Every society has great stories that are told generation after generation some of which may be difficult to fathom. There are some stories that persist over time no matter the civilization. One example is the great flood. The flood depicted in Stephen Mitchell’s version of “Gilgamesh” bears a striking resemblance to the flood described in the Hebrew Scriptures while also having differences. It has been said that because the story of Gilgamesh came approximately six hundred years before the story of the flood in the Bible that the book of Genesis draws its inspiration from the epic of Gilgamesh. In the Bible it is Noah that builds to boat, or the “Ark” whereas in Gilgamesh it is Utnapishtim that builds one. Noah and Utnapishtim built their …show more content…
There are a great number of similarities between the two accounts, and any superficial reader might believe that there is no doubt about the two documents being related to each other. However, if you exam the stories more closely one can see that a main reason for the resemblance is that the two contain a lot of occurrences which are perfectly common during a flood. A reason for the fact that both accounts occur in the same region is that both the Sumerian culture and the Hebrew lived in the Middle East. The Gods that we read about in the Epic of Gilgamesh seem to have a more humane side, as they feel sorry for having caused the deaths of nearly all of the people. On the other hand, in the Bible God does not feel any regret for the deaths that he has caused. In the end God states that he will never provoke a flood of such a magnitude and tells Noah and his family to procreate with the purpose of repopulating earth. The gods in Gilgamesh just create new people and instruct them to repopulate