The Primeval Flood Catastrophe

Abstract

Previous research on Mesopotamian Flood traditions tended to focus on a few textual sources. How the traditions originated and developed as a whole has not been seriously investigated. By systematically examining a large body of relevant cuneiform sources of diverse genres from the mid‐third millennium BC. to the end of the first millennium BC, this book observes that it is during the Old Babylonian period (c.2000–1600 BC) that the first and classical attestations of the Flood traditions are found. On linguistic, conceptual, and literary‐historical grounds, the book argues that the traditions emerged relatively late in Sumerian culture. It traces different evolutionary stages of the Flood traditions, from the emergence of the Flood motif within the historical context of the early Isin dynasty (c.2017–1896 BC), to the diverse mythological representations of the motif in literary traditions, to the historicisation of the motif in chronography, and finally to the interactions between various strands of the Flood traditions and other Mesopotamian literary traditions, such as those concerning Gilgameš. By uncovering the processes through which the Flood traditions were constructed, the book offers a valuable case study on the complex and dynamic relationship between myth‐making, literary development, the rise of historical consciousness and historiography, and socio‐political circumstances in the ancient world. The origins and development of the Flood traditions examined in this book, furthermore, represent one of the best‐documented examples illustrating continuities and changes in Mesopotamian cultural, intellectual, and socio‐political history over the course of two and a half millennia.