Image Details

British Museum

In the Gilgamesh epic’s Tablet XI (a seventh-century B.C.E. copy, found by Austen Henry Layard at Nineveh, is shown here), Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh of the great flood that destroyed the world—a story with detailed similarities to Noah’s Flood in Genesis. Utnapishtim and his family alone survived, and Utnapishtim and his wife were granted immortality by the gods (compare with photo of relief from Tell Halaf).