to rest on the mountains of Araret (which today would be in Turkey)

The details do vary between different editions and publishers, but for the most part that is the story

So my first question for you, and I am going to give you some hints, but when do you think the Book of Genesis was written?

• Note that the bible is comprised of many books that have been written throughout history
• The book of genesis is the first one in the bible and is the one that talks about god making the universe and all that jazz as well as the Noah and the Flood story
• We don't know the exact dates so this is an estimate
• written language is thought to have begun around 3400 BC

The Book of Genesis consists of 50 chapters today, chapters 1-11 are thought to have been written in the 5th century BC, so 3000 years after we began writing shit down. Which is pretty old, but not 2500 BC old.

Now we know that the bible is not an accurate historical source, we do know that some of the events, places and people mentioned were real. But how do you determine what was real and wasn't?

One of the first steps to determine the authenticity of a document is to figure out who wrote it. And that's a really tricky question with the bible, but turns out a lot of people have done some really serious legwork into this

The current theory, called the "Supplementary Hypothesis" proposes that the pentateuch (which is the first 5 books of the bible including Genesis) was derived from a series of direct additions to an existing piece of work

Prior to this it was commonly thought that the pentateuch was made up of multiple, independently written and complete works which were then stitched together, where this current theory says that "no, there was a framework already there, people just kept adding to it"

The "Supplementary Hypothesis" proposes that there were three major additions to what would become the Pentateuch

1. the Deuteronomist source (D) was likely written c. seventh century BCE, and influenced the composition of the Deuteronomistic History (from the Book of Joshua to 2 Kings) in the early phase of the Babylonian captivity.
2. the Yahwist source (J) was likely added c. 540 BCE in the late phase of the Babylonian captivity, influencing the stories from the Genesis creation narrative to the death of Moses
3. the Priestly source (P) was likely added c. 400 BCE in the Second Temple period.

Content written by the priestly source tends to the most recognizable, as stylistically and theologically it is quite distinct from the other authors. It is also considered the last source to touch the Pentateuch and like a final editor, made many changes and redactions, essentially trying to make a document that's hundreds of years old, make sense after so many revisions, this also leads to many contradictions though and that's why you'll find many parts of the bible repeat itself or contradicts its own content just a few lines later.

It's generally accepted that the flood story draws on two sources, the Yahwist and the Priestly.

The second part determining how much truth a document has to it, is to determine its source and contemporaries. Has this information been presented before?

The question is: was there actually a flood?

Evidence suggests that there has never been a flood to the level that is described in the Noah story, but it does turn out the great flood myth is quite old

Before the bible we have a version of the myth from 1880-1595 BC Mesopotamia

Sumerian Myth

Similarities between the sumerian myth and the book of Genesis make it seem very very likely that the Noah flood story was based on/inspired by the myth. The oldest version of the myth that was written out is the Epic of Ziusudra, which is thought to be from 1600 BC. There are two other common versions, one in the Atrahasis and one in Epic of Gilgamesh.

The name of the hero, according to the version concerned, was Ziusudra, Atrahasis, or Utnapishtim, all of which are variations of each other, and it is just possible that an abbreviation of Utnapishtim/Utna'ishtim as "na'ish" was pronounced "Noah" in Palestine. History is fun

But this goes deeper

The King List

There is an ancient document called the "Sumerian King List" which is estimated to have been written between 2084-1648 BC. It is a detailed list of all the Sumerian cities and the kings that ruled them and the duration of that rule, between the periods of 2112-2004 BC

The tablet has hundreds of lines, but lines 1-39 are quite interesting. It details the first kings and their reigns, each successor having gotten their title by defeating the predecessor. This first section lists eight kings that ruled over 5 cities, The duration of each reign is also given. In this first section, the reigns vary between 43,200 and 28,800 years for a total of 241,200 years. Which would be pretty impressive for 8 assumably mortal dudes

The section ends with the line "Then the flood swept over". Among the kings mentioned in this section is the ancient Mesopotamian god Dumuzid (the later Tammuz).

"After the flood had swept over, and the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Kish."

After this well-known line, the section goes on to list 23 kings of Kish, who each ruled between 1500 and 300 years for a total of 24,510 years. The exact number of years varies between copies

One thing that scholars have noted about this list in all its reproductions is that the portion that talks about the kings before the flood differs stylistically to the portion after the flood.

The prominent theory is that the "before the flood" list was added at a later date, thought to have been added during the Old Babylonian period, as the earliest mentions of the flood myth have not been found before that period.

The last king listed before the flood, is Ziusudra, who happens to be the hero of the sumerian flood myth. He is recorded as having reigned as both king and gudug priest for ten sars (periods of 3,600 years) although this figure is probably a copyist error for ten years

As mentioned the first line in the king list after mention of the flood is 

"After the flood had swept over, and the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Kish."

Kingship of Kish

This gives us a pretty defining line that after the flood, Kings were in the city of Kish

The city of Kish flourished in the Early Dynastic period and turns out evidence has been found of a river flood from around the time suggested in the king's list

Sedimentary strata tested from Shuruppak (modern Tell Fara), Uruk, Kish, and other sites, all of which have been radiocarbon dated to 2900 BC. Polychrome pottery was also found from the Jemdet Nasr period ( 30th century BC), which immediately preceded the Early Dynastic I period, was discovered directly below the Shuruppak flood stratum

Max Mallowan wrote that 

"We know from the [Sumerian King's List] that at the time of the Flood, Ziusudra, the Sumerian Noah, was King of the city of Shuruppak where he received warning of the impending disaster. His role as a saviour agrees with that assigned to his counterpart Utnapishtim in the Gilgamesh Epic. ... both epigraphical and archaeological discovery give good grounds for believing that Ziusudra was a prehistoric ruler of a well-known historic city the site of which has been identified."

SO there was indeed a flood and there was a king who was seen as a hero during said disaster

The tale of Ziusudra which is the earliest account of the sumerian flood myth that has been found, comes from a single tablet that is thought to have been published in 1600 BC, so long after Ziusudra would've ruled and long after the flood, over a thousand years

The legend of course is far more fantastical than reality I am sure. As the legend starts, like the Book of Genesis, with the creation of man, of animals and the founding of the five great Sumerian cities mentioned in the first part of the king list. A section of the tablet here is missing, but the next readable section then tells of how Ziusudra was approached by the god Enki (lord of the underworld sea of fresh water and Sumerian equivalent of Babylonian god Ea). Enki warns Ziusudra about the impending flood and provides him with directions on how to make a boat, these directions are also lost

When the tablet resumes, it is describing the flood. A terrible storm raged for seven days, "the huge boat had been tossed about on the great waters," when Utu, the sun god appears. Ziusudra sacrifices a sheep and an ox, before the text cuts out again. The text resumes, the flood is apparently over, and Ziusudra is prostrating himself before An (Sky) and Enlil (Lordbreath), who give him "breath eternal" and take him to dwell in Dilmun. The remainder of the poem is lost

Dilmun was a region in Eastern Arabia mentioned from the 3rd millenium onward, it's thought that it encompassed what is now Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia

Four Floods of Mesopotamia

Evidence for four floods in the Mesopotamia area have been found. The oldest in Ur, estimated to have occurred in 3500 BC, there were two in Kish, one thought to have occurred between 3000-2900 bc but evidence of another flood was found in what would've been Shuruppak the city that Ziusudra had been king of, and it's estimated that it occurred around 2950-2850 BC. But to be clear, while some of these floods were quite impressive, none were catastrophic enough to cover the entire land

Theologists believe it is one of these floods that the book of Genesis is based on. Unfortunately the bible is real shit at giving reliable hints or information that might help us determine when exactly that flood occurred. According to the bible it occurred 10 generations after Adam, which if these generations were all mortals, could've occurred over a couple centuries, which we know humans have been around for much longer than that.

And maybe 10 generations from Adam isn't literal, maybe it referred to ten kings since the founding of the empire, but Ziusudra is recorded as the 8th king of Shuruppak and the myth of the flood is around him, though the king list does seem to imply that the kings were either divinely selected or in some way divine themselves.

But many scholars do believe the flood that genesis references was the Shuruppak flood of 2950-2850

And this finally gets to the text I wanted to talk about "Instructions of Shuruppak". There have been several copies found throughout the years, with dates spanning centuries, attesting to the wisdom within being considered important enough to publish again and again over centuries. The tablet is a letter from a father to a son, giving him all the advice he would need to live a successful life. For the most part the decrees of wisdom haven't changed a ton over the different iterations over centuries. One version estimated to be from 1900-1700 BC opens with this

Shuruppak gave instructions to his son, Shuruppak, the son of Ubartutu, Gave instructions to his son Ziusudra: "My son, I would instruct you, Take my instructions, Ziusudra, I would utter a word to you, Give heed to it, Do not neglect my instruction, Do not transgress the word I uttered, The father's instructions, the precious, Carry out diligently." - Reflections of the Mesopotamian Flood

This tablet also opens with a creation myth, about the world, people and animals all coming to be. Really it's quite fantastical and then leads into the instructions

Now this would've been written over 1000 years after Ziusudra is thought to have lived, but older versions have been found, the oldest estimated to be from 2600-2500 BC. It is one of the oldest pieces of text we have. This would've been centuries after Ziusudra, yet in this version, the son is not named, and all the divine fluff at the beginning is not present

The finding of this tablet was huge, as I mentioned, it's one of the oldest pieces of text we have. It was found during an expedition by the Oriental Institute of Chicago which happened between 1963-1965. The British School of Archaeolgy also would do a expedition to this area between 1975-1989, but all excavations had be suspended with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and we have no been able to go back since.  

It's possible Ziusudra just got tied to these tablets of wisdom as he was seen as quite a heroic figure, his deeds and stature mythologized in the centuries following his life. He was the hero of the flood after-all, the king that survived and ascended to immortality.

But the reason so many people keep coming back to these tablets is that they do warn of a flood, and my gosh do some of these sound like the 10 commandments?

So what were the instructions allegedly given to the young Ziusudra?

Instructions of Shuruppag

• 1-13: […] My son, let me give you instructions: you should pay attention! Zi-ud-sura, let me speak a word to you: you should pay attention! Do not neglect my instructions! Do not transgress the words I speak! The instructions of an old man are precious; you should comply with them!
• 14: You should not buy a donkey which brays; it will split (?) your midriff (?).
• 15-18: You should not locate a field on a road; ... You should not plough a field at a path; ... You should not make a well in your field: people will cause damage on it for you. You should not place your house next to a public square: there is always a crowd (?) there.
• 19-20: You should not vouch for someone: that man will have a hold on you; and you yourself, you should not let somebody vouch for you.
• 28-31: You should not steal anything; you should not ... yourself. You should not break into a house; you should not wish for the money chest (?). A thief is a lion, but after he has been caught, he will be a slave. My son, you should not commit robbery; you should not cut yourself with an axe.
• 32-34: You should not play around with a married young woman: the slander could be serious. My son, you should not sit alone in a chamber with a married woman.
• 35-38: You should not pick a quarrel; you should not disgrace yourself. You should not ... lies; ... You should not boast; then your words will be trusted. You should not deliberate for too long
• 42-43: You should not speak improperly; later it will lay a trap for you.
• 44-46: You should not scatter your sheep into unknown pastures.
• 47: You should not travel during the night: it can hide both good and evil.
• 49: You should not have sex with your slave girl: she will chew you up (?).
• 50: You should not curse strongly: it rebounds on you.
• 51-52: You should not draw up water which you cannot reach; it will make you weak.
• 53: You should not drive away a debtor: he will be hostile towards you.
• 54-57: You should not establish a home with an arrogant man: he will make your life like that of a slave girl. You will not be able to travel through any human dwelling without be being shouted at: "There you go! There you go!"
• 61-62: My son, you should not use violence (?); ... You should not commit rape on someone's daughter; the courtyard will learn of it.
• 67: You should not boast in beer halls like a deceitful man.
• 97-100: When it is about someone's else bread, it is easy to say, "I will give it to you", but the time of actual giving can be as far away as the sky. If you go after the man who said, "I will give it to you", he will say "I cannot give it to you – the bread has just been finished up".
• 103-105: The artistic mouth recites words; the harsh mouth brings litigation documents; the sweet mouth gathers sweet herbs.
• 109: Who works with leather will eventually (?) work with his own leather.
• 118: A weak wife is always seized (?) by fate.
• 124-125: You tell your son to come to your home; you tell your daughter to go to her women's quarters.
• 126: You should not pass judgment when you drink beer.
• 127: You should not worry unduly about what leaves the house.
• 128-130: Heaven is far, earth is most precious, but it is with heaven that you multiply your goods, and all foreign lands breathe under it.
• 131-133: At harvest time, at the most priceless time, collect like a slave girl, eat like a queen; my son, to collect like a slave girl, to eat like a queen, this is how it should be.
• 153: You should not beat a farmer's son: he has constructed (?) your embankments and ditches.
• 154-164: You should not buy a prostitute: she is a mouth that bites. You should not buy a house-born slave: he is a herb that makes the stomach sick. You should not buy a free man: he will always lean against the wall. You should not buy a palace slave girl: she will always be the bottom of the barrel (?). You should rather bring down a foreign slave from the mountains, or you should bring somebody from a place where he is an alien; my son, then he will pour water for you where the sun rises, and he will walk before you. He does not belong to any family, so he does not want to go to his family; he does not belong to any city, so he does not want to go to his city.
• 170-171: Fate is a wet bank; it can make one slip.
• 175-176: You should not work using only your eyes; you will not multiply your possessions using only your mouth.
• 178-180: The need for food makes some people ascend the mountains; it also brings traitors and foreigners, since the need for food brings down other people from the mountains.
• 183-188: The married man is well equipped; the unmarried makes his bed in a haystack
• He who wishes to destroy a house will go ahead and destroy the house; he who wishes to raise up will go ahead and raise up.
• 193-201: When you bring a slave girl from the hills, she brings both good and evil with her. The good is in the hands; the evil is in the heart. The heart does not let go of the good; but the heart cannot let go of the evil either. As if it were a watery place, the heart does not abandon the good. Evil is a store-room ... May the boat with the evil sink in the river! May his waterskin split in the desert!
• 202-203: A loving heart maintains a family; a hateful heart destroys a family.
• 208-212: You should not choose a wife during a festival. Her inside is illusory (?); her outside is illusory (?). The silver on her is borrowed; the lapis lazuli on her is borrowed. The dress on her is borrowed; the linen garment on her is borrowed.
• 220: A woman with her own property ruins the house.
• 221: A drunkard will drown the harvest.
• 246-247: You should not abuse a ewe; otherwise you will give birth to a daughter. You should not throw a lump of earth into the money chest (?); otherwise, you will give birth to a son.
• 248-249: You should not abduct a wife; you should not make her cry
• 254: The wet-nurses in the women's quarters determine the fate of their lord.
• 255-260: You should not speak arrogantly to your mother; that causes hatred for you.
• 262-263: My son, a field situated at the bottom of the embankments, be it wet or dry, is nevertheless a source of income.
• 264: It is inconceivable (?) that something is lost forever.
• 266-271: To get lost is bad for a dog, but terrible for a man. On the unfamiliar way at the edge of the mountains, the gods of the mountains are man-eaters. They do not build houses there as men do; they do not build cities there as men do.

The success of The Instructions of Shuruppak in contrast with other instructions' collections is apparent if we compare the number of manuscripts preserved. The Instructions of Shuruppak counts over 70 extant manuscripts and fragments 

Sumerian texts are divided chronologically as either before or after the flood. All texts that are myths or retelling of events will usually start with that preface, most texts of before the flood start with the sumerian versions of "once upon a time" which starts like

"In those days, in those distant days, in those nights, in those remote nights, in those years, in those distant years; in days of yore".

Where texts after will usually start

"After the days of yore had come to an end, after nights had become far remote from those distant nights, after years had become remote from remote years, after the Flood had swept over"

This is an important distinction, in the same way we measure time as before and after Christ as a pivotal cultural marker, they used the flood. While we discussed 4 main floods of this era, the reality is floods were very common place and most of which were not notable

That this took place in Mesopotamia, and particularly in its southern half, the Sumer of most ancient days, is not surprising, for it is a region where torrential floods are endemic to this day. There was one such appalling disaster for example, in 1954, when an exceptionally rainy spring combined with the melting snows of Armenia and Kurdistan, so swelled the Tigris River that it submerged the low-lying plain for hundreds of miles, and all Baghdad was in imminent danger of destruction. Max Mallowan, the distinguished British archaeologist who, when a young man, was one of Leonard Woolley's associates in the excavation of Ur, reports that from 1925 to 1930,

there was hardly a season either in the spring or autumn, when the desert did not, at least for a few days, assume the appearance of a lake, and quite often Eridu (some 12 miles to the southeast) was cut off from us. I remember a day in the month of November, either 1925 or 1926, when in a torrential downpour we had to use our two hundred workmen to complete a dyke across the courtyard of our expedition house in order to save it from being swept away; within a few minutes of this cloud-burst, we were standing chest-deep in water outside our own front door

https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/reflections-on-the-mesopotamian-flood/ 

But the eponymous Flood with a capital F, was a marker that everyone knew. The speculated flood occurred at the very beginning of when the written language was developed. It's likely it was documented at the time in someway, but as of yet none of those documents have been found.

As always when talking about events, primary sources are the best, if not secondary or contemporary sources are what we then look for. But in the case of the flood, neither have been discovered, all we have is aggrandized accounts from centuries after the fact, which by that point had turned a King into a heroic figure of legend, and a flood into an apocalyptic event. The selection of the first king after Ziusudra is seen as a divine event.

It's though that the addition of the "once upon a time" opening with Ziusudra's name was to add some prominence and importance to the wisdom. It stages the advice as coming from a pre-flood time, which was super in at the time in the same way that alt-rights like to venerate our "forefathers". This was a big theme at the time and many documents were rewritten in this style

There seemed to be a desire to create a solid chronology and it's around this time that we would see the pre-flood kings added to the King List. With this evolved a kind of narrative where the pre-flood kings were divine and that the post flood kings were chosen by the divine, which only further increased the perceived prestige of the pre-flood kings. It's hard to say if those kings did see themselves as divine or even chosen by the divine.

By the time of the Epic of Gilgamesh (thought to be maybe as old as 2100 BC, so nearly a thousand years after Ziusudra lived), Ziusudra was not just a divine figure, but the only that survived the flood and helped humanity start again

In the end it all comes back to one thing. The Christians stole literally everything

Full Source List

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maxims_of_Ptahhotep 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_hypothesis 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuteronomistic_History

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Joshua

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Kings

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_captivity

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple_period

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priestly_source

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_flood_narrative

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List

• https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/reflections-on-the-mesopotamian-flood/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziusudra

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish_(Sumer)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilmun

• https://ncse.ngo/flood-mesopotamian-archaeological-evidence

• https://www.penn.museum/sites/journal/9356/

• https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/reflections-on-the-mesopotamian-flood/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_of_Shuruppak

• https://teachmiddleeast.lib.uchicago.edu/historical-perspectives/writing-and-literature/before-islam/image-resource-bank/image-03.html

• https://www.schoyencollection.com/literature-collection/sumerian-literature-collection/shuruppak-ms-2788

• https://www.ub.edu/ipoa/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/19872AuOrAlster.pdf

• https://www.ub.edu/ipoa/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/19872AuOrCivil.pdf

• https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/30335461/2-4-peterson-antediluvian-fragment-def-libre.pdf?1390884523=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DA_New_Sumerian_Fragment_Preserving_an_Ac.pdf 

• https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=1306

• https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2126/the-instructions-of-shuruppag/

• https://harjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/harassets/har202201.pdf#page=25

• https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/reflections-on-the-mesopotamian-flood/

• https://www.jstor.org/stable/1359063?read-now=1&seq=7#page_scan_tab_contents

• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2130885/Europes-oldest-book-British-Library-raises-9million-buy-ancient-gospel-survived-pillaging-Vikings-lay-saints-coffin-centuries.html

• https://www.arthistoryproject.com/timeline/the-ancient-world/mesopotamia/diary-of-a-scribe/

• https://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/myths/texts/life/instructionshruppak.html

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_documents 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primeval_history 

• https://ncse.ngo/flood-mesopotamian-archaeological-evidence