We learn from the Ark Tablet, however, that when everything was ready, and just before Atra-hasīs came aboard himself, another practical operation took place:
“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.”
Ark Tablet: 57–8
Nine cubic metres of lard in the hands of workmen is no simple matter of bread and dripping and this material can only be destined for physical application to the outer surface on a large scale. Such a large quantity will also have been prepared in advance, probably alongside the bitumen operation. Atra-hasīs tells us that a one-finger layer out of that supply must now be applied, using a roller called a girmadû (on which, see presently). Lard or oil applied as a final coating to a bitumen surface has a softening effect which enhances the level of waterproofing and this is undoubtedly what is going on here. It would only be necessary to oil the outside of the boat, of course, and so the process could be carried out at the last minute.
The remainder of the Ark Tablet concerns the continuation of the Flood Story plot: people and animals going aboard, last-minute deliveries and Atra-hasīs’s agony of mind, all of which we will look at in Chapter 10. Only selected parts of this great boat-building operation, described in such detail, were taken up into Gilgamesh XI, to which august narrative we now turn.
2. Building Utnapishti’s Ark in the Gilgamesh Story
Work began on Utnapishti’s Ark as early as possible, and there was a good turnout:
At the very first light of dawn,
The population began assembling at Atra-hasīs’s gate.
Gilgamesh XI: 48–9
Immediately we perceive imported Old Babylonian narrative under this much later text. Utnapishti is reminiscing in the first person, so he ought to say ‘at my gate’. The Old Babylonian name of Atra-hasīs was there in the original but does not belong in the new text; it should have been edited out but has sneaked in under the wire. This single line is also a very important indication that the Old Babylonian text in the background was in the third person and not the first person, exactly as we can see it in Old Babylonian Atrahasis:
Atra-hasīs received the command,
He assembled the elders to his gate.
Old Babylonian Atrahasis: 38–9
It took five days before the ‘outer shape’ was ready. Unlike the Ark Tablet, which bypasses the episode, Old Babylonian Atrahasis (not much left) and Gilgamesh XI both list the workers who came to help with Atra-hasīs’s great project. We can see how well this labour force reflected the building of the giant coracle that we have been discussing:
Worker Project
The carpenter carrying his axe Ribs, stanchions, plugs
The reed worker carrying his stone Cabins
The young men bearing … …
The old men bearing rope of palm-fibre Boat structure
Rich man carrying bitumen Waterproofing
Poor man carrying … ‘tackle’ ‘Tackle’
One ancient contributor to the text added a specialist with an agasilikku axe, probably also for woodworking. The presence of ‘palm-fibre rope’, Akkadian pitiltu, is especially significant in view of what the god Ea says about the same fundamental material in Ark Tablet line 11 above.
The poor man’s ‘tackle’ (the word means ‘the needful things’) is a bit of a mystery. Utnapishti explains:
I struck the water pegs into her belly.
I found a punting-pole and put the tackle in place.
Gilgamesh XI: 64–5
Its safety importance had been stressed by the god Ea a millennium before:
The tackle should be very strong;
Let the bitumen be tough and so give (the boat) strength.
Old Babylonian Atrahasis: 32–3
The ‘punting pole’ in the Gilgamesh description, Akkadian parrisu, is essential for coracle navigation and its inclusion here is another pointer to the authentic riverine Old Babylonian background to the passage. The traditional Iraqi coracle made specific journeys to set destinations and required a paddle:
When small or moderate in size, the quffāji, leaning over one side (the functional fore end for the time being) propels his craft with a paddle. The usual system is to make several strokes first on one side and then on the other, changing over as necessary to keep a straight course. In medium-sized quffas two men paddle standing on opposite sides; the largest requires a crew of four paddlers … The paddle used to-day has a loom 5–6 feet in length, with a short blade, round or oblong, nailed to the outer end. It bears no resemblance to the ‘oars’ working on thole pins shown in Assyrian bas-reliefs of the quffas of Sennacherib’s period [see Pl.… ].
Hornell 1946: 104
Under flood conditions Atra-hasīs’s Ark had one job only: to stay afloat and safeguard its contents, but perhaps any giant coracle had to have its giant punting pole. The ‘tackle’ could therefore be the matching rowlock to keep the thing in place and stop it drifting away (as I know paddles are apt to do). The pole, if not for steering, might also help to prevent the vessel from spinning round and round, and we know from Tablet X that a character like Gilgamesh could handle thirty-metre parrisu poles by the three hundred when it came to it. The water pegs are also mentioned in Ark Tablet 47, and are sometimes thought to be bilge plugs.
The process of roofing the Round Ark with all its implications and associations reminded some early poet of the Apsû, the water under the world, and the idea is made explicit:
Cover her with a roof, like the Apsû.
Old Babylonian Atrahasis: 29; Gilgamesh XI: 705
Middle Babylonian Nippur, in contrast, says, ‘ … roof it over with a strong covering’, for talk there is of the non-round makurkurru ark, and the cosmic Apsû metaphor does not apply. Mention of the roof was not integral to every Old Babylonian version, however, for, as we have seen, the author behind the Ark Tablet omits the topic entirely, just as he makes no mention of installing a deck (although we can be sure there was one for reasons given above). A round Babylonian ark, then, had a lower deck or base and a deck above that, with cabins on both decks and a roof whose profile mirrored the base.
Utnapishti’s internal arrangements put this modest one-up, one-down structure to shame:
I gave her six decks
I divided her into seven parts
I divided her interior into nine.
Gilgamesh XI: 61–3
This is a flamboyant achievement, especially if, like so much else in this tablet, it ultimately derives from a far simpler Old Babylonian model.
When this narrative section is compared to the Ark Tablet (our only other source of information on these highly interesting matters), it is noticeable that the long and sticky bitumen passage with which we have just engaged is whittled down in Gilgamesh XI to two lines. Perhaps Assurbanipal’s editors experienced technical overload, and in any case the right way to bituminise a coracle didn’t have much to do with their narrative (which was really focused on Gilgamesh and what happened to him), and the symbolic nature of the structure far exceeded interest in how it was actually made.
While the matter of bitumen was substantially reduced in the Gilgamesh version, it is the same two principal types of bitumen that went into Utnapishti’s kiln. For these, and the oil that comes next, we are given the only Gilgamesh XI quantity measurements on offer, preserved partly in a tablet from Babylon as well as in the Nineveh copies:
I poured 3 × 3,600 [Nineveh, source W], or 6 × 3,600 [Babylon, source j] (sūtu) of kupru-bitumen into the kiln; [I poured] in 3 × 3,600 [Nineveh and Babylon](sūtu) of iṭṭû-bitumen …
Gilgamesh XI: 61–3
If we choose the 6 × 3,600 of the Babylon tradition over the Ninevite Assyrian 3 × 3,600 (as I much prefer to do) we find that Utnapishti put a total of nine šár of mixed bitumen into his kiln, with the idea of waterproofing – be it remembered – what was originally a round coracle boat of one-ik�
� area with one-nindan walls. This makes a suggestive point of comparison with the Old Babylonian Ark Tablet, which prepares a total of nine šár of bitumen for the identical purpose. This shows that the original bitumen number came through the process of textual transmission undistorted or unaltered, and that the quantity of bitumen was not altered to match the increased size. On the contrary, those responsible for the finished text of Gilgamesh XI reveal themselves to be aware that the original quantity of bitumen would only suffice to cover the lower two-thirds of the outside of the Ark in its Gilgamesh form (see below, and Appendix 3).
Utnapishti itemises his oil quantities as if accounting to someone rather defensively for expenses:
The workforce of porters was bringing over 3 × 3,600 (sūtu) of oil;
Apart from 3,600 (sūtu) of oil that niqqu used up
There were 3,600 × 2 (sūtu) that the shipwright stashed away.
Gilgamesh XI: 68–70
His oil came in three lots of 3,600; one was used for niqqu (the meaning of which is uncertain) and the remaining two went to Puzur-Enlil, shipwright and man-in-charge, who was to keep it until needed. No one is quite sure what niqqu means, although ‘libation’ has been suggested. The ‘apart from …’ idea derives from the Ark Tablet tradition, with a slight change from the original Babylonian meaning ‘out of’. Finally, we know that Ark Tablet 57 refers in this oily context to a tool called girmadû, here clearly spelled gi-ri-ma-de-e. This important term has also survived in Gilgamesh XI: 79, but scholars have usually thrown it out, emending the text. This rejection is now seen to be unjustified. Here is the crucial passage:
At sun-[rise to] I set my hand to oiling;
[Before] sundown the boat was finished.
[ …] were very difficult.
We kept moving the girmadû from back to front
[Until] two-thirds of it [were mar]ked off.
Gilgamesh XI: 76–80
The term ‘oiling’ in line 76 confirms the nature of the activity to which these five lines are devoted: it took all day and it wasn’t easy. Applying bitumen all over, inside and out, was a bigger job, but this final waterproofing attracted greater interest in the Gilgamesh version. Perhaps it was accompanied by some concluding ceremony. Puzur-Enlil’s supply of oil was applied with the girmadû, presumably by him. This word must mean ‘wooden roller’, exactly as described above by Chesney, for smoothing over the surface of the bitumen on a new boat once it was applied. The same roller would be used both for the bitumen, and then for the oily layer. Puzur-Enlil must have supervised both bitumen and oil sealing operations to have received such a handsome reward as this:
To the man who sealed the boat, the shipwright
Puzur-Enlil – said Utnapishti –
(variant: To the shipwright Puzur-Enlil in return for sealing the boat)
I gave the Palace with all its goods.
Gilgamesh XI: 95–6
This, to me, is an unforgettable, cinematographic image. Here the word ‘Palace’ is inserted, rather late in the proceedings, to show that Atra-hasīs has been king all along. At the last minute we meet Puzur-Enlil, who, one imagines, had been humouring Atra-hasīs and building his mad I-have-to-get-away-from-it-all boat without a murmur (but no doubt discussing it sardonically over a beer with his fellow workers). Now, as the hatch closes tight, momentous news! One pictures him running hysterically up the road to the Palace, bursting through the front door, ordering a banquet, half the cellar and as many of the harem as he could possibly manage. Later, sprawling and sated on the royal cushions, unable to move, he hears the first ping of raindrops on the roof over his head …
If Gilgamesh line 80 is correctly restored as ‘until two-thirds of it were marked off’, this means that the oil layer was only applied to the lower two-thirds of the boat’s exterior, which would correlate perfectly with the Nineveh issue of bitumen, for this only sufficed to coat the bottom two-thirds of Utnapishti’s Ark. They clearly anticipated little danger from leaks. Interestingly, modern coracles are often not bituminised up to the rim.
Up until now, it must be said, lines 76–80 in the Gilgamesh passage have been understood to describe the launching of Utnapishti’s Ark. Launching could hardly precede the loading of everything on board, and the apparently supportive interpretation, ‘poles for the slipway we kept moving back to front’, has depended on the unwarranted throwing out of the reading girmadû, which is now confirmed as a real word by the spelling in the Ark Tablet.
A launch with a bottle of fizz across the bows was never an option for the Babylonian flood hero or for his ark. The vast coracle would be ‘launched’ of its own accord as the waters arrived, like an abandoned lilo on the beach gradually taken up by an incoming tide.
How to launch a large coracle (if you have to).
(picture acknowledgement 8.2)
9
Life on Board
The animals went in two by two, Hurrah! Hurrah!
The elephant and the kangaroo, Hurrah! Hurrah!
The animals went in two by two,
The elephant and the kangaroo,
And they all went in- to the Ark for to get out of the rain
Anon
The Ark in the storm as portrayed by Dutch artist Reinier Zeeman.
(picture acknowledgement 9.1)
We left the completed ark at the end of the last chapter, waterproofed, anointed and ready, its occupants surely apprehensive as to what could possibly await them. The Flood Story versions that build up to this dramatic moment differ in their accounts of who and what came to be on board at Atra-hasīs’s side in his great vessel and it is to these intriguing questions that we now turn our attention. Most important, of course, are the animals, and then the people.
‘Spurn property and save life!’ said the god Enki to Atra-hasīs, and the essence of the task that lay ahead of him, one can only reflect, remains a valid proposition for our own modern world. The same injunction appears in our three chief flood tablets, Old Babylonian Atrahasis, the Ark Tablet and Gilgamesh XI, ‘save life’ in line 26 of the latter being amplified for emphasis by ‘Put on board the seed of all living creatures.’
Boat-building notwithstanding, one cannot help but worry about the various Noahs, Babylonian and otherwise, and all their animals. The thought of rounding them up, getting them in line, marching them up the gangplank like a schoolteacher on an outing and ensuring good behaviour all round for a voyage of unknown length …
Atra-hasīs’s Animals
The animal boarders divide fundamentally into domestic and wild, and to convey this the Babylonian poets who write of Atra-hasīs use three Akkadian words: būl ṣēri, umām ṣēri and nammaššû. The word ṣēru means ‘hinterland, back country, open country, fields, plain and steppe land’, the broad countryside that outlies a village or town, uncultivated and more often than not the haunt of demons. The word būlu can mean on the one hand ‘herd of cattle, sheep or horses’, on the other ‘wild animals, as a collective, referring mainly to herds of quadrupeds’. Finally, umāmu means ‘animal, beast’, often but not necessarily wild, and nammaššû, ‘herds of (wild) animals’.
This breakdown makes it look as if words in Akkadian can mean whatever you want them to mean, but that is not the case. These are literary words whose full range of possible meanings seems too all encompassing to be much help when it comes to the Great Natural History Project, but, in context, the appropriate meaning – domestic or wild, one or many – is usually clear. I think that we cannot go far wrong with understanding būl ṣēri in the Ark situation as referring to ‘domesticated animals’ and nammaššû as meaning ‘wild animals’. We can comfortably translate umām ṣēri with our expression ‘beast of the field’, which can be either domestic or wild.
With these translations in mind, it becomes apparent that Old Babylonian Atrahasis has normal livestock, domesticated animals and wild animals being taken on board:
Whatever he [had …]
Whatever he had [ … ]
Clean (animals) … [… ]
Fat (animals) […]
He caught [and put on board]
The winged [birds of] the heavens.
The cattle (būl šakkan)[… ]
The wild [animals of the steppe (nammaššû ṣēri)]
[… ] he put on board.
Old Babylonian Atrahasis: 30–38
It is a pity that such timeless lines are broken in what is our best-preserved account of the cuneiform story. ‘Clean’ and ‘fat’ animals are separated here from the other categories, probably referring to domestic sheep and goats. In prime condition they would be brought on board not only with the survival of species in mind, but also to provide milk, cheese and meat. The distinction between būl šakkan and nammaššû ṣēri is essentially that between domesticated and wild animals, but it is worth pointing out there is no indication in Old Babylonian Atrahasis (in the surviving lines) that species completeness was conceived as part of the deal, or indeed that there were Male and Female of each. The category of ‘clean’, too, cannot pass without comment, for the notion of clean and unclean animals did not exist in ancient Mesopotamia as it does in the Bible. While the pig was certainly typecast as unclean there is no occurrence of, or antecedent to, the Hebrew dietary conception: it is certainly more than curious that it should occur here, of all places, in the clearest parallel of all, parallel to the text of Genesis, where the issue is important.
Middle Babylonian Nippur mentions wild animals and birds but is fragmentary:
[Into the boat which] you will make
The Ark Before Noah Page 17
