Nineveh; the tablet is in the British Museum, Iraq

The Gilgamesh Flood Tablet

Copied for Ashurbanipal, 7th century BC (the tablet read in London in 1872)

A king who wants to escape death is told, instead, how one man was warned to build a boat.

Why this is extraordinary

Gilgamesh, seeking a way not to die, reaches Utnapishtim, the man who survived the flood. Utnapishtim answers with the flood itself. Ea warns him to build a boat. He loads his goods, his animals, and his people. The storm lasts. On the seventh day he sends out a dove, which returns, then a swallow, which returns, then a raven, which does not. The boat has grounded on Mount Nimush. He sacrifices, and he is granted a life like the gods. The copy is from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, who reigned from 668 to about 631 BC. The museum number of the famous piece is K.3375.

On 3 December 1872 an assistant at the British Museum read this account to the Society of Biblical Archaeology. His paper of that night, printed the next year, is old enough to quote. He wrote that the inscription sends a dove first, which finds no resting place and returns; then a swallow, which also returns; then a raven, which feeds on the corpses in the water, wanders away, and does not return. He set that order beside Genesis, where the raven goes first, and beside the Greek retelling of Berossus, which has three trials and does not name the birds. His own conclusion was that the events run in the same order and that the differences show a distinct tradition, not a copy of the Hebrew page in front of him.

The 1872 reading showed that a flood with a boat, animals and birds was already on clay from Nineveh. It did not show that every later flood tablet is this one. The Sumerian story of Ziusudra is a Nippur tablet of the 17th century BC. Atrahasis is the Old Babylonian poem this speech retells, with another hero's name. Neither is a shoreline of the Younger Dryas. The library is the Nineveh room.

Why it matters

This is the tablet that put a Mesopotamian flood in front of modern readers. The public-domain reading of 1872 can be set beside the older poems without treating them as one object.

The speech depends on Atrahasis. The Sumerian telling, with Ziusudra and the cities, is the Eridu Genesis. The death poem in which Gilgamesh has already reached Ziusudra is the Death of Gilgamesh. The city of the flood hero is Shuruppak. The king of Uruk is in the Uruk room. The versions side by side are the flood tablets room.

Photo tour

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

A large joined clay tablet with columns of cuneiform, on a clear stand against a red wall. — Comparison: the Atrahasis tablet of Ku-Aya, probably from Sippar. The flood speech is already here, centuries before Nineveh, under another hero's name.SpeakingArch, CC BY-SA 4.0

See the evidence at the source

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The Chaldean Account of the DelugeThe paper read on 3 December 1872. Public domain. The bird passage quoted in this room is his.
Flood tablet K.3375The British Museum record of Tablet XI.

What is still unexplained

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

Observed A story inside the epic Tablet XI is a speech. Gilgamesh is the listener. The flood hero is Utnapishtim, son of Ubar-Tutu, who lived at Shuruppak on the Euphrates. The warning comes from Ea. The boat is pitched with bitumen. The landing mountain in the 1872 reading is Nizir, later read as Nimush. The hero does not return to a mortal reign. He is taken out of ordinary life. Genesis, in the same 1872 comparison, leaves Noah alive for years. The difference is part of the evidence, not a defect in either text.

Observed The birds, in the words of 1872 The paper read that night says the inscription tries the birds three times: dove, swallow, raven. Genesis tries a raven and then a dove, more than once, and the dove returns with a leaf. Berossus tries birds three times and does not name them. The 1872 reader treated the likeness of order, and the unlikeness of detail, as a sign of a shared story that had already branched. That is a weighing, done in public, on a tablet he had joined with his own hands.

Observed Older than this copy, younger than the silt Old Babylonian tablets of Gilgamesh exist from the early second millennium. They are not this Nineveh piece, and they do not all contain the flood speech. The flood speech as a full narrative is already in Atrahasis, copied in the reign of Ammi-saduqa. The Nineveh tablet is a 7th-century copy of a retelling. The silt at Shuruppak, Ur and Kish is older than Atrahasis and is not one date. A cold return about 12,900 to 11,700 years ago is older than all of them. The tablet dates the copy. It does not date the Ice Age.

Observed Not the Nippur flood tablet Penn Museum CBS 10673 is a Sumerian tablet from Nippur. Its catalogue title is also a flood tablet. The survivor there is Ziusudra, the language is Sumerian, and the preserved lines found the cities before the storm. Putting both under one English heading is a convenience for a case. The clay, the script, the hero and the museum are four ways to keep them apart.

Location and dating

Location: Nineveh, the library of Ashurbanipal. British Museum K.3375, with joins. The 1872 reading was given to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London.
Period label: Current consensus — open to revision Current consensus — open to revision. This copy is Neo-Assyrian, 668 to about 631 BC, from the palace library. The flood narrative it retells is already Old Babylonian in Atrahasis. The reading in London is 1872.
How this dating was done: The copy is dated by the library and by typology of the Neo-Assyrian script. Typology means reading a date from the style of the writing. The older poem is dated by the Atrahasis colophon. The 1872 paper is dated by the day it was read. None of these is a radiocarbon date of a flood layer. Radiocarbon would measure the carbon left in something that once lived, and this clay has no such measurement.
What could change it: A flood speech on a tablet older than Atrahasis would move the narrative. A silt date that clustered at one century across Ur, Kish and Shuruppak would move the "one flood" reading. The present layers do not cluster.

Published ranges, drawn as bars. A bar is a claim about a span, not a point.

Atrahasis copy

This Nineveh copy

1646 BCE1200 BCE631 BCE

Atrahasis copy. The poem this speech retells. Middle chronology.
This Nineveh copy. Ashurbanipal. K.3375.

What is actually there

The tablet was read to the Society of Biblical Archaeology on 3 December 1872.
The 1872 paper gives the birds as dove, then swallow, then raven.
The hero of this tablet is Utnapishtim, not Ziusudra.
The copy is 7th century BC. The plot is older.

Open questions

Question	Status
How much of Tablet XI is Atrahasis copied, and how much is new?	Debated in the line-by-line work
Does the landing on Nimush name a mountain a survey can visit?	Open
Did the 1872 likeness of order mean a shared event, or a shared literature?	The paper itself left the origin to later work

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 seventh-century retelling of an older flood poem

Tablet XI is Utnapishtim's speech inside the epic of Gilgamesh, copied for Ashurbanipal from a flood narrative already written in Atrahasis. The 1872 reading correctly saw a story kin to Genesis and not identical with it.

What supports this

The tablet's library is Nineveh, 7th century BC.
The birds, the boat and the warning match the shape of Atrahasis, with a different hero.
The 1872 paper itself lists the differences from Genesis and from Berossus.

What pushes back

Line-by-line dependence is a modern editorial result. The 1872 reader did not yet have Atrahasis in the form later copies supplied.
Old Babylonian Gilgamesh tablets show the epic was already old. Which of them contained a flood speech is a separate question.

What would settle it

Best reading. The copy is late. The plot is older than the copy. The 1872 paper is a true report of what he could then read.

Emerging narratives

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

An emerging narrative

One world flood, witnessed here

Utnapishtim's account is the record of a single flood that covered the world, the same event as Genesis and as every silt layer.

What supports this

A boat, animals, birds and a mountain landing are told here and in Genesis.
The 1872 paper judged the events to be the same events in the same order.
Many other cultures tell of a flood, which is what a very large memory would leave behind.

What pushes back

The same paper treats the differences as proof of a distinct tradition.
Silt at Ur, Kish and Shuruppak is local and of different dates.
This tablet is a speech inside an epic about not dying. It is not a field notebook.

What would settle it

A shared story is well supported. One world flood is not what the layers show. The paper's own last pages leave the origin open.

An emerging narrative

A memory of the Younger Dryas, written down late

The seven days and the grounded boat remember the cold return at the end of the Ice Age, kept in telling until Nineveh copied it.

What supports this

The Younger Dryas was abrupt. Oral tradition can, in principle, carry a shock for a long time.
The Gulf was dry land and then sea across the same broad era.

What pushes back

The copy is the 7th century BC. The older Atrahasis copy is still the second millennium BC.
No line names a cold snap, an ice sheet, or a year in that range.
Nearer silt, of several dates, is the flood the cities could actually have seen.

What would settle it

Thin. It asks a palace copy to remember a climate event the tablet does not mention, and it flattens the other flood poems into the same century.

Should the current view be reevaluated?

Consensus holds well

The tablet, the 1872 reading, and the debt to an older flood poem are secure. A single world flood, or a single Ice Age date, is more than this clay can carry.

What drives this

K.3375 and the day it was read
The bird order in the public-domain paper
Older and different tablets with other heroes

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 seventh-century retelling of an older flood poem Unsure One world flood, witnessed here

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 speech and the silt at Shuruppak are one event

Utnapishtim's city and the yellow band would be the same memory, and Tablet XI would be a late copy of that memory rather than only a literary inset.

Why it is still worth a test

A date on the Shuruppak charcoal, and a flood speech on a tablet closer to that layer than the Nineveh copy is.

Sources

The Chaldean Account of the Deluge Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, read 3 December 1872
The flood tablet The British Museum
Gilgamesh flood myth Wikipedia

Image credits

Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh, from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, 7th century BC. The flood is a story told inside another story, and it was the piece read to a London society on 3 December 1872. . Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)., CC BY-SA 4.0. Shown unedited.
Tablet XI on its blue case in the British Museum, the broken edge toward the camera. The piece is a fragment, and the reading of 1872 was made from joins of this kind.. Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0. Shown unedited.
Comparison: the Atrahasis tablet of Ku-Aya, probably from Sippar. The flood speech is already here, centuries before Nineveh, under another hero's name.. SpeakingArch, CC BY-SA 4.0. Shown unedited.
Comparison: the Nippur tablet of Ziusudra's story, Penn Museum CBS 10673. It is also called a flood tablet, and it is not this one. The language is Sumerian and the hero is Ziusudra.. Onceinawhile, CC BY-SA 4.0. Shown unedited.
Comparison: VAT 4105, an Old Babylonian Gilgamesh tablet in Berlin, 18th or 17th century BC. The epic is already being copied long before Nineveh. This piece is not the flood speech of Tablet XI.. Bautsch, CC0. Shown unedited.

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