Talk:Atra-Hasis

Dating the Gilgamesh Epic

Though some may estimate dates with C-14 of plant and bacteria in the clay, the epic can also be dated by the Damuzi poem which says Venus rose from the dead the day Mars turned around into Scorpio. A search of the sky results in a rare event that comes closest as the two dates 2040bc April 26 (G.Apr 9) and 1645bc March 10 (G.Feb 25). According to Genesis Hebrew short chronology, this Noah would be alive for the first epic and dead for the rewritten copy of it. The 2040bc date does not match the long chronology such as Egypt which places the three men (biblical Peleg, and 5th dynasty Unas Sakkara, and Gilgamesh at 2321bc), nor other timelines that place these men as year 740 after the Flood such as 2217bc and 2207bc.

Discrepancies in the number of years before the Igigu rebelled.

The description provided in this article regarding Table 1 states:

"Enlil, the god of Earth, assigned junior dingirs (Sumerian: 𒀭, lit. 'divines') to perform farm labor and maintain the rivers and canals. However, after 40 years, the lesser dingirs rebelled and refused to engage in strenuous labor.”

The 40-year timeframe aligns with the translation found in the Electronic Babylonian Library (https://www.ebl.lmu.de/corpus/L/1/1/OB/I).

However, there appears to be a discrepancy with other translations, such as the one by British Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley, which states that they worked for over 3,000 years (https://geha.paginas.ufsc.br/files/2017/04/Atrahasis.pdf).

We need to find out which translation is the most accurate, because the discrepancies are enormous. PurpleDandelion (talk) 15:49, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

There is discussion about the numbers. The eBL (the first link you provided) has a note on that line and the interpretation of the numbers. It states "The correct reading and interpretation of the number given in this line has been discussed several times. Lambert & Millard, 1969: 44-45 translated “forty years”; similarly, Pettinato, 1968: 178 note 2 read “forty years,” interpreting them as divine years: according to Tablet II 1 (nēr (u) nēr), one divine year equals 600 (and) 600 (or perhaps 600×600) human years. von Soden, 1969: 422 interpreted it as 2.500 (years of work), i.e. 4×600+60+40, adding that this number should refer to the god Enlil, because 2.500 is the square of Enlil’s divine number 50 (see von Soden, 1978: 78; von Soden, 1991: 47). Dalley, 1989: 10 translates 3.600 years without further explanation (60×60?)." 2001:62A:4:434:AC85:4500:110C:9099 (talk) 11:09, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Does this sentence make sense?

"(Compare also the triple alliance of the party around Zeus and the two from Atlantis to Greece defected groups around Epi- and Prometheus.)" I don't understand what this sentence is trying to say. (Second section end of first paragraph) Bruceman138 (talk) 00:27, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Off-topic paragraph?

This paragraph contains a theory about the evolution of human societies ("autarkic hordes") / a theory about the origins of Gobekli Tepe. Is this relevant to the article? It seems a) off-topic and b)speculation, especially when it ends with an unsourced theory about the Garden of Eden. This is an article about Atra-Hasis, not the origins of human civilization or religion. "It is not unlikely that the story refers to the era of the Neolithic Revolution, when Homo sapiens, similar to chimpanzees evolving in small autarkic hordes, began to establish political inter-group organisations. Instead of fighting each other as before (and as our closest relatives in animal kingdom seem to have no choice in an overpopulation crisis), this groups of hunter-gatherers concluded to share the coveted territory in peace, to defend it together and to erect impressive monuments like those at Göbekli Tepe (so the thesis of its discoverer K. Schmidt). More or less from this date, they also developed agriculture, became sedentary and transformed Mesopotamia's steppe into the blooming landscape that went down in the myths of mankind as the Garden of Eden." Bruceman138 (talk) 00:46, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

• It's clearly off-topic and "original research", as the citations do not support the conclusions. I'm removing it and the images that go along with it, as they have nothing to do with Atrahasis. Chris Weimer (talk) 21:36, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

  Klaus Schmid relates his resarch on Göbekli Tep to the narrative of the gods in the epic, speaking about hunter-gatherer communities that founded cross-group organisations; also Thorkild and Erdu Genesis (same story in a simpler version) wrote about the dawn of this civilisation. --Floooty (talk) 08:38, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

  • Just because they wrote something doesn't mean it's relevant to this topic. You need to make a real argument for relevance and not include it for its own sake. The paragraph is also unbalanced, placing far too much emphasis on a very recent science article that hasn't been reviewed by historians of this time period. Remember that Wikipedia is neutral and agendas are not (supposed to be) welcome here. Chris Weimer (talk) 15:57, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

    The Eridu Genesis resembles Atrahasis in some central aspects. It reports on the beginning of civilisation on earth, even hinting that the groups of prehistoric man previously roamed Mesopotamia as free nomads. That is what Jacobson refers to, and [Schmidt]—who is also a prehistorian (not merely an archaeologist)—does the same. So I don’t understand at the moment what problem there is in including that information in the article, or why it should be considered irrelevant. Floooty (talk) 15:25, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Doesn't this sentence need a citation, especially the part about an "earlier myth?"

"In the main, the epic reports on a conflict between some of the first Sumerian gods and draws on the earlier myth of the separation of air and earth (‘above’ and ‘below’) in the midst of the cosmic freshwater primordial ocean to clarify their hierarchical relationship" What is this earlier myth? What text is it found in? Bruceman138 (talk) 00:52, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Myths and Facts

"Only the goddess Tiamat – a personification of the saltwater ocean imagined as a giant serpent – and the god Abzu, a symbol of the cosmic freshwater ocean, who both created earth together, represent the first generation."

There is no mention of Tiamat in the epic of Atrahasis at all. Whoever wrote this section seems to be conflating this epic with the epic of Enuma Elish, which is a babylonian myth from the late bronze age, about a thousand years later than Atrahasis. That epic does start with a creation story involving Tiamat and Apsu as primal gods/forces, followed by a teogeny, the creation of all the other gods, conflicts of the young gods and their parents, specially between Tiamat and Marduku. But it is a completely different myth and it doesn't appear in Atra-Hasis. There is no sea serpent either.

Sources:

Dalley, Stephanie (2008). Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford University Press.

Lambert, W. G. and Millard, Alan R. (1969). Atra-Ḫas̄is: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. Clarendon Press

https://archive.org/details/atrahasis0000wgla/page/43/mode/1up (Lambert1996, starts at page 43)

2804:389:C2AC:2175:950:D948:12C2:ECEA (talk) 00:34, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Speculation in the article

I have to agree with previous commenters that this article is riddled with unsourced speculation and references to other mythologies that add unencyclopedic commentary to it. 187.168.128.191 (talk) 05:38, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

undue weight

What was meant by that comment in history section? That speculation of the kind linking the Anunnaki to extraterrestrial reptiles should also be mentioned? Floooty (talk) 05:24, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Origin theories

@Floooty: Regarding Special:Diff/1352945205, please answer my concerns I expressed in the following edits: .

To summarize: most of the sources don't mention Mesopotamia specifically, so applying them here would violate WP:SYNTH. Rose discusses a very specific hypothesis about possible rapid flooding of the area that is now the Persian Gulf. Other sources you provided don't mention it; you are conflating them with this theory. Rose does (tangentially) mention mythology, but the connection is not particularly strong; see my comment at Talk:Flood myth#Last Glacial Period.

I added the "undue" tag because there are several other theories about the origin of flood myths, as listed in the article Flood myth. I don't understand why think you this theory is the only one that should be mentioned in the article lead.

—Janhrach (talk) 19:36, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Janhrach. I didn’t suggest that Rose’s theory is the only one that should be mentioned. It just seems to me that it deals particularly vividly with a possible (!) causal link between widespread flooding, the start of the Neolithic Revolution and the Mesopotamian flood myth. I’m not particularly surprised that the link, especially to the latter, isn’t particularly strong – do you know of anything better?The fact that the other sources I cited do not explicitly concern Mesopotamia (the flood variant in the Bible borrowed from Antrahasis would have to be attributed to that region), is because the end of the last Ice Age led to a rise in sea levels worldwide. Do you mean I’m inventing a specific theory of my own here?

I am planning to incorporate the following into the article, hoping it will explain why the links between mythos and hard facts are so weak: "Palaeoanthropologist Klaus Schmidt explicitly refers to the Atrhasian Upper Gods as the mythical instigators of the Neolithic Revolution in the south of present-day Turkey; it is, of course, in the nature of the matter that this connection can only be postulated indirectly, namely by way of cognitive-archaeological considerations in conjunction with the megalithic structures at Göbekli Tepe. The real events that, according to this assumption, underlie the epic date back at least 11,000 years – thus to an era in human history when the method of written documentation had not yet been invented." Floooty (talk) 09:51, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Per WP:DUE, articles should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources.

do you know of anything better? – There are some sources at Flood myth#Mesopotamia and Eridu Genesis#Historical context, but I don't know how useful they are.

because the end of the last Ice Age led to a rise in sea levels worldwide – I believe this type of reasoning is not sufficient. To quote the WP:NOR policy:

Articles may make an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim only if it has been published by a reliable secondary source.
— WP:SECONDARY

[... D]o not combine different parts of one source to state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by that source.
— WP:SYNTH

—Janhrach (talk) 19:15, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

"Per WP:DUE, articles should "fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources." – There are some sources at Flood myth#Mesopotamia and Eridu Genesis#Historical context, but I don't know how useful they are."

Yes, I’m also not sure how sensible it would be to add the science-fiction idea that the Supreme Gods which had alegedly triggered the Flood were extraterrestrial space travellers. In any case, I’d like to" make it clear here that you’ve misunderstood me: I never said that scientifically based theories about the end of the Ice Age were the only thing that should be mentioned in the introduction as a possible real-world background to the flood myths found across the globe. I also do not understand what you mean by the other point. If you assume that I am engaging in theory-building, then state clearly ‘which’ one that would be (in your opinion) and ‘with what’.

(from me: "because the end of the last Ice Age led to a rise in sea levels worldwide" –) Yor statement: " I believe this type of reasoning is not sufficient"

May be. But not suffizient for what? Which theory?

"Do not combine different parts of one source to state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by that source."

There are various sources cited, for different points. On the one hand, it is noted that flood myths found across the globe bear a striking resemblance to one another. On the other hand, sources are cited which refer to the end of the last Ice Age (the logically associated global rise in sea levels) and treat this fact as a possible real-world backdrop for some flood myths. One of these sources then discusses the relatively sudden rise in sea levels in relation to Mesopotamian regions and links this to the relevant flood myth. Not very strong, that's true. But a weak link is better then nothing. Now it would be up to you, me and others to explain in what way I would be making something up here myself. Floooty (talk) 13:26, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

I’m also not sure how sensible it would be to add the science-fiction idea that the Supreme Gods which had alegedly triggered the Flood were extraterrestrial space travellers

– No credible researcher would suggest such a theory. When the policy mentions prominence of each viewpoint in [reliable] sources, the word prominence means how many experts hold that view. (Not how many of them mention that view.)

If you assume that I am engaging in theory-building, then state clearly ‘which’ one that would be (in your opinion) and ‘with what’.

– I mentioned the NOR policy as a reaction to your statement that The fact that the other sources I cited do not explicitly concern Mesopotamia [...] is because the end of the last Ice Age led to a rise in sea levels worldwide. I was objecting to citing sources that don't explicitly mention Mesopotamia. You also made the same argument in Special:Diff/1352945205.

I concede I was wrong when I said that most of the sources don't mention Mesopotamia specifically in my original post. I meant that most of the sources don't mention the Persian Gulf (and therefore they have nothing in common with Rose). (I don't remember why I wrote "Mesopotamia" in my post. I had expressed myself correctly in my edits: .) I thought you were misinterpreting the other sources, by saying they argued in favor of Rose's theory. I probably misunderstood you, didn't I?

So, when it comes to mythology, the article presents three sources: Discover Magazine, National Geographic, and Jeffrey Rose. As for the first and the last one, I think the article should be clear that they don't present the same hypothesis; the former is about the Black Sea deluge hypothesis while the latter is about the Gulf Oasis hypothesis. As for Nat Geo, it refers to a completely different scenario (an island being submerged), and I fail to see when makes it noteworthy.

Please ask if anything is unclear.

—Janhrach (talk) 19:38, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Revision needed for speculation around origins

I suggest a thorough review of the second and third paragraphs of this article, and potentially their total removal from the page, as they ultimately contain unnecessary speculation regarding the origin of flood myths as a cross-cultural mytheme that is neither pertinent to the story of Atra-Hasis itself or any perceived historicity regarding any elements discussed within. If it is to be included it should make note that such connections are of a speculative nature and are not the only potential explanations for the existence of flood myths as narrative devices worldwide or even locally within ancient West Asian cultures.

Below are the two paragraphs in question at the time of writing this comment:

Current research posits that the relatively sudden rise in sea levels at the end of the last ice age may provide a real-world backdrop of this widespread narrative,which was handed down in a form remarkably similar to the biblical version and other flood myths of humanity. As the global climate became warmer, rising ocean levels caused outburst floods (possibly in the Black Sea or in the Persian Gulf), triggering a transformation in the remaining areas of Mesopotamia that science refers to as the Neolithic Revolution: onset of agriculture since about 10,000 BC; increase in population density; specialised division of labour; and the shift from the egalitarian coexistence of the original hunter-gatherer communities to hierarchical relationships within the emerging city-states. Mythical peak of such power imbalance is revealed in the relationship between gods and humans, in which the former display surprisingly anthropomorphic traits — not least because, according to the epic, they originally had to work themselves, "like" their creatures. That the gods themselves caused the Flood is out of the question. What is scientifically reasonable, however, is that they founded a politically "cross-group organisation" (K. Schmidt), which began transforming Mesopotamia’s steppe Edenthrough irrigation into that blossoming garden landscape which, together with the first paired humans and the Flood catastrophe, became the foundation of later monotheistic religion. Morgan Ratcliffe1991 (talk) 16:03, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Pinging @Floooty, who added these paragraphs originally. Janhrach (talk) 21:16, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

The research report on the flooding of what is now the Strait of Hormuz is very recent – and is certainly of encyclopaedic value in terms of the possible historical background to this Sumerian flood narrative. That said, you are of course right: the text should perhaps point out that the ‘possible background’ constitutes scientific speculation and that the research community is by no means unanimous on this point. In principle, the article ‘Global Flood Myths’ is there primarily for this purpose. Floooty (talk) 17:16, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Three editors at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Near East#Flood-myth origin theories in Atra-Hasis also agree... Janhrach (talk) 21:52, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

Floooty

@Floooty: Several editors (Morgan Ratcliffe1991, Zunkir, HaniwaEnthusiast, Ploversegg (discussion here for the latter three)) disagree with you about inclusion of these paragraphs, so I strongly urge you to discuss instead of re-inserting the disputed text. Several of them are of the opinion that this material is off-topic in this article – you haven't adressed this point.

Special:Diff/1365827469: [...] please also cite reputable sources that explicitly reject any possible link with the post-glacial flooding of parts of Mesopotamia – No, this absolutely isn't how WP:DUE works, not to mention that the lead is supposed to summarize the article body. Neither does this address the concern that this material is off-topic.

—Janhrach (talk) 12:13, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

You say that the entries contain ‘unnecessary speculation’. Reasons why, in my view, this is not the case: 1- There is broad consensus in modern biblical scholarship as well as classical studies* that Atra-Hasis (its incorporation into Gilgamesh's Epic) constitutes the written source of the story of Noah. (* Irving L. Finkel: The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood. Hodder & Stoughton, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-4447-5705-7.) 2- Furthermore, the very recent study on the flooding of, amongst other places, the present-day Strait of Hormuz (as a result of the glaciers melting at end of last Ice Age) mentions a probable influence on the development of the Mesopotamian flood narrativ. Please explain why you feel it is unnecessary to mention this in the introduction. Floooty (talk) 08:18, 30 July 2026 (UTC)