Our Deep History Our Deep History A museum of unexplained ancient sites and relics
Iraq rooms

Nippur; the tablet is in the Penn Museum, Iraq

The Eridu Genesis

Nippur copy, about the 17th century BC (dated by the script)

The Nippur tablet of the Sumerian flood story, Penn Museum CBS 10673, the lower part of a six-column tablet. The museum files it as a flood tablet, and the writing founds cities before anyone builds a boat. Onceinawhile, CC BY-SA 4.0. Shown unedited.

Before the flood, the tablet founds the cities and gives Eridu to Enki. The survivor is Ziusudra, and the storm that he rides out is counted in days.

Why this is extraordinary

The piece in Philadelphia is the lower third of a tablet from Nippur. The signs are cuneiform, wedge-shaped writing. The museum's own record calls it a flood tablet and describes a Sumerian text: humans and animals, cities assigned to gods, five names preserved, Eridu given to Enki, then a flood. Ziusudra, a king, is warned. Wind and storm last seven days and seven nights, and then the sun returns. He sacrifices, and he is granted life that does not end, in Dilmun. The whole tablet would have run to about 260 lines. What remains is the bottom. The script places the copy in the 17th century BC. The museum's record says about 1650 BC.

"Eridu Genesis" is a modern title for this composition. The ancient tablet does not carry it. The title is useful because the story begins with creation and with cities, and the flood is the last act, not the only one. The hero is Ziusudra. He is not Utnapishtim, and this clay is not Gilgamesh Tablet XI, which is an Akkadian tablet from Nineveh, copied for Ashurbanipal a thousand years later. Adapa, the sage who refuses the food of life, is a different story again. His best-known Assyrian fragment is in the Morgan Library. A heading that says only "flood" can put all three in one case. The plots and the objects do not.

The Sumerian telling ties the flood to the founding of the cities, Eridu first among those that can be read. That is testimony about order, not a date for the silt at Shuruppak and not a date for the Younger Dryas. The mound is the Eridu room. The yellow layer is the Shuruppak room. The other two flood poems are Atrahasis and Gilgamesh Tablet XI.

The Nippur story sits with the other written copies. The silt is earlier and is not one line. Diagram: Our Deep History.

Why it matters

This is the Sumerian flood. Keeping it distinct from the Akkadian tablet found in 1872 is what lets the versions be compared instead of collapsed into one clay.

The king list's antediluvian cities are weighed in the Sumerian King List room. Eridu is first there and first in the ground. Shuruppak is last before the flood, and the instructions spoken in that city name Ziusudra as the son who is taught. This tablet is the narrative. It was dug at Nippur by the Babylonian expedition and given to the Penn Museum. The catalogue title is Flood Tablet. The composition is the Sumerian story summarised above.

Photo tour

4 photographs, unedited. On a phone, swipe the row. Choose one to look closely.

The Nippur tablet of the Sumerian flood story, Penn Museum CBS 10673, the lower part of a six-column tablet. The museum files it as a flood tablet, and the writing founds cities before anyone builds a boat. Onceinawhile, CC BY-SA 4.0
Comparison: Gilgamesh Tablet XI, British Museum, from Nineveh. Two columns, the top broken. This is the tablet read in 1872. The hero is Utnapishtim. It is not the Nippur piece.Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)., CC BY-SA 4.0
Comparison: the Atrahasis tablet copied by Ku-Aya, probably at Sippar. The Akkadian poem is the nearest literary neighbour. The clay, the language, and the hero's name are still not this Nippur tablet.SpeakingArch, CC BY-SA 4.0
Comparison: a fragment of Adapa, Morgan Library, from Nineveh. He is a sage of Eridu, not a flood hero. A flood heading does not make this tablet the Nippur story.Daderot, CC0

See the evidence at the source

These pictures are not openly licensed, so they are not copied onto this page. Each link opens in a new tab.

What is still unexplained

These sit beside the consensus account, with the same visual weight. None of them is marked solved.

Observed in the preserved lines Cities before the boat The preserved opening of the story, as the museum record and the editions summarise it, has divine instruction to build cities and to assign them to gods. Eridu is one of the names that survive, given to Enki. Kingship and the flood come after that founding. A flood-only label stops at the last act. The tablet starts earlier.
Observed A different tablet from Gilgamesh XI Gilgamesh Tablet XI is Akkadian, from Nineveh, 7th century BC, and the speaker is Utnapishtim, son of Ubar-Tutu, who lived at Shuruppak. This tablet is Sumerian, from Nippur, 17th century BC by the script, and the survivor is Ziusudra. The plots rhyme: a warning, a boat, a sacrifice, a life that does not end. Rhyme is not identity. The Penn record's heading, flood tablet, describes the theme. It does not make the two objects one object.
Observed Not Adapa Adapa is a sage of Eridu who breaks the South Wind and refuses the food of life. He does not found the cities and he does not ride out a seven-day flood. The Sumerian Adapa copies are from Tell Haddad and Nippur. The Assyrian fragment visitors can see in New York is in the Morgan Library. Filing Adapa with this Penn tablet under one flood heading mixes a sage's hearing in heaven with a king's boat.
Open Seven days, and several silts The preserved flood lasts seven days and seven nights, and then the sun returns. The sky in these lines is that simple. Storm, and then the sun. The yellow band at Shuruppak is a water-laid layer at the Jemdet Nasr transition, often placed about 3100 to 2900 BC, with the city's tablets above it. Ur and Kish have silt of other dates. The Younger Dryas ends about 11,700 years ago. A seven-day storm in a 17th-century copy can remember a local flood, or several, or none. It does not by itself choose among those layers.

Location and dating

Location
Nippur, modern Nuffar. Penn Museum CBS 10673, joined with CBS 10867. On display as a flood tablet in the Middle East Galleries.
Period label
Current consensus — open to revision The working date is open to revision. The copy is Old Babylonian, about the 17th century BC, by the script. The museum record says about 1650 BC. The cities it names are older than the copy. The silt layers are older still, and they are not one date.
How this dating was done
The tablet is dated by typology, which places a text from the style of its script. The Nippur findspot is the excavation record of the Babylonian expedition. The silt is dated by stratigraphy, reading age from the order of the layers, and by pottery in the city rooms, not by this clay.
What could change it
A second Sumerian copy with a colophon would narrow the date of the composition. A line that named the yellow band, or any measurable flood, would tie the story to a layer. The preserved lines name cities and a seven-day storm, and then the sun.
Published ranges, drawn as bars. A bar is a claim about a span, not a point.
Shuruppak yellow layerContested
Nippur copy
Gilgamesh Tablet XI
3100 BCE2000 BCE631 BCE
  • Shuruppak yellow layer. A ceramic window for a different room. Not this tablet.
  • Nippur copy. Old Babylonian script. Museum record about 1650 BC.
  • Gilgamesh Tablet XI. A different tablet, from Nineveh. Shown so the dates stay apart.

What is actually there

Open questions

Question Status
Is the seven-day storm the yellow layer at Shuruppak? Open
Why does the story found the cities before it floods them? Open
How much of the missing two-thirds would change the plot? Open until a join

The current narrative

Where publication stands today. It is the best-supported reading, and it is open to revision. It is not a verdict.

The current narrative — open to revision

A Sumerian literary flood, kin to the later poems

CBS 10673 is an Old Babylonian copy of a Sumerian story that founds the cities and then tells a flood survived by Ziusudra. It belongs with Atrahasis and with Gilgamesh Tablet XI as literature. It is not those tablets.

What supports this

  • The script is Old Babylonian. The museum dates the copy to about 1650 BC.
  • The preserved plot is creation, cities, warning, flood, sacrifice, enduring life.
  • The later Akkadian poems share that shape and use other names.

What pushes back

  • Two-thirds of the tablet are missing, so the summary is the preserved third plus the joins.
  • The catalogue heading "flood tablet" is broad enough that a visitor can think every flood tablet is this one.

What would settle it

This is the best reading. The object is identified, and the heading is a theme, not a join between tablets.

Emerging narratives

Other published readings. Each may be right. None is adopted here unless the evidence carries it.

An emerging narrative

The seven days are the layer under Shuruppak

Ziusudra's flood is the yellow band at the city where the king list stops, and this tablet is the memory of that band.

What supports this

  • The king list, the instructions, and Gilgamesh all single out Shuruppak.
  • A water-laid layer does sit on a living floor there.
  • This story has a flood of a stated length, which a memory could preserve as a number.

What pushes back

  • The tablet names Eridu among the founded cities. It is from Nippur. It does not, in the preserved lines, describe the pit at Tell Fara.
  • The band has no single published thickness, and the archive that names Shuruppak sits above it.
  • Other cities have silt of other dates.

What would settle it

One local memory is possible. It is not secured by the Nippur copy alone, which never describes the pit.

An emerging narrative

Every flood tablet is one event, including the Younger Dryas

Ziusudra, Atrahasis, Utnapishtim and the silt are one flood, and that flood is the cold return at the end of the Ice Age.

What supports this

  • The plots are close enough to be compared, and many cultures tell of a flood.
  • The Younger Dryas and the filling of the Gulf were real changes of water and climate.

What pushes back

  • The three tablets are different objects, languages, heroes and centuries.
  • The silt layers are local and disagree with each other.
  • The Ice Age dates sit thousands of years before the oldest of these copies, and no line names them.

What would settle it

Comparison is the work, and a collapse into one event is not supported. A cold snap remains a climate fact in its own century, not a label for this clay.

Should the current view be reevaluated?

Consensus holds well

The Nippur tablet is a Sumerian flood story of the 17th century BC, distinct from Gilgamesh Tablet XI and from Adapa. Whether its seven days remember a particular silt is still larger than the preserved lines.

What drives this

  • Script date and the museum record
  • A preserved plot that founds cities
  • Other flood tablets that are not this one

This is the museum’s own weighing of the evidence. It is not a visitor vote, and it is separate from the slider.

Weigh it yourself

Anonymous. Nothing here is stored except on this browser. Your lean does not change the assessment beside it.

A Sumerian literary flood, kin to the later poems Unsure The seven days are the layer under Shuruppak

If the contested reading is right

What would follow if a reading that is not the consensus turned out to be true, and what could settle it. This explains the stakes. It does not adopt the reading.

The seven-day flood is the yellow layer at Shuruppak

A Sumerian narrative and one pit would be the same event, and the other silt layers would still need their own account.

Why it is still worth a test

A date on the charcoal under the yellow band, and a further copy of this story that names a mound.

Sources

  1. CBS 10673, flood tablet Penn Museum
  2. The Sumerian flood story The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford
  3. The flood story of Ziusudra Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative

Image credits

← Iraq World map