Felicia Ooi; Gilgamesh - Tablets I & XI

I found reading Genesis 6 - 8 a lot easier as compared to Gilgamesh Tablets I & XI, both in terms of actually reading it as well as understanding it. There are indeed similarities between the two texts, yet at the same time they are vastly different.

Genesis 6 - 8 was primarily about God sending the flood to purify the earth of all the unclean and unrighteous people and it tells us about how Noah was the one chosen to carry out God's wishes. In that way, Noah was the clear "hero" of the story. There is a flood story in Gilgamesh as well. However, it was not Gilgamesh himself who was the hero who saved humanity from the flood; it was Utanapishtim who was chosen by Ea to save humanity and he was recounting the flood story to Gilgamesh. I felt that the main story in Tablet XI was actually Gilgamesh on a quest for immortality and the flood story was merely an explanation of how Utanapishtim attained immortality.

A similarity would be the element of repetition in both texts, though it is much clearer in Gilgamesh as many verses are repeated several times throughout the text. Reading the same phrases several times did not make the meaning of the phrases any clearer to me though. In addition to that, both texts contain very specific instructions as to how the vessel of humankind's salvation was to be built.

Only a small part of Tablet XI is actually about the flood. After the recounting of the flood, the focus of the story shifts back to Gilgamesh's quest for immortality that takes him to the ends of the earth to look for a plant that could restore youth.

The Bible is an obviously religious text that depicts God as wrathful, but also loving and merciful. Gilgamesh, on the other hand is not a religious text. It is instead a collection of stories about Gilgamesh, a cultural hero of his time and the stories are just that - stories. They have no religious basis and were possibly intended as mere entertainment for the people of that time.