Growing up, I have always been told that are two sides to every story and nothing seems to be truer at this exact moment when comparing Mesopotamian and Hebrew flood and creation myths. While each story is different overall, the myths all remain somewhat the same.
The largest similarity in the stories is how the earth was created from nothing by members of a higher being. In the Mesopotamian myth, Atra-Hasis alludes to the protagonist of one of the Mesopotamian creation stories as well as the myth's central figure. The mother goddess Mami is said to have created humanity at the beginning of the narrative to help the gods with their burden. She fashioned them from a combination of clay, human flesh, and blood from a killed god. However, later in the narrative, the god Enlil makes several measures to restrict human overpopulation, including hunger, drought, and finally a major flood. Atrahasis, who was forewarned of the flood by the deity Enki, constructed a boat to escape the waters, eventually appeasing the gods with sacrifices, and saving humanity.
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God reveals his plan to create humanity on the sixth day, saying that he wants to create somebody in his "own image". He creates Eve from Adam's rib and Adam out of dust. Adam and Eve are put in the idyllic garden of Eden by God, who also forbids them from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and encourages them to reproduce and fully enjoy the created world, which Eve doesn't do- thus causing Adam and Eve to be banished from Eden and begin to have