Gilgamesh and the Great Flood in Tablet XI: Supplementary Lecture Notes
In this year’s Religion, Spirituality, and the Arts Seminar, we are beginning a four-year series that explores the relationship between religion and the environment.
This year’s theme focuses on floods, and there are two primary texts that will guide our discussions over the next several months: the two accounts of a great flood found in Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh and in Genesis 6-9.
For our first meeting, I introduced Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh and some of the epic’s broader narratives. I also provided a very brief summary of its geographical and historical context. Since we had to move through the presentation so quickly, I have included my slide deck below.
In introducing the text, I also played a short recording of Karl Hecker reading the first lines from Tablet XI, provided by SOAS at the University of London. It’s really worth a listen to get a sense of the syntax and rhythm of the seventh-century text from the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, which was first excavated by Hormuzd Rassam and Austen Henry Layard in the 19th century.
Next Listens
"Epic of Gilgamesh," In Our Time, BBC. 47 min.
"Flood Tablet," A History of the World in 100 Objects, BBC.
Recordings of Babylonian and Assyrian Poetry and Literature. SOAS, University of London. Department of History, School of History, Religions & Philosophies.
Next Reads
Dalley, Stephanie, ed. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
George, A. R., ed. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Lambert, W. G., ed. Babylonian Creation Myths. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2013.
Rassam, Hormuzd, 1826-1910. Narrative of the British Mission to Theodore, King of Abyssinia with Notices of the Countries Traversed from Massowah, through the Soodân, the Amhâra, and Back to Annesley Bay, from Mágdala. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1869.
Reade, Julian. “Hormuzd Rassam and His Discoveries.” Iraq 55 (1993): 39–62. https://doi.org/10.2307/4200366.
Tigay, Jeffrey H. The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.