Muse

Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. So how did Rome begin? With a throne, a triumph or a murder between brothers? Well, according to legend, the mighty city was founded by the twin sons of Mars, Romulus and Remus, abandoned as infants, suckled by a she-wolf and destined for greatness until ambition poisoned their bond. I'm Tristan Hughes, and I cannot wait to get into the explosive story of Romulus and Remus on the Ancients' live tour in Australia and New Zealand this August. I'm going to be joined by the fantastic Jeremy Armstrong. He's a professor of ancient history and an expert on early Rome. And together, we'll follow the myth from divine origins to blood-soaked founding legend, teasing apart what the Romans believed, what archaeology can actually tell us, And how a city built on stories became one of the greatest powers in history. Tickets are on sale now. We're coming to Canberra on the 2nd of August and we're going to be in Auckland on the 8th. The tickets, they are selling fast, so book yours now at feign.com.au. Can't wait to see you there.

You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank? Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining al fresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to 70% off during Wayfair's 4th of July clearance. Score huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs, and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus, surprise flash deals July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com.

Wayfair, every style, every home.

Transcription by CastingWords

Those are the opening lines to one of the greatest epics of antiquity, performed to crowds of people in the streets of Babylon and beyond some 4,000 years ago. A story about their creation, how humans came into existence, and how they were living in a world that had followed a divine flood. We know the epic today as the Atrahasis, named after its central character, a man who survived this divine flood by building a great boat, taking some companions with him and two of every animal. Sound familiar? This Babylonian epic has many striking similarities to the biblical flood, of Noah and his ark, and today we're going to shine a light on it. Welcome to the Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of the oldest flood myth known from anywhere in the world. Our guest is Dr Sophus Hell, a writer, translator, and expert on ancient Babylonian literature. Sophus, welcome back to the show.

So great to be back. I really enjoyed being on the Ancients the first two times and I'm so delighted to be here again.

Well, we've done the Epic of Gilgamesh and Babylon's Epic of Creation and this is another epic, isn't it? Can we say that this is the original flood myth story?

Well, it's one of the oldest flood myths and in my opinion, the greatest. And we'll get to talking about why in a moment. But yeah, this is yet another Babylonian epic. It's also one of the earliest Babylonian epics. So we're actually long before the composition of the Enuma Elish, this epic of creation we talked about, and also before the standard Babylonian Gilgamesh that we talked about. So this is really one of the great first classics of Babylonian literature.

And I think as we'll see as we explore key parts of the story. It can't be missed. You can't miss it. There are clear inspirations on the later, the flood story from the Hebrew Bible.

Yes, exactly. And the flood story also appears in Gilgamesh, as we talked about in that episode. But actually, recent research has shown that the flood story we see in Athrahasis that we're talking about today is closer to the version we find in Genesis than the one in Gilgamesh is. There's still a lot of open questions about how exactly the transmission

happened, but it's worth keeping in mind. Okay, so how far back in time are we going

with this flood myth story? Yeah, so as I said, we're really at the beginning of Babylonian literature. So we are in a period known as the Old Babylonian Period. And that basically means the beginning of the second millennium BCE. It's really hard to say when this poem that we're looking at today was first composed, but we have a set of manuscripts, so a set of clay tablets on which it was written down that are just like really high quality. So these are like, you know, there are other copies of this text, but we're especially reliant on these texts that were copied by a man named Ipik Aya when he was sort of like at the equivalent of the end of his university education. And he copied these tablets in the year 1635 BCE. So again, we can't exactly say when it was composed, but often when we sort of try to place this text in time, we use these manuscripts by Ibig Aya to, you know, give it a sort of specific context. And he lived in the city of Sippar, very close to what is today Baghdad. And yeah, as I said, 1635. Sofis, this is what I

love with mesopotamian epics with mesopotamian literature is that you can have these copies surviving that are almost 4 000 years old and look at the writing today because it's baked into clay yeah you have those rather than let's say later like the iliad and the odyssey or or later text where it's kind of little bits of fragments of papyrus that have survived you have the clay tablet surviving from when that figure wrote it down almost 4 000 years ago that

just always blows my mind. Yeah, exactly. And I agree, like, it's part of what makes clay does this wonderful material. And I really feel like sometimes it gives us the sense of intimacy with these ancient people, because not only do we have the Atrahasis epic by Ipik Aya, but we can actually follow him through his education, we can see the other texts he was studying in his quote-unquote university degree. And so we can sort of reconstruct what mindset he might have been in as he was copying this this text which is really exciting the mindset as well so you get indications into

the the manner the nature the mind of the copier the writer down as well yeah so we know that he

was being taught by his father and we can sort of see the other texts that his father is choosing for him and a lot of them have to do with like the end of an era a lot of them have to do with sort of like death and tragedy but also with like words and you know what it means to to be a good servant of the god Enki, this trickster creative god that we're going to talk about a lot today.

And the name that they gave to this myth, they call it the Atrahasis, do they?

So no, that's actually a modern title. And we name it after its main human character. As we're going to see, there are three main characters in this text, two gods and one human, and the human is called Atrahasis. Their name for it, and this sort of launches us straight into the story, because the Babylonians called their poems by the first line. And it's, you know, one of the best examples of this. It's enuma ilu awilum, which means when gods were man, which is just a fantastic opening title, to be honest. And it then goes on to explain what it means with this rather puzzling sentence, when gods were man, which is that in the beginning, gods were like men are today in that they were burdened with work. So if I can just read like opening lines of the text, it goes, When gods were men, weighed down by work, they bore the burden. The burden of the gods was great. Their work was heavy. Their atorment long. And it then goes on to explain that it's not all the gods that are working. There are two classes of gods. There is the Anunna and the Igigi. Now, the Anunna and the Igigi, those words mean different things in different Babylonian texts, so it's easy to get confused. But in this text, the Anunna are the gods of heaven, and the Yigigi are the working gods. And it literally tells us that the Anunna gods are idle. It uses that word. So they're quite literally an idle class. They are the power holders. And the Yigigi are the working class of the gods. And so the text begins with setting up this class conflict that is actually going to power the rest of the myth. Because the first thing that happens, the first episode, is a labor strike. a labor strike that's amazing yeah yeah where the Gigi rise up in rebellion against the Anunna they put

down their tools and they say we are being mistreated our working conditions are awful genesis is is really hard work because the geeky have to dig out the riverbeds and they have to build the mountains and you know after centuries of doing this they're they're exhausted and so they they launched this labor strike which is just a crazy thing the work that those lesser gods are

doing in this story it isn't constructing a great building or anything like that it is literally building geography creating the world as we know it yeah exactly right and i think it's you know

you have a lot of other creation myths including in uma elish uh that we talked about but you know i'm sure you talked about all sorts of other creation myths on the podcast where like creation often seems this very sort of like magical or perhaps sometimes instantaneous thing and this this is a myth that really looks at like what is what is the labor involved in in creation what what you know what physical work does it take to to make the world i just find that fascinating

and so and before we go on with the story you read out that lovely part right at the beginning there and it i mean straight away the wording itself sounded very quite beautiful quite poetic and is there a particular style in which this this epic should be delivered yeah so again just to to flag

this fact that we're at the beginning of the literary history of babylonian literature and And in the early periods, it's quite pared down. The lines are very short. The words tend to be very simple. But at the same time, it's very musical. There's a lot of like alliteration and play on words and that kind of thing. But, you know, the lines of later texts can be almost twice as long and actually sometimes three times as long as those in Atrahasas. So it's a very sort of like, yeah, condensed literary form. I find it very, very beautiful, to be honest, which is also why I pushed myself to convey it as well as I could in the translation.

And can we imagine it being spoken aloud in Akkadian or whatever the language was at the time to a room full of people by someone who knew the text or who could read the text?

Yeah, absolutely. And so I think Athrahasis is actually a really good example of how these ancient texts in the Babylonian culture would have circulated. And we tend, I think, in part based on the Greek model, to assume that there is sort of this duality that either texts are circulating in written form, or they're circulating in a spoken form. But Atrahasis makes it quite clear that it has a dual form. So the very last line, and we'll get to the context for that later, but the very last line is just the word listen, which is being spoken to the audience, listen. And so that, you know, makes it very clear that this, you know, and a text actually calls itself a song as well as a model which means song yeah and at the same time this is also an object made of clay you know our epic ayah copying his his manuscripts in the in 1635 you know he's working with clay and as we'll see this is a text that sort of brings clay and sound together in interesting ways so you can you should imagine it like circulating in two forms at once

so we have as you've highlighted at the beginning these two levels of gods and the lesser gods Should we say, well, they're the workforce, they're the labor, building the world, creating. And as you say, there's a strike. So how does this strike go? Lesser gods against the higher gods. It feels like, it doesn't feel like it's going to be very fortunate for the strikers.

Yeah, but it actually is, which is, again, one of the crazy things about it. Like the revolution works. So the Ikige are being led by a god called Wei. And just to quote another bit, Wei says to his brothers, the striking he says, now cry war, let us stir battle and strife. The gods heard his words, they set fire to their tools, they set fire to their spades, they burned their burden, which I think is also very dramatic. And then they marched to the house of the leader of the heavenly gods, a god called Enlil, the king of the gods, and they sort of surround his house. And yeah, they demand better working conditions. And it literally says, you know, the workers revolted, which is, I don't know. That's part of why the text feels so bizarrely modern, even though it's so very, very old.

I'm guessing Enlil, he's not too pleased to be risen by these people who he expected to be working.

Nope, not at all. And Enlil is like famously angry. It's like one of his main character traits. And Atrahas is no exception. i actually think it really was one of the texts that helped establish this perception of of enlil as a god who is just very trigger happy he's you know yeah easy easily angered especially when he is being woken up and that's exactly what happens he's woken up and he you know is furious he first wants to

to isolate who the leader of the rebellion is, so that he can sort of quite literally cut off the head of the rebellion. But the geeky, they have a real Spartacus moment. And they say, all of us called for this strike. And they actually say something very interesting when they have their Spartacus moment. They say, every one of us called for this war, we formed our assembly in the ditch. And the reason that that's important is that there is this concept in Babylonian mythology of the assembly of the gods. So all major decisions in Babylonian mythology are taken in this assembly. It's a polytheistic system, there's many gods, and the gods meet in their council, in their pukhur, as it's called, the pukhur ili, and then they make decisions. And this is, according to Atrahasis, the first of these assemblies takes place in a ditch, and its first decision is a labor strike, right? So the use of that phrase, we formed our assembly in the ditch, it might not mean much to a modern audience, but in its original context, it's actually quite a striking phrase. But yeah, so Enlil, you know, he can't isolate the leader. And so instead, he says, well, let's scrap this universe and start another one. Like he literally says, you know, let's just rewrite the rules of the cosmos because he's sort of that angry. But that's when we get the intervention of the god Enki, also called Ea. And I think we've talked about Enki before on the podcast.

I think we almost certainly have. It's been a moment. So Enlil, we should be thinking almost kind of this king of the gods, maybe Zeus or Jupiter-like, should we think, just as a comparison?

Yes, but somewhat less powerful, much less omnipotent than Zeus.

And Enki, more of a trickster, more of a, I'm just trying to think of like more Athena-like, or I don't know, of a direct comparison, but another important god, but known for their cunning, is it?

Yeah, like Athena, in that he's known for his cunning, but a god of the water. Right. So he has this underground lake that he lives in. And yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, I feel like Athena is often doing Zeus's bidding, but I guess you'll know more about that than me.

It's difficult to cross-compare, yeah, of course.

But Enki is more often subverting Enlil's rule than helping Enlil's rule. And yeah, I think that's, again, Afrahasis is a great example of that. Because just when Enlil is about to say, well, you know, scrap this cosmos, Enki intervenes. And he intervenes on the side of the strike. And he says, well, we've heard them complain for a long time and we should take that seriously. And so Enki proposes a solution to the strike and that's us we are the solution we are the compromise he says let's create a new creature humanity and they will then take on the labor of the gods and um you know our work our daily work is sort of presented as an extension of of genesis right so like in the same way that the gods dug the rivers we dig canals to you know sort of perfect where the water is going right to guide the rest of the way. And in the same way that they build mountains, we build cities, you know, and we build temples in those cities. And so I think, you know, there is no clear cut line between nature and culture in Babylonian mythology, but you can sort of have the equivalent of that be, you know, that the gods, they made what we would call nature and humans. We sort of continue that creation, but we make, you know, the human environment. Yeah. And it's not completely

random to pick out canals because I guess we should remind us that in Mesopotamia, the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, these great cities in Mesopotamia, they were renowned for their management of water and the creation of these beautiful canals, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, people should really stick a pin in that point because this idea of the management of water is going to come back later in a major way.

But also this idea that humans, they are created to work. So this idea, I think you also see with Adam and Eve as well and the like with the creation stories humans right from the get-go you've got to go out and toil you've got to go out and be a labor force yeah and and as I said

I think part of what I find interesting here is that it really sees our work as an extension of divine creation and you know I think I think the text has a point because like the way that I put it in my book about Atrahas is that all work is world making and I think that's also true today You know, the way that we make the human world, the world that we live in is through labor, you know, whether that's delivering packages or making podcasts or building buildings or whatever it might be, you know, like we make the world that we know through labor. And I think Atrahasis sees that with a lot of clarity. But I think it's also important to emphasize that, you know, on the one hand, it does make us into, you know, what I call holy robots. Like we have to feed the gods, we have to, you know, bring them offerings, we have to, you know, give them grain and beer and incense and song, you know. But on the other hand, like the text doesn't only give us the burden of labor from the gods, it also gives us something else. And this is where things become a bit technical, but there's a lot of puns in this passage that sort of describe what also happens. And so, for example, the name of this rebel leader, Wei, is written with a sign that also means ear, and ear also means intelligence. And Enki explains that he will have to sacrifice one of the gods, and that god will be Wei, and use his blood to create humankind. And when Enki says this, he says that we will sacrifice the god who had the idea, meaning the idea for the rebellion. But the word for idea in that context, temu, another beautiful Babylonian word, temu, not to be confused with the modern temu, as it were. But this idea of temu doesn't mean just the idea specifically for the rebellion. It can also mean something like consciousness. And so, the rebel leader is sacrificed, and his blood is then used to create humankind. But also, we inherit his rebellious instinct, and his idea for the rebellion becomes our consciousness. That's the divine blood in us.

So, the spirit of way lives on inside us, that idea, is it?

Yeah, exactly right. And the text expresses this rather beautifully here. It says, forever after let us hear the drum from the flesh of the gods let a spirit remain and let it make the living know its sign so as not to forget let a spirit remain and it's then you know shown that the spirit is ways spirit living on inside us but i particularly like this line of let us hear the drum because that's that's our heartbeat you know and it's that drum inside us that is constantly reminding us of this, you know, rebel God who lives on in our blood, in our minds.

That's quite something. Okay, Waze, the heartbeat. Okay, but Waze out of the picture, Waze sacrificed himself for us, for humans. And then, Sophus, how do we get to these first humans? What does the story tell us about the earliest humans?

Well, it actually has a very long and detailed description of them. And that brings us to our second main character. So our first main character is Enki. He's going to be really a plot engine throughout the story. And he's this trickster god. But he needs a collaborator. He says, I cannot create humanity alone. And so he brings in the mother goddess. The mother goddess has roughly 15 different names. But today we're going to use the name Mami. And Mami then takes the sort of living flesh, this living clay blood mixture that Enki has made, and actually shapes it into humanity. And Mami lays the design of the people, as the poem puts it. And what she designs in that moment is the system of procreation. She designs the system of reproduction. And so the mother goddess has a very extended description of first making the genders, and then making mutual attraction, and then she invents sex. And she invents consent also, which is quite interesting. Like it's actually repeatedly emphasized that these people who have sex must consciously choose one another, which is a great Akkadian word. And then they have sex, and then she designs the process of pregnancy and childbirth and delivery and nursing. And it's a very long speech. I think it goes on for almost 100 lines in which the mother goddess sort of lays out her vision for motherhood with each and every step that that entails. And so she's created essentially a perfect system where the gods can just get free labor forever and ever and ever and ever.

But no death at this point, it's just birth and creation. Okay.

exactly right because the mother goddess's perfect system has one big flaw in it which is that she creates life and she creates the means for creating new life but she does not create death and that's that's the big problem here right because then 1200 years pass and there's been no death it seems to be that you can still sort of die of like premature causes i think the best way to think about this is that you can still die if the god era kills you an era can kill you with sickness and with war and like with murder and that kind of thing but you don't die of of like old age you can die in like era coming and snatching you in the various ways he does but but you don't sort of you know there's no limit to your your lifespan it just goes on and on and on and after 1200 years this has become a problem and then it's become a problem in the way that we've already met because what it does is that it keeps Enlil awake. Is this the thing with Enlil? Like some of the king of the... gods but at the end of the day like the thing that really matters to him is getting his good

night's sleep yeah exactly right and like to be fair it seems that he's not been able to sleep for centuries at this point but still the way that he puts it is as follows enlil heard their noise and said to the great gods humanity's noise is too heavy for me i cannot sleep for their roar And, you know, I think like this is often the passage that people most remark on when I tell them the story of Atrahasis, because it just seems sillier than the Bible, where it's this question of sin and all of that. But I honestly, I like this better, you know, I think in part because like sound plays such a role throughout the story. You know, we heard that when Wei is created, he becomes this drumbeat inside of us. And then the lead up to the flood is sort of this, yeah, this sense of humanity's noise becoming louder and louder and louder. And then Enlil being kept awake by it. And then as we're going to see, the flood itself is an explosion of sound. and since we heard that this this text is a song i actually think it's quite clever of it that it it lets the prime engine of the plot be sound right it's its own it's working with its own medium and you can just sort of imagine this epic being performed and just becoming louder and louder itself you know so i think even though it seems a bit silly at first i actually think it

would have been very effective i think you're quite right and actually the more i think of it I think, I think something like almost a pantomime or, you know, kind of a, I say a live performance where you have the person reading it out, but maybe assisted by one or two people who are helping with the sound effects for those key parts of the story. And then all of a sudden you can get more of a sense how this performance could well have, what it could have looked like when it was being performed in a street in Babylon almost 4,000 years ago. That's cool.

Yeah, exactly. And the drums resounding in the background when we hear that way becomes a drum.

So Enlil can't get some sleep. Does that lead to him directly thinking it's time for a genocide, quite frankly, or what's his next step?

No, not yet. We're not at the genocide yet. And I think it's actually like, this is a really interesting, this is actually a really interesting aspect of a lot of these ancient epics, is that a lot of them do depict a genocide, but often they show us sort of the way there. So if you think of the Iliad, there's this mounting tension between the Greeks and the Trojans. And in book six of the Iliad, you reach the tipping point. And that's when the Greeks begin to talk about killing all of them, not killing their warriors, but literally killing the women and the children and the elders. And you'll see the same in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, that there's a sort of sense of tensions mounting before you get to the full genocidal attack. And in the case of Atrahasis, Enlil makes three failed attempts at culling humanity before eventually resorting on the sort of final solution, which is the flood, right? But yeah, so and in between each of these three attempts, 1200 years pass, and there's a lot more humans and a lot more sound.

So these early attempts, they fail because humans, they have the spirit of way, the spirit of resistance, the spirit of kind of fighting back against even by what Enlil sent to try and get rid of them, humans prove incredibly resilient to it.

Yeah, exactly. And there is one man who possesses this intelligence, you know, this arguably artificial intelligence, this creative intelligence, more than any of the other humans. And that's our third main character, and that's Atrahasis. This is Atrahasis, okay. Right. And his name literally means super intelligent. And he uses that intelligence. I think the intelligence in question, which is expressed with the word Hasis, is very much the intelligence, not sort of internal meditation, but very much the intelligence of being able to listen to others and being able to speak himself. And in Atrahasis' case, that is especially his conversation with his god, Enki, the trickster god that we already met. And Atrahasis' skill is that he can talk with Enki and Enki talks with him, right? And it is by talking with the god of creativity that he again and again comes up with these creative solutions to foil Enki's plans. And those often involve manipulating the one tool that humanity has at their disposal, because the god have given the humans control over their food supply, right, which might not have been the best idea. because now the humans can withhold the food and they can also decide to give all their food offerings to one specific god. So when Enki tries to send a disease, a pandemic, again, there are too many way too relatable things about Athrahasis, right? But Enlil attempts a pandemic and so the humans bring all of their offerings only to the god. So nobody else gets any, all the other gods are starving, and suddenly the god of disease is sitting there with all of these offerings, and he literally feels ashamed, right? He feels embarrassed, and so he lets the disease leave the land, and that's the first round of plague. But eventually, sort of Enlil catches on to what Enki and Atrehasis are doing, so he makes it still more difficult for them to communicate with each other.

I do have the idea of that god and that clever person, that extraordinary human figure, the conversations, because, I mean, you do think of things like Odysseus and Athena or Telemachus, you know, these extraordinary figures from Greek mythology, these so-called heroes, you know, who are, because they are a bit better, as they're portrayed, or a bit different to everyday figures, they have that connection with the gods. And you have that similar theme here in this epic in Babylon, you know, with the figure of Atrahasis and the god Enki as well. It's funny how you can see parallels there.

Yeah, absolutely. There are various culture heroes in Babylonian mythology. You know, we've also looked at Gilgamesh, of course. But what I think interesting about Atrahasis is that he's such an empty character. Like he is his intellect and nothing more. Like we learn almost nothing else about him, his personality, or, you know, even like his condition in life is unclear what his profession is. Is he a king? Is he a priest? Is he just a commoner? It's not fully certain. But, and, you know, I like to call him the exceptional everyman, because I think we can really project ourselves into him because he is this empty character. But the one thing that he is, is he is atrahasis. He is super smart, right? He is extra intelligent.

So let's get to the flood. I know there are a few other things that happen, but you cover them in detail in your book. So I don't want to give everything away. But how do we get then to Enlil deciding, right, I need to do something different. We need a flood.

yeah unfortunately the answer to that question is not fully clear because the the text is fragmentary but i think we can sort of reasonably extrapolate from from what we know so far that it gets to a point where enlil has again and again tried to foil first of all he's tried to cull humanity he's tried to foil enki's and atrahasis's schemes and then he just has enough and he says okay this is it no more humans i you know i'm sick of this cycle it's been going on for 3,600 years, enough of this. And so he decides on, yeah, this final solution. And, you know, the text gives us like a lengthy treatment of the meeting of the gods, the assembly of the gods in which they decide to call the flood.

So another assembly. Okay, interesting.

Another assembly, exactly. And I think that's also really worth noting that Atrahasis has a lot of reversals between the first and the second part. So first we get the creation of humanity, in the first assembly and then we get the destruction of humanity in the second assembly and there are specific lines that are repeated from the first part in the second where they flip meaning and uh you know really tying the two parts together and establishing this sense of contrast but yeah so i mean unfortunately the the minutes of this meeting are lost because that that is the description of that assembly is very fragmentary but but that's what happens the gods decide to to call the flood and i think it's also very interesting that the text will repeatedly insist that Enlil subverted what we could call the sort of, in quote-unquote, democratic process of the assembly, right? Like, he doesn't listen to everybody else in the assembly, and he really sort of forces his own agenda through, and it's said that he confused the assembly, he subverted the assembly. So I think it's also a reminder that, and this is really a widespread trope in Babylonian literature that if a leader stops listening to his assembly, pretty terrible things happen almost immediately. And Atrahasis in the story of the flood is a great example of that. Like the reason that the flood happened is that Enlil stopped listening to the other gods, stopped listening to

his assembly and his advisors. So that could be a reflection on Babylonian kingship and the council and the priests and all the people that would have been around him at his court.

yeah exactly and you know it's it's it's a story that's particularly appealing to the people like ipigaya our scribe who is copying out this text as part of his university education because what is his job going to be well it's going to be a professional advisor right so like here is a myth which is the crowning moment of his education that tells him you know there was once a time where universal disaster could have been avoided if if the king of the gods just listen to a person like you you know like that's that's that's just sort of what an ego boost there

you go right right so how is atrahas is how does he get word of this destruction decision well at

first it's very difficult because enlil has ensured that enki can't just do the same trick again so he has imposed

an oath of silence on all the gods. They've all been sworn to secrecy. And this seems, and this is a bit my interpretation, but I'll present it and then you'll see whether you agree. So it seems to be a Babylonian explanation of why we can't talk with the gods directly, right? And the Babylonians had a solution to that problem, which is to interpret the omens that the gods sent to And this story explains how that system came about, because Enki can't just say to Atrahasis, this is what's about to happen. So he sends to him a series of omens, first in the form of a dream, but then Atrahasis can't understand that dream. And then in the form of these reeds. So Enki is living in this underground lake. So the reeds are like tiny pipes that he's piping up through Atrahasis' house, which is also made of reeds. So it's like the whole house is talking to him. But this thing of communicating through objects, that's an omen, you know, like that's what an omen is. And the Babylonians, you know, they were obsessed with omens. They saw omens absolutely everywhere. And the story of the flood may have been an explanation of why the gods communicate in this rather bizarre way, rather than just talking to us.

And so Enki manages to get word to Tacharsis through this manor. And what is he told to do?

Well, let me read you the passage.

Okay.

So Enki speaks through the wall and says, Wall, listen to me. Fence, heed my every word. Flee the house. Build a boat. Leave your stuff. Save your life. And then he goes into a sort of lengthy description of what this ark, this boat, is supposed to look like. How it is to be shaped. What its measurements are. and Atrahasis is told to take on board the seed of every living things, meaning, at least in the Bible's rendition, two of every kind of animals, and also the craftsmen of every kind of craft, so that humanity doesn't lose the crafts that are the bedrock of our society. And Atrahasis is also allowed to take his family. So slightly roomier boat than in the Bible, but the same

basic idea. I remember talking to Irving Finkel about this a couple of years ago, and is it

actually this idea that the boat was supposed to be round? Well, that's actually not as clear in Atrahasis. So Irving found another text that has a more detailed description of the boat than what we see in Atrahasis. It's a little harder to sort of mentally reconstruct the boat if you're just

going by the Atrahasis description. But it sounds like, so Atrahasis is allowed to save a few more people than in the biblical story but he can't save everyone is that true yeah and and he's

clearly heartbroken about it so he you know um gets all the people of his city to to build this boat because he only has a week before the flood is coming it has to be a very big boat and so you know he's truly opening the treasury he's holding a big feast for all of his workers but he knows that they're all going to die. And that is a pretty terrible psychological situation. And so at this feast, he's just overcome by emotions. And so the text says, they were eating, they were drinking, but he went in and he went out, could not sit and could not crouch. His heart was broken. He vomited gall. And yeah, I don't know, it's a tragedy.

That's like a last supper of beer and barley. And that's the kind of the drink and the food, isn't it, that you should think of as well? Yeah, exactly right. And so the workers build the boat, they're not allowed on it. Yeah. And then the flood comes. In the story, the flood comes straight away. Is that the idea?

Yeah, exactly right. Literally, right after the lines I read right now, the next lines are, then the face of the weather changed and Adat began to roar in the clouds. Adat being the storm god.

And what happens? Take it away, Sophus.

Yeah, so we get this very dramatic description of the flood. again sort of really emphasizes how loud the flood is which again i you know i can very easily imagine a skilled performer having a field day recreating the right exactly right with with recreating the sound of the flood um but yeah let me just read you a passage like battle disaster spread over the people brothers looked in vain for each other men all looked the same in the slaughter the flood was bellowing like a bull the winds wailed like an eagle's cry the darkness was dense the sun had gone and the children of men became like flies the gods grew afraid of the noise of the flood they hid in heaven and took refuge in the open they sat and wept it's very

uncontrolled this is just sheer destruction

at its maximum. Exactly right. And that's one of the big differences from the biblical account, right? Like where in the Bible, you know, think what you will of the God of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. But you know, he at least knows what he's doing, right? He has control over the operation of the flood. In the Babylonian version, they lose control over it immediately, you know? And I think it's partly also interesting to think about this in class terms. And, you know, I'm sorry to be sounding very sort of Marxist in my analysis here, but it does sort of reflect the structure of the text, you know, that the revolt of the Igigi in the beginning of the poem was these workers rising up against their masters. And the story of the flood is the inverse of that. And so it is the masters killing their workers, it's the gods killing humanity. And again, there's one of these lines sort of making that link. So earlier we heard that the Igigi were described as the work has revolted. And here we're described, we hear the flood being described as the waters revolted. And so this is, you know, it sort of has, again, an eerily modern resonance, because it sort of describes catastrophic climate change as class warfare from above. And again, I know that that sounds very Marxist, but I'm sort of trying to present the poem in, you know, in terms that makes sense to this day. And I think it's kind of crazy how much Atrahas is allows for those modern parallels. It's part of why I'm so obsessed with the story.

You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank? Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining alfresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to 70% off during Wayfair's 4th of July clearance. Score huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs, and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus, surprise flash deals July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com.

Wayfair, every style, every home.

If you love a good story, why aren't you listening to Dan Snow's History Hit Podcast? It's a show where we tell you every amazing, crazy, and important thing that has ever happened in human history. From the perilous voyages of the first Polynesians, the discoveries of Captain Cook the deadly Viking raids on Britain and Ireland the rise and fall of the great English kings and queens we'll tell you how Waterloo was won the Alamo was lost and all the history in between so make sure you check it out Down Snow's History Hit for the best true stories ever told wherever you get your podcasts

how long does the chaos last then that you if these very quickly almost instantly the waters the floods they can't be controlled by the gods as soon as they've issued it in i mean how long does this kind of uncontrolled chaos last so it lasts for seven days and seven nights okay so it

lasts for this very dramatic week and then at the end of it the gods they gather on a mountain and they sort of begin to take stock of what's happened. And there's another very beautiful mirroring here because we heard earlier about how the heartbeat is created. The heartbeat is created to be this regular reminder of the moment in which humanity was created. And likewise, the mother goddess, who is absolutely devastated at seeing humanity being destroyed, she creates a regular reminder to herself so that she can remember what happened in the flood. And that's, again, what we see in the Bible, where it's the rainbow. But strangely, in Atrahasis, the rainbow is created by the mother goddess taking jeweled flies. So you know how flies have these shimmering wings. And she makes this, you know, cosmic necklace of jeweled flies and hangs it around her neck, and that becomes the rainbow. So yeah, the heartbeat and the rainbow are respectively these regular rhythmical reminders of humanity's creation and our near total destruction.

Gods like goddesses, are they mourning the complete destruction of humanity at that time? Do they know that Atrahasis and his select few have actually survived aboard this boat?

So they find out after the flood is over because Atrahasis does the Noah trick of sending out A series of birds, and then finally, in this case, the crow finds the peak that is, you know, Mount Ararat in the Bible. And here it's, at least in the later Babylonian tradition, it's Mount Nezirtu. But either way, the crow finds land and Atrahasis sets up.

an offering. And, you know, the offering really reveals the idiocy of the endless quote-unquote plan, because, you know, he hadn't thought it through. Like, now that he had obliterated humanity, the gods starve. And because, again, the gods had given their servants, humanity, control over their food supply. And so, the gods also revealed themselves to be dependent on humanity, because it's said that they had shrunk to the size of flies, and they're sort of swarming to Atrahasis' sacrifice because they've not eaten for a week. And so I think that's what the flood ultimately illustrates. It ultimately illustrates this bizarre balance of power in Babylonian cosmology between the gods and humanity, that the gods are dependent on us, but we're also very dependent on them because they can just wipe us out, right? And so I think that's part of what this myth reveals. And as I said, it began with the sentence, inuma ilu awilum, when gods were men, at a moment in time in which the gods are very much like humans, and now they have become very unlike each other. They're so powerful and we're not. But at the same time, much as we've become also very different, we remain very profoundly linked. They depend on us and we depend on them. That's what this sort of final meeting on the mountain reveals.

So is this the context for us getting to that third and final meeting, the post-flood decision as to what is going to happen to humans?

Right, exactly right. And what is going to happen to humans is the creation of death. And that is a sort of final supplement that brings the story to a close. Because we've had this sort of very dynamic story where each problem was resolved, but then the solution became the occasion for the new problem, right? So like, there was this labor strike that was solved with the creation of humanity. But that then became a problem because there were too many of us. And that led to these, you know, famines and diseases and so on and so forth. And they were resolved, but that only made the problem worse. And then that led to the quote unquote final solution, which is the flood, which then turned into a huge problem, right? And then out of this sort of rhythm of problems and solutions and problems and solutions emerges the final problem slash solution, which is death, right? And it's a solution because it brings this whole thing to a sort of stable endpoint where humanity now won't sort of explode in population numbers, we won't bother Enlil, and we can just sort of keep providing these regular offerings of food. but it's a problem for us right like it might not be a problem for the gods but it's a problem for us because we have to die and the one person who is accepted from that is is atrahasis so atrahasis

kind of receives he's allowed to maintain his immortality then is that that the idea or

right and in later babylonian tradition he is then given a new title and that new title is the one who found life or in akkadian utana pishti which is the name of the character that

we meeting Gilgamesh. And that's in the Epic of Gilgamesh where Gilgamesh goes searching for immortality and that's why he goes to meet Utnapishtim. Exactly right. Okay, so that's how they link together. Okay, we won't go down the Epic of Gilgamesh because we've got two great episodes with you on that. We'll put a link to that in the episode notes. And that's the end of the Epic. So humans, the family of Atrahasis and the other people who were allowed on the boat, the idea is that they will slowly expand, they will slowly populate, repopulate the earth from then on.

Yeah, exactly right. And just as the mother goddess was earlier being tasked with creating humanity and she set up this system of like reproduction and procreation, she then is tasked with the opposite. She becomes the creator of death, but she also creates a number of other sort of like measures that are like anti-reproduction, anti-procreation. So she creates women who don't give birth, which includes a series of priestesses who were barred from having children. The Naditu women is one example. The end priestesses is another example. So, for example, the first known author in Heduanna, she was an end priestess, so she was not allowed to have children. the mother goddess also creates this demon called Lamashtu, which would snatch newborn babies and was sort of the Babylonian explanation for infant mortality. And all of these measures are made here

at the end of the poem. And that's the end of the epic. I mean, Sophie, just how long, we've covered the main themes there, really grateful to go through them. Just how long was this epic? Could we imagine that people would have been listening to a performance of this epic and they'd be able to watch the whole thing in one sitting, so to speak?

Yeah, I do think so. So it's about 50 pages in a modern translation. So I do think you could listen to all of it in one sitting. In the original Akkadian, we don't have the whole thing. whole thing preserved but but it comes out to what what we have comes out to around 500 lines so yeah much shorter than something like the iliad or or the odyssey also much shorter than gilgamesh shorter than beowulf um and i just think like it's so amazing how much this poem packs into its story like this is a it's a history of humanity that in the last lines uh it seems to be revealed that this is being told by the mother goddess so this is her account of the history of humanity and you know we've touched on a lot of themes that are relevant for today like class conflict and labor disputes climate disaster arguably artificial intelligence you know and we've seen the invention of sex and we've seen the invention of the opposite of sex you know like we've we've had all of these themes being explored in as i said not a not a long not a long poem well

i mean i was i was you kind of preempted my next question which was like what would have been the main themes for someone listening to this performance and watching it, you know, almost 4,000 years ago? I mean, how would they have interpreted it? What do you think would have

been the key takeaways for them? That's a really good question. And I think our only chance of answering that is by looking at a specific individual, which in this case is Ipig Aya. So as I said, like Ipig Aya is being taught by his father.

Describe who created the copy that we talked through. Okay, yeah.

Exactly right. Exactly right. We know that he would have been, yeah, let's say, give or take 19 when he's doing this. We know that his family, he comes from a family of scribes, and the family was devoted to the god Enki. So most people in his city were devoted to other gods, including Ishtar and Shamash, but his family is sort of pro-Enki, and this is very much a myth about Enki. So I think that would have been important to him. But as I mentioned earlier, his father had recently in his education been teaching him texts that have to do with the end of an age. So he had been studying texts that have to do with the end of the old Akkadian Empire, where according to myth, the sort of vainglorious King Naram-Sin brought this great empire crashing down. He had been studying some texts related to the fall of the Ur III Empire, which is a couple of centuries after the fall of the Old Akkadian Empire, where the Ur III, this great Sumerian-speaking empire, was toppled by an invasion from Iran. And so he's studying texts that have to do with one period giving way to another. And I think he would have seen the flood myth in those times, because this is sort of quite literally about the end of an antediluvian age and the beginning of a new age, about the end of an age in which we could talk directly to the gods and which we were without death to what was broadly conceived for the Babylonians, the present, right? Like our age. And so I think that's one way in which you would quite likely have understood it.

Do you think work is a big thing at all, or kind of this idea that we are to work?

Absolutely. Yeah. Sorry to cut you off here, but yeah, sorry. Like the reason I was so enthusiastic in answering is that the book that I've written about Atrahasis is literally called for its subtitle, Babylonian Reflections on Labour, because I think that's what this is, right? Like Atrahasis sees human life as being shaped by labour, both in the sort of obvious sense that we're created to serve the gods and to labor for the gods and to extend the labor of the gods. But labor also becomes many other things in the poem as well, including it becomes crucially linked to inequality. And the sort of dynamic of labor and inequality and how they shape each other really propels the entire poem. So yes, I absolutely think that labor is central, not just to this poem, but to the entire sort of period of cultural history that Ipigaya lived in, the Old Babylonian. There are many stories about labor in different ways at that time.

You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank? Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining alfresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space shop now and save up to 70 off during wayfair's fourth of july clearance score huge deals on outdoor furniture area rugs and more we're talking thousands of products for every style and budget plus surprise flash deals july 6 don't wait shop wayfair's fourth of july clearance now through july 6 at wayfair.com wayfair every style every home if you love a good

story why aren't you listening to dan snow's history hit podcast it's a show where we tell you every amazing crazy and important thing that's ever happened in human history from the perilous voyages of the first polynesians the discoveries of captain cook the deadly viking raids on britain and ireland the rise and fall of the great english kings and queens we'll tell you how waterloo was won the alamo was lost and all the history in between

So make sure you check it out, Down Snow's History Hit, for the best true stories ever told, wherever you get your podcasts.

so if this i must ask because you you you highlighted this earlier like kind of the strength of natural disasters like the floods and of course how the flood gets out of control of the gods almost instantly yeah could there be any elements of truth behind this story of flood? Could there be any hearkening back of historical memory of Babylonians that could there have been a memory of a very terrible flood that occurred at the Tigris of the Euphrates from long before, from which the story of this myth could have been loosely or at least

slightly based on? Yes, it's a really good question. And when we think about the flood myth in Atrahasis, there's two big questions that pop up. One we've already talked about, which is, you know, is there a direct connection to the Bible? We don't know, but it seems like Atrahasis is at least closer to the Bible. So that's one question. And the other question is, was this based on a real flood? And I'm just going to start with the argument against it being based on a real flood. And then we can sort of look at the arguments for, but the main argument against is that the stories about floods really begin to circulate in the Babylonian and Sumerian literature in the early second millennium BCE. So we have Sumerian literature from the third millennium in which the word flood just means like what it means in English, you know, like a flood of water, right? Like a lot of water coming, rushing down from a mountain or whatever. It doesn't mean like this cataclysmic event. And then around year 2000, we have this political event I briefly mentioned a bit ago, the fall of the Uthri Empire And that political event really leaves a huge scar in the political and cultural memory of Babylonian culture. They return to this event quite obsessively. They sort of process it over the couple of centuries that follow. And it's in that context when you're getting things like the lamentation of the destruction of the land, which is a great text, you also at that time get the flood myth exploding in importance. And so there is a scholar called Samuel Chen, who has written a really good book about this, called The Primeval Flood Myth, where he argues that the flood myth becomes what we know today through this sort of process of taking this political shock and then turning it into a myth, right? So you're processing this great empire that fell. Imagine the fall of the Roman Empire. And you're sort of trying to, yeah, to make sense of it. And so you come up with this myth of a time in which the world changed radically in a single week, you know. And I actually find Chen's argument very convincing. interesting uh but again that does that does leave us with less of a connection to the real flood but i mean like it is definitely possible that real geological events like informed this you know i think it's a discussion that's very similar to atlantis where you know it was it was plato who came up with the myth of atlantis is it possible that his coming up with the myth was informed by by real events yes it's possible but that just becomes a lot harder to prove and

establish. Very much so. But I save that question to the end, and I have it in big, bold letters on my questions for you right before we finish, because I have to ask it. Sophus, this has been so much fun. Last but certainly not least, you have written a book which goes into this story in so much more detail and explains why this flood myth is so important and deserves to be better known. It is called?

Yeah, so I have the book Human Babylonian Reflections on Labour, which is out with University of Chicago Press in May, May 2026. But I would also like to flag another book that I have on the way with Thames and Hudson's Illustrated Myth Series. That book is called Babylonian Myths. And I also have one chapter there talking about the Atrahasis myth. But then I have other chapters dealing with a range of other Babylonian stories. Fantastic. So first, we'll get you back on for

more stories in the future but it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time

to come back on the show thank you so much for having me it's always a delight to be on the

ancients well there you go there was dr sophis hell returning to the podcast such a great guy and a brilliant expert on these great epics these stories of ancient mesopotamia of babylon and beyond.

pleasure having him on the show to talk through them and i really do hope you enjoyed this latest episode with him if you want more episodes about these stories that we've done in the past with sophus well we'll put a link to them in the show notes we've done a two-parter with him all about the epic of gilgamesh the most well-known epic of ancient mesopotamia we've also done the story of babylon's epic of creation too and i'm sure there'll be other great stories we can cover with sophus in the future really do hope you enjoyed this episode thank you so much for listening now if you're enjoying the ancients please make sure to follow the show on spotify or wherever you get your podcasts that really helps us you'll be doing us a big favor if you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well well we'd really appreciate that don't forget you can also sign up to history hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com slash subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

area rugs, and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus, surprise flash deals July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July

6th at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Here's a tip for you. There's a podcast

out there with fans waiting to be your next customer. They tune in every week, they trust the host, and that host wants to talk about brands like yours in their own words to their audience. The problem is, you just haven't been introduced yet. We're Acast, where that introduction happens. As the world's largest podcast marketplace, we let you browse shows, see who's listening, and book host-read sponsorships or run your own ads all from one platform. Transparent pricing, real-time data, complete control. Start advertising on podcasts by visiting acast.com slash advertise.