September 2, 2025 • 13 mins
Dive into the captivating world of ancient Babylon with this insightful monograph, which explores the legendary flood myth and the renowned Epic of Gilgamesh, particularly the Standard Babylonian version dating back to the 7th century BC. Unearthed from the clay tablets of the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal at the historic Nineveh, the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, this work not only narrates these timeless stories through a blend of direct translation and engaging paraphrase but also provides a vivid description of the library and the intriguing tale of its discovery. Accompanied by eighteen stunning illustrations, this book offers a rich glimpse into a fascinating chapter of human history. - Summary by Kazbek
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section three of the Babylonian Story of the Deluge and
the Epic of Gilgamesh with an account of the Royal
Libraries of Nineveh by E. A. Wallace Budge. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. George Smith's discovery of
the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Story of the Deluge.
(00:21):
The massive tablets, which had been discovered by Layard and
Russum at Nineve, came to the British Museum in eighteen
fifty four to five, and their examination by Rawlinson Ann
Norris began very soon after. Mister Bowler, a skillful draftsman,
and copies of tablets, whom Rawlinson employed in making transfers
(00:44):
of copies of Cuneiform texts or publication by lithography, rejoined
a considerable number of fragments of bilingual lists, syllableries, et cetera,
which were published in the second volume of the Cuneiform
Inscriptions of West Asia in eighteen sixty six. In that
(01:04):
year the trustees of the British Museum employed George Smith
to sist Rallanson insorting, classifying and rejoining fragments, and a
comprehensive examination of the collection by him began. His personal
interest in assyriology was centered upon historical texts, especially those
(01:26):
which threw any lights on the Bible narrative. But in
the course of his search for stories of the campaigns
of Sargan, the second snahirib Sarhadan and Asherbanipal, he discovered,
among other important documents, one as series of portions of
tablets which give the adventures of Gilgamesh, an ancient king
(01:50):
of Erech. Two an account of the deluge, which is
supplied by the eleventh tablets of the Legend of Gilgamesh
in more than one version. Three a detailed description of
the creation. Four the legend of the descent of Ishtar
into Hades in quest of Tamuz. The general meaning of
(02:14):
the texts was quite clear, but there were many gaps
in them, and it was not until December eighteen seventy
two that George Smith published his description of the Legend
of Gilgamesh and a translation of the Chaldean account of
the Deluge. The interest which his paper evoked was universal,
(02:36):
and the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph advocated that Smith
should be at once dispatched to Nineveh to search for
the missing fragments of tablets which would fill up the
gaps in his texts, and generously offered to contribute one
thousand guineas towards the cost of the excavations. The trustees
(02:58):
accepted the offer and gave six months leave of absence
to Smith, who left London in January and arrived in
Mosul in March eighteen seventy three. In the following May,
he recovered from Kuyunjik a fragment that contained the greater
portion of seventeen lines of inscription, belonging to the first
(03:21):
column of the Chaldean account of the Deluge, and fitting
into the only place where there was a serious blank
in the story. During the excavations which Smith carried out
at Kuyunjik in eighteen seventy three and eighteen seventy four,
he recovered many fragments of tablets, the texts of which
(03:42):
enabled him to complete the description of the contents of
the twelve tablets of the Legend of Gilgamesh, which included
his translation of the story of the Deluge. Unfortunately, Smith
died of hunger and sickness near Aleppo in eighteen seventy six,
and he was enabled to revise his early work, and
(04:03):
to supplement it with the information which he had acquired
during his latest travels in Assyria and Babylonia. Thanks to
the excavations which were carried on at Kuyunjik by the
trustees of the British Museum after his untimely death, several
hundreds of tablets and fragments had been recovered, and many
(04:24):
of these had been rejoined to the tablets of the
older collection. By the careful study and investigation of the
old and new material, a Syriologists have during the last
forty years been enabled to restore and complete many passages
in the legends of Gilgamesh and the Flood. It is
(04:45):
now clear that the legend of the flood had not
originally any connection with the legend of Gilgamesh, and that
it was introduced into it by a late editor or
redactor of the legend, probably in order to complete the
number of the twelve tablets on which it was written
in the time of Usher Bannipal. The legend of the
(05:08):
Deluge in Babylonia in the introduction to his paper on
the Kaldean Account of the Deluge, which Smith read in
December eighteen seventy two and published in eighteen seventy three,
he stated that the Assyrian text which he had found
on usher Banipal's tablets was copied from an archetype at
(05:30):
Erik in Lower Babylonia. This archetype was he thought, either
written in or translated into Semitic Babylonian at a very
early period, and although he could not assign a date
to it, he adduced a number of convincing proofs in
(05:50):
support of his opinion. The language in which he assumed
the legend to have been originally composed was known to
him under the name of Acadian or Acadian, but is
now called Sumerian. Recent research has shown that his view
on this point was correct on the whole, but there
(06:13):
is satisfactory proof available to show that versions or recensions
of the legend of the Deluge and of the epic
of Gilganush existed both in Sumerian and Babylonian as early
as b c. Two thousand. The discovery has been made
of a fragment of a tablet with a small portion
(06:34):
of the Babylonian version of the legend of the Deluge
inscribed upon it and dated in a year which is
the equivalence of the eleventh year of a Misadouga I e.
About BC two thousand, and in the Museum at Philadelphia
is preserved half of a tablet which, when hull, contained
(06:57):
a complete copy of the Sumerian version of the legend,
and must have been written about the same date. The
fragment of the tablets written in the reign of am
Misaduga is of special importance because the colophon shows that
the tablet to which it belonged was the second of
(07:18):
a sirius, and that this serius was not that of
the Epic of Gilgamesh. And from this we learn that
in BC two thousand the legend of the deluge did
not form the eleventh tablets of the Epica of Gilgamesh,
as it did in the reign of Ashurbanipal or earlier.
(07:40):
The Sumerian version is equally important, though from another point
of view, for the contents and position of the portion
of it that remains on behalf of the tablet mentioned
above makes it certain that already in this early period
there were several versions of the legend of the deluge
current in the Sumerian language. The fact is that the
(08:03):
legend of the deluge was then already so old in Mesopotamia,
that the scribes added to or abbreviated the text at will,
and treated the incidents recorded in it according to local
or popular tradition, taste, and prejudice. There seems to be
no evidence that proves conclusively that the Sumerian version is
(08:27):
older than the Semitic or that the latter was translated
direct from the former version. It is probable that both
the Sumerians and the Semites, each in their own way,
attempted to commemorate an appalling disaster of unparalleled magnitude, the
knowledge of which, through tradition, was common to both peoples.
(08:50):
It is, at all events clear that the Sumerians regarded
the deluge as a historic event which they were practically
able to date. For some of the tablets contain lists
of kings who reigned before the deluge, though it must
be confessed that the lengths assigned to their reigns are incredible.
(09:13):
It is not too much to assume that the original
events commemorated in the legend of the Deluge was a
serious and prolonged inundation or flood in Lower Babylonia, which
was accompanied by great loss of life and destruction of property.
The Babylonian versions state that this inundation or flood was
(09:34):
caused by rain, but passages in some of them suggest
that the effects of the rain storm were intensified by
other physical happenings connected with the Earth of a most
destructive character. The Hebrews, also, as we may see from
the Bible, had alternative views as to the cause of
(09:56):
the deluge. According to one, reign upon the Earth for
forty days and forty nights Genesis chapter seven, verse twelve.
And according to the other, the deluge came because quote
all the fountains of the great Deep were broken up,
and the flood gates of Heaven were opened, and quote
(10:19):
Genesis chapter seven, verse two. The latter use suggests that
the rain flood was joined by the waters of the sea.
Later tradition, based partly on Babylonian and partly on hebrew sources,
asserts in the Cave of Treasures that when Noah had
entered the Ark and the door was shut, quote, the
(10:42):
sluices of Heaven were opened, and the deeps were rent asunder,
And that the Ocean, the great sea that surrounded the
whole world, vomited its waters, and the sluices of heaven
being opened, and the deeps of the earth being rent
asi under. The storehouses of the winds were opened, and
(11:03):
the whirlwinds broke loose, and the ocean roared and poured
out its waters in floods end quote. The ark was
steered over the waters by an angel who acted as pilots,
And when that had come to rest on the mountains
of Cardo Armenia, quote, God commended the waters, and they
(11:24):
separated from each other. The waters that had been above
ascended to their place above the heavens whence they had come.
And the waters that had come up from under the
earth returned to the lower deep, and the waters that
were from the ocean returned into it end quote. Many
(11:44):
authorities seeking to find a foundation of facts for the
legend of the deluge in Mesopotamia have assumed that the
rain flood was accompanied either by an earthquake or a
tidal wave, or by both. There is no doubt that
the cities of lower Babylonia were near the sea in
the Sumerian period than they are at the present time,
(12:07):
and it is a generally accepted view that the head
of the Persian Gulf lay further to the north at
that time. A cyclone coupled with a tidal wave is
a sufficient base for any of the forms of the
legend now known. The comparison of the contents of the
various Sumerian and Babylonian versions of the deluge that have
(12:29):
come down to us shows that they are incomplete, and
as none of them tells so connected and full a
narrative of the prehistoric shipbuilder as Berosis, a priest of Bell,
the great god of Babylon. It seems that the Mesopotamian
scribes were content to copy the legend in an abbreviated
(12:51):
form Beosis. It is true, is not a very ancient authority,
for he was not born until the raina Alexander the Great,
but he was a learned man, and was well acquainted
with the Babylonian language and with the ancient literature of
his country, and he wrote the history of Babylonia, some
(13:12):
fragments of which have been preserved to us in the
work of Alexander, Polyhistore, Eusebius, and others. The following is
a version of the fragment which describes the flood that
took place in the days of Caesuthrus, the tenth King
of the Chaldeans, and is of importance for comparison with
(13:34):
the rendering of the legend of the deluge as found
on the Ninevite Tablets, which follows immediately after end of
Section three.
Section three of the Babylonian Story of the Deluge and
the Epic of Gilgamesh with an account of the Royal
Libraries of Nineveh by E. A. Wallace Budge. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. George Smith's discovery of
the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Story of the Deluge.
(00:21):
The massive tablets, which had been discovered by Layard and
Russum at Nineve, came to the British Museum in eighteen
fifty four to five, and their examination by Rawlinson Ann
Norris began very soon after. Mister Bowler, a skillful draftsman,
and copies of tablets, whom Rawlinson employed in making transfers
(00:44):
of copies of Cuneiform texts or publication by lithography, rejoined
a considerable number of fragments of bilingual lists, syllableries, et cetera,
which were published in the second volume of the Cuneiform
Inscriptions of West Asia in eighteen sixty six. In that
(01:04):
year the trustees of the British Museum employed George Smith
to sist Rallanson insorting, classifying and rejoining fragments, and a
comprehensive examination of the collection by him began. His personal
interest in assyriology was centered upon historical texts, especially those
(01:26):
which threw any lights on the Bible narrative. But in
the course of his search for stories of the campaigns
of Sargan, the second snahirib Sarhadan and Asherbanipal, he discovered,
among other important documents, one as series of portions of
tablets which give the adventures of Gilgamesh, an ancient king
(01:50):
of Erech. Two an account of the deluge, which is
supplied by the eleventh tablets of the Legend of Gilgamesh
in more than one version. Three a detailed description of
the creation. Four the legend of the descent of Ishtar
into Hades in quest of Tamuz. The general meaning of
(02:14):
the texts was quite clear, but there were many gaps
in them, and it was not until December eighteen seventy
two that George Smith published his description of the Legend
of Gilgamesh and a translation of the Chaldean account of
the Deluge. The interest which his paper evoked was universal,
(02:36):
and the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph advocated that Smith
should be at once dispatched to Nineveh to search for
the missing fragments of tablets which would fill up the
gaps in his texts, and generously offered to contribute one
thousand guineas towards the cost of the excavations. The trustees
(02:58):
accepted the offer and gave six months leave of absence
to Smith, who left London in January and arrived in
Mosul in March eighteen seventy three. In the following May,
he recovered from Kuyunjik a fragment that contained the greater
portion of seventeen lines of inscription, belonging to the first
(03:21):
column of the Chaldean account of the Deluge, and fitting
into the only place where there was a serious blank
in the story. During the excavations which Smith carried out
at Kuyunjik in eighteen seventy three and eighteen seventy four,
he recovered many fragments of tablets, the texts of which
(03:42):
enabled him to complete the description of the contents of
the twelve tablets of the Legend of Gilgamesh, which included
his translation of the story of the Deluge. Unfortunately, Smith
died of hunger and sickness near Aleppo in eighteen seventy six,
and he was enabled to revise his early work, and
(04:03):
to supplement it with the information which he had acquired
during his latest travels in Assyria and Babylonia. Thanks to
the excavations which were carried on at Kuyunjik by the
trustees of the British Museum after his untimely death, several
hundreds of tablets and fragments had been recovered, and many
(04:24):
of these had been rejoined to the tablets of the
older collection. By the careful study and investigation of the
old and new material, a Syriologists have during the last
forty years been enabled to restore and complete many passages
in the legends of Gilgamesh and the Flood. It is
(04:45):
now clear that the legend of the flood had not
originally any connection with the legend of Gilgamesh, and that
it was introduced into it by a late editor or
redactor of the legend, probably in order to complete the
number of the twelve tablets on which it was written
in the time of Usher Bannipal. The legend of the
(05:08):
Deluge in Babylonia in the introduction to his paper on
the Kaldean Account of the Deluge, which Smith read in
December eighteen seventy two and published in eighteen seventy three,
he stated that the Assyrian text which he had found
on usher Banipal's tablets was copied from an archetype at
(05:30):
Erik in Lower Babylonia. This archetype was he thought, either
written in or translated into Semitic Babylonian at a very
early period, and although he could not assign a date
to it, he adduced a number of convincing proofs in
(05:50):
support of his opinion. The language in which he assumed
the legend to have been originally composed was known to
him under the name of Acadian or Acadian, but is
now called Sumerian. Recent research has shown that his view
on this point was correct on the whole, but there
(06:13):
is satisfactory proof available to show that versions or recensions
of the legend of the Deluge and of the epic
of Gilganush existed both in Sumerian and Babylonian as early
as b c. Two thousand. The discovery has been made
of a fragment of a tablet with a small portion
(06:34):
of the Babylonian version of the legend of the Deluge
inscribed upon it and dated in a year which is
the equivalence of the eleventh year of a Misadouga I e.
About BC two thousand, and in the Museum at Philadelphia
is preserved half of a tablet which, when hull, contained
(06:57):
a complete copy of the Sumerian version of the legend,
and must have been written about the same date. The
fragment of the tablets written in the reign of am
Misaduga is of special importance because the colophon shows that
the tablet to which it belonged was the second of
(07:18):
a sirius, and that this serius was not that of
the Epic of Gilgamesh. And from this we learn that
in BC two thousand the legend of the deluge did
not form the eleventh tablets of the Epica of Gilgamesh,
as it did in the reign of Ashurbanipal or earlier.
(07:40):
The Sumerian version is equally important, though from another point
of view, for the contents and position of the portion
of it that remains on behalf of the tablet mentioned
above makes it certain that already in this early period
there were several versions of the legend of the deluge
current in the Sumerian language. The fact is that the
(08:03):
legend of the deluge was then already so old in Mesopotamia,
that the scribes added to or abbreviated the text at will,
and treated the incidents recorded in it according to local
or popular tradition, taste, and prejudice. There seems to be
no evidence that proves conclusively that the Sumerian version is
(08:27):
older than the Semitic or that the latter was translated
direct from the former version. It is probable that both
the Sumerians and the Semites, each in their own way,
attempted to commemorate an appalling disaster of unparalleled magnitude, the
knowledge of which, through tradition, was common to both peoples.
(08:50):
It is, at all events clear that the Sumerians regarded
the deluge as a historic event which they were practically
able to date. For some of the tablets contain lists
of kings who reigned before the deluge, though it must
be confessed that the lengths assigned to their reigns are incredible.
(09:13):
It is not too much to assume that the original
events commemorated in the legend of the Deluge was a
serious and prolonged inundation or flood in Lower Babylonia, which
was accompanied by great loss of life and destruction of property.
The Babylonian versions state that this inundation or flood was
(09:34):
caused by rain, but passages in some of them suggest
that the effects of the rain storm were intensified by
other physical happenings connected with the Earth of a most
destructive character. The Hebrews, also, as we may see from
the Bible, had alternative views as to the cause of
(09:56):
the deluge. According to one, reign upon the Earth for
forty days and forty nights Genesis chapter seven, verse twelve.
And according to the other, the deluge came because quote
all the fountains of the great Deep were broken up,
and the flood gates of Heaven were opened, and quote
(10:19):
Genesis chapter seven, verse two. The latter use suggests that
the rain flood was joined by the waters of the sea.
Later tradition, based partly on Babylonian and partly on hebrew sources,
asserts in the Cave of Treasures that when Noah had
entered the Ark and the door was shut, quote, the
(10:42):
sluices of Heaven were opened, and the deeps were rent asunder,
And that the Ocean, the great sea that surrounded the
whole world, vomited its waters, and the sluices of heaven
being opened, and the deeps of the earth being rent
asi under. The storehouses of the winds were opened, and
(11:03):
the whirlwinds broke loose, and the ocean roared and poured
out its waters in floods end quote. The ark was
steered over the waters by an angel who acted as pilots,
And when that had come to rest on the mountains
of Cardo Armenia, quote, God commended the waters, and they
(11:24):
separated from each other. The waters that had been above
ascended to their place above the heavens whence they had come.
And the waters that had come up from under the
earth returned to the lower deep, and the waters that
were from the ocean returned into it end quote. Many
(11:44):
authorities seeking to find a foundation of facts for the
legend of the deluge in Mesopotamia have assumed that the
rain flood was accompanied either by an earthquake or a
tidal wave, or by both. There is no doubt that
the cities of lower Babylonia were near the sea in
the Sumerian period than they are at the present time,
(12:07):
and it is a generally accepted view that the head
of the Persian Gulf lay further to the north at
that time. A cyclone coupled with a tidal wave is
a sufficient base for any of the forms of the
legend now known. The comparison of the contents of the
various Sumerian and Babylonian versions of the deluge that have
(12:29):
come down to us shows that they are incomplete, and
as none of them tells so connected and full a
narrative of the prehistoric shipbuilder as Berosis, a priest of Bell,
the great god of Babylon. It seems that the Mesopotamian
scribes were content to copy the legend in an abbreviated
(12:51):
form Beosis. It is true, is not a very ancient authority,
for he was not born until the raina Alexander the Great,
but he was a learned man, and was well acquainted
with the Babylonian language and with the ancient literature of
his country, and he wrote the history of Babylonia, some
(13:12):
fragments of which have been preserved to us in the
work of Alexander, Polyhistore, Eusebius, and others. The following is
a version of the fragment which describes the flood that
took place in the days of Caesuthrus, the tenth King
of the Chaldeans, and is of importance for comparison with
(13:34):
the rendering of the legend of the deluge as found
on the Ninevite Tablets, which follows immediately after end of
Section three.
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