Willie Ho

After comparing the Genesis story-myth with tablets I and IX of The Epic of Gilgamesh, I noticed a number of similarities and differences in the text.

In the Genesis, Noah was chosen by god as a righteous man who seemed to be the best candidate of the human race to help God fulfill his task. God warned Noah that mankind has grow to be too evil and He did not anticipate this. God needed to cleanse the earth of the evils of mankind so he creates a flood to wipe the earth clean. Hence, he tells Noah to build an ark with a length of "three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits."

This flood in the Genesis is also present in the The Epic of Gilgamesh. However, in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the "chosen" craftsman goes by the name of Utanapishtim. In fact, Utanapishtim is not even chosen. The gods in that myth hold a meeting and one god, Ea, is overheard by Utanapishtim when he speaks to a reed house. He speaks of a flood and that the only way to survive it is to build a boat in which "its length must correspond to its width." After the boat is built, its dimensions are told. "Its walls were each 10 times 12 cubits in height, the sides of its top were of equal length, 10 times It cubits each." As seen, the boat in The Epic of Gilgamesh is actually more square than the ark in Genesis.

Everything else in the two stories regarding the mythical flood seem to be the same. However, the gods' ambitions for causing it were quite different. As stated earlier,in the genesis, God causes the flood because mankind has grown to be too evil of a creature and for this they must repent and start anew as a race. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods simply thought mankind was being pesky and decided to kill them off for fun.

There were a few extra, minor differences regarding the aftermath of the flood. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the flood's aftermath seemed to have lasted seven days while in the Genesis, it lasted about 150 days. Both antagonists of the stories send forth a dove and raven to check if the waters have abated after the flood. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, a swallow is also sent out to check the waters.