Sura 11:36–48
Noah said, ‘My Lord, help me! They call me a liar,’ and so We revealed to him: ‘Build the Ark under Our watchful eye and according to Our revelation. When Our command comes and water gushes up out of the earth, take pairs of every species on board, and your family, except for those on whom the sentence has already been passed – do not plead with me for the evildoers: they will be drowned – and when you and your companions are settled on the Ark, say, “Praise be to God, who delivered us from the wicked people,” and say, “My Lord, let me land with Your blessing: it is You who provide the best landings.” ’ There are signs in all this: We have always put [people] to the test.
Sura 23:26–30
He said, ‘My Lord, my people have rejected me, so make a firm judgement between me and them, and save me and my believing followers.’ So We saved him and his followers in the fully laden ship, and drowned the rest.
Sura 26:117–20
We sent Noah out to his people. He lived among them for fifty years short of a thousand but when the Flood overwhelmed them they were still doing evil. We saved him and those with him on the Ark (safina). We made this a sign for all people.
Sura 29:14–15
So We opened the gates of the sky with torrential water, burst the earth with gushing springs: the waters met for a preordained purpose. We carried him along on a vessel of planks and nails that floated under Our watchful eye, a reward for the one who had been rejected.
Sura 54:11–14
But when the Flood rose high, We saved you in the floating ship, making that event a reminder for you: attentive ears may take heed.
Sura 69:10–12
The Ark Tablet
It is an exciting matter to compare the new Ark Tablet – dating to the Old Babylonian Period, probably about 1750 BC – with all these familiar and less familiar accounts. There are sixty new lines of literary Babylonian to occupy us, and poking about among the words certainly uncovers interesting things concerning the Flood Story as it developed within ancient Mesopotamian literature and beyond. The Ark Tablet packs in crucial and dramatic sections of the broader story which we will investigate in the following chapters, at the same time comparing what we have already known from these versions in Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic.
Our task now is to see what evidence can be wrung out of each new line of cuneiform writing. Many new ideas come and some old ones will have to be upset, not least the shape of the famous Ark in the Epic of Gilgamesh, as we will see.
5
The Ark Tablet
And Noah he often said to his wife
When he sat down to dine,
“I don’t care where the water goes
If it doesn’t get into the wine.”
G.K. Chesterton
Some wonderful cuneiform tablets have come to light for the Mesopotamian Flood detective since George Smith’s day. Everyone is interested in them and all Assyriologists keep their eye out for pieces of cuneiform that might start off ‘Wall! Wall … !’. Texts of this exalted literary quality, either excavated on archaeological sites or identified in museum collections, have usually been quickly published and translated into one or more modern languages; the interested reader has always been able to find them and see what they have to offer. Such documents are of concern to the widest possible readership: culturally their content belongs to the world at large.
We come now to the Flood Story tablet that has led to the writing of this book and which it has been my good fortune to publish here for the first time. The tablet, like many documents of its period, is designed to fit comfortably in the reader’s hand; it is much the same size and weight as a contemporary mobile phone.
Let us recap the important details.
The Ark Tablet was written during the Old Babylonian period, broadly 1900–1700 BC. The document was not dated by the scribe, but from the shape and appearance of the tablet itself, the character and composition of the cuneiform signs and the grammatical forms and usages, we can be sure that this is the period in which it was written. It was composed in Semitic Babylonian, that is Akkadian, in a literary style. The hand is smallish and neat and that of a fully trained cuneiform scribe whose name, unfortunately, is not recorded on the tablet. The text has been written out very ably without error and for a specific purpose; it is certainly not a school practice tablet from a beginner, or anything of that kind. It measures 11.5 × 6.0 cm and contains exactly sixty lines.
The front (or obverse) is in fine condition and virtually everything can be read and translated. The back (or reverse) is damaged in the middle of most lines, with the result that not everything there can be read now, although much of substantial importance can be deciphered; some parts are simply missing altogether and other parts are very badly worn. The tablet has at some time been fragmented in several pieces and has evidently been fired and assembled in modern times by a competent ceramic conservator. The Ark Tablet arrived in Great Britain in 1948 in the possession of Mr Leonard Simmonds and was given to his son Mr Douglas Simmonds in 1974. Throughout the time of writing it has been resident in the author’s desk at the British Museum, which has allowed repeated checking of the signs and renewed attempts at incomplete words and signs.
The Ark Tablet is of colossal importance for the history of the Flood Story both in cuneiform and biblical Hebrew, and is among the most significant inscriptions ever to come to light on a clay tablet, for the reasons discussed in the following chapters. The narrative quotes verbatim speeches by the god Ea and the man Atra-hasīs, the heroic Babylonian equivalent of Noah, concerning what is about to happen and what he must do. It concludes at the point when Atra-hasīs’s shipwright seals the door behind him before the waters come. We proceed with a straightforward translation of the original Babylonian text of the Ark Tablet into English.
The Ark Tablet, front view: how to build an ark, hands on.
(picture acknowledgement 5.1)
On the front of the tablet we read:
“Wall, wall! Reed wall, reed wall!
Atra-hasīs, pay heed to my advice,
That you may live for ever!
Destroy your house, build a boat;
Spurn property and save life!
Draw out the boat that you will make
On a circular plan;
Let her length and breadth be equal,
Let her floor area be one field, let her sides be one nindan high.
You saw kannu ropes and ašlu ropes/rushes for [a coracle before!]
Let someone (else) twist the fronds and palm-fibre for you!
It will surely consume 14,430 (sūtu)!”
“I set in place thirty ribs
Which were one parsiktu-vessel thick, ten nindan long;
I set up 3,600 stanchions within her
Which were half (a parsiktu-vessel) thick, half a nindan high;
I constructed her cabins above and below.”
“I apportioned one finger of bitumen for her outsides;
I apportioned one finger of bitumen for her interior;
I had (already) poured out one finger of bitumen onto her cabins;
I caused the kilns to be loaded with 28,800 (sūtu) of kupru-bitumen
And I poured 3,600 (sūtu) of iṭṭû-bitumen within.
The bitumen did not come to the surface [lit. up to me]; (so) I added five fingers of lard,
I ordered the kilns to be loaded … in equal measure;
(With) tamarisk wood (?) (and) stalks (?)
… (= I completed the mixture).
On the lower edge, only parts of two of the four lines can be deciphered:
…
Going between her ribs;
…
… the iṭṭû-bitumen …
On the other side we read:
“I applied (?) the outside kupru-bitumen from the kilns,
Out of the 120 gur-measures, which the workmen had put to one side.”
The Ark Tablet, back view, showing the kind
of damage that can happen to the best of tablets.
(picture acknowledgement 5.2)
“I lay myself down (?) … of rejoicing
My kith and kin [went into] the boat … ;
Joyful … of my in-laws,
And the porter with … and …
They ate and drank their fill.”
“As for me there was no word in my heart, and
… my heart
… my …
… of my …
… of my lips
… I slept with difficulty;
I went up on the roof [and prayed] to the moon god Sin, my lord:
‘Let my heartbreak (?) be extinguished! [Do you not disap]pear!’
… darkness;
Into my …’
Sin, from his throne, swore as to annihilation
And desolation on (the) darkened [day (to come)].”
“But the wild animals from the steppe [(…)]
Two by two the boat did [they enter] …”
“I had … five of beer …
They were transporting eleven or twelve …
Three measures of šiqbum … ;
One-third (measure) of fodder … and kurdinnu plant (?).”
“I ordered several times (?) a one-finger (layer) of lard for the girmadû roller,
Out of the thirty gur which the workmen had put to one side.”
“When I shall have gone into the boat,
Caulk the frame of her door!”
A very dramatic moment to stop!
6
Flood Warning
If the centre of the gall bladder is inflated with water a flood will come.
Babylonian liver omen
The Ark Tablet starts with no preamble: the Flood warning speech is delivered just like that, and it is only by investigating the other cuneiform accounts that we can understand the background and realise that it is the god Enki who is speaking and that he has to make two attempts, using distinct devices, to get the urgent message across.
First, then, we turn to the classic Old Babylonian Atrahasis version:
Atra-hasīs opened his mouth
And addressed his lord …
Just when the narrative is satisfactorily under way, as often happens with cuneiform stories, there are nine lines completely missing. Then the tablet resumes the narrative, from which it can be surmised that the missing lines contained some explanation of a worrisome dream:
Atra-hasīs opened his mouth
And addressed his lord,
“Teach me the meaning [of the dream]
… that I may look out for its conclusion.”
[Enki] opened his mouth
And addressed his slave:
“You say, ‘What am I to seek?’
Take note of the message I am going to send you:
20 Wall, listen to me!
Reed wall, observe all my words!
Destroy your house, build a boat,
Spurn property and save life …”
Old Babylonian Atrahasis: iii 1–2, 11–23
Enki thus has a very urgent set of instructions – such as no human had ever heard before – for the unwitting hero-to-be: many details would have to be got right. Enki’s message-dream attempt was unsuccessful. It was probably too obscure or complicated, and no Frances Danby vision of a Deluge sweeping away the world with Atra-hasīs the only man who could save it. Mesopotamian dreams were an important means of communication from god to man and, like omens, could arrive spontaneously or be induced by ritual. (There is a manual of procedure, dating from around 450 BC, for this sort of thing in the British Museum: it explains how to procure a personal message dream, which is brought up from the underworld by Wind Messengers, with the help of a Dream Ladder, to the client waiting on the roof, stupefied with incense.) Either way dream messages often needed unravelling, and a specialist class of interpreters was to hand; message-laden dreams requiring exposition are a classic device in Mesopotamian stories.
The other Flood Story versions back up this dream-boat picture. Middle Babylonian Nippur is very damaged but one revealing word survives. Enki says, in the Akkadian, apaŠšar, ‘… I will explain …’, using the verb that is always employed for expounding dreams (pašāru). From Middle Babylonian Ugarit we learn more: that Atra-hasīs is in Ea’s temple:
When the gods took counsel concerning the lands
They brought about a flood in the world regions.
… hears …
5 … Ea in his heart.
“I am Atra-hasīs,
I have been staying in the temple of Ea, my master,
And I know all.
I know of the counsel of the great gods,
10 I know of their oath, although they should not have revealed it to me.”
Line 7 in the version from Ugarit suggests that Atra-hasīs had stayed overnight in the temple hoping for a message dream, which was evidently successful and the dream informative. If so, some anxiety must have prompted his enquiry originally. (This procedure was favoured by rulers, and known rather curiously to Assyriology as incubation. King Kurigalzu tried it once at the great temple at Babylon in about 1400 BC, anxious to know whether his anorexic wife Qatantum was ever going to get pregnant, and the gods looked her entry up in the Tablet of Sins, but we never find out what happened.) Line 7 can equally well be translated ‘I lived’ or ‘I was living in the temple of Ea’, and some scholars have thought that Atra-hasīs must have been a priest, like Ziusudra in the Sumerian version. The Assyrian Recension shows Atra-hasīs waiting in the temple for Ea to tell him in some way of the gods’ decision. (The scribe dutifully informs us in line 11 that some signs were broken in the text he was copying.):
“Ea, master, [I heard] your entry,
[I] noticed steps like [your] footsteps.”
[Atra-hasīs] bowed down, he prostrated up … himself,
he stood.
He opened [his mouth], saying,
5 “[Master], I heard your entry,
[I noticed] steps like your footsteps.
[Ea, master], I heard your entry,
[I noticed] steps like your footsteps.”
“… like seven years,
10 … your … has made the weak thirsty,
… (new it-was-broken) … I have seen your face
… tell me your (pl.) decision(?).
In the Sumerian Flood Story, however, Ziusudra’s message came to him in some other way:
Day by day, standing constantly at the … of Enki, the wise lord.
It was no dream, coming out and speaking …
Our slightly scrappy tablets, taken together, present a convincing picture of Enki’s first attempt to warn Atra-hasīs through a dream, but there is unexpected confirmation from the very latest Mesopotamian witness, the Greek Babyloniaka of Berossus. In this, the dream tradition was a crucial part of the story, and proved to be the only message conduit needed. Cronus, the father of Zeus, is to be equated with the Babylonian god Marduk, according to Berossus. So Cronus corresponds to Ea, Marduk’s father:
Cronus appeared to Xisuthros in a dream and revealed that on the fifteenth day of the month Daisios mankind would be destroyed by a flood.
The important thing from the Babylonian story point of view is that the dream technique was ineffective in getting the message clearly across to Atra-hasīs. This is hardly surprising: it was a heavy matter and there were many details that would have to be got right. Ea, therefore, had to try another form of undercover speech.
Talking to the Wall
It is at this point that the text of the Ark Tablet (with which this book is so concerned) actually begins:
“Wall, wall! Reed wall, reed wall!
Atra-hasīs, pay heed to my advice,
That you may live for ever!
Destroy your house, build a boat;
5 Spurn possessions and save life!”
From the moment when George Smith stepped into the limelight in the London of 1872 to declaim ‘Wall, wall!
Reed fence, reed fence!’ these dramatic words, god speaking to man, have been perhaps the most famous in cuneiform. Five flood-story versions, including our own Ark Tablet, preserve this speech or part of it. Enki gets the message to his servant this time by talking to the wall, by which means Atra-hasīs learns what will happen.
The Ark Before Noah Page 11
