Talk:Ziusudra/Archive 1

Problems with Gilgamesh

The Biblical dimensions of Noah's ark (300 long x 50 wide x 30 high in cubits) define a realistic ocean going vessel. In contrast, the Epic of Gilgamesh has an impossible vessel of 120 x 120 x 120 cubits. This 7 storey vessel is structurally challenging and would tumble around in the sea. The proposition that the Biblical account was inspired by the Epic of Gilgamesh is complicated by the inexplicable correctness of Noah's Ark. The proportions closely match a modern ship, giving a near optimal balance of roll stability, hull strength and seakeeping comfort (accelerations)[1], the three levels give a workable ceiling height, roof ventilation capacity is adequate, the scale is towards the limit for a timber vessel but not impossible. The obvious improvements of the Biblical account over the Gilgamesh epic can be explained in two ways. Either the author of the Biblical account (attributed to Moses) re-interpreted the Gilgamesh data in the light of Egyptian seagoing expertise (unknown at this scale), or the Biblical flood actually occurred and the Gilgamesh author had access to folklore rather than records. The Biblical account compiled my Moses gives clear indication of referencing earlier works. Hence the date of authorship of Genesis (by Moses) is not the date for the story's origin.

It seems a bit strange to nitpick the vessel dimensions when there are so many things that make both flood myths physically impossible; unless you take the supernatural into account. The cube shaped Gilgamesh "ark" simply requires one extra miracle from the God/Gods who were watching over Utnapishtim. Making a badly designed boat seaworthy is a pretty small trick compared with conjuring up enough water to cover the entire planet.--D kendall 22:27, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'll agree with the previous poster that it does deem a bit much to declare as incontrovertable fact that Gilgamesh is much older than the story of Noah given how sketchy ancient history is and the fact that the story of Noah was likely told orally for some time before it was written down.

Since this has gone down this road, could not both stories be based around a regional flood, possibly in the area of the Bosporos, instead of covering the entire globe, as we know it today? When analyzing the truth to ancient legends, one must account for (sometimes extreme) exageration, not just the letter of the story. My two cents. Xyzzyva 00:25, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

The author's statement ending with "can be explained in two ways" is nothing more than a syllogism: a mere attempt to establish a conclusion by developing a series of premises. The absurb idea of a universal flood and the loss of all previous creation is totally unsupportable by any empirical evidence. Moreover, it avoids any reasonable analysis of the development of mythological themes found in the earlier writing cultures throughout the world. This is nothing short of an attempt to limit our epistemological research to the limited realm of Hebrew myth as redacted in the more recent translations of the Bible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.22.17.21 (talk) 21:42, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Utnapishtim or Ziusudra?

I've heard both names given for this character. Are they both correct; i.e. is one the Sumerian name and the other the Akkadian name? Or is Ziusudra simply a mistransliteration that is no longer used?

And on a side note, the Noah's Ark dimensions are not much more realistic than the Gilgamesh ones. A wooden vessel of the size given in Genesis would be virtually impossible to survive in a flood; the largest wooden ships ever built in reality are about 3/4 its size, and required constant bailing, as well as heavy steel reinforcements. Steel did not exist in ancient times (it was developed about 400 years ago by a purification process of iron, see Steel), so it could obviously not be used to build Noah's Ark.

Next time, think twice about trusting "Answers in Genesis" as a reliable source of shipbuilding knowledge, let alone ancient history.

And while it is correct that we do not know if the Genesis flood account was derived from the Mesopotamian one, it is a definite possibility. The more likely possibility is that both versions of the flood story derive from an older oral tradition.

We do know, however, that the Gilgamesh Epic was written down earlier than the Genesis account. The version of Gilgamesh we have today was written down in Akkadian sometime between 1300 and 1000 BC by the Babylonian priest Sin-liqe-unninni, who "canonized" the text- that is, he edited it, wrote an introduction (in which he gives us his name), and established the version used in modern translations. He himself, however, was definitely reworking an older text from Sumerian, possibly dated to as early as 2100 BC.

The earliest stratum of the Genesis flood account, the Jahwist text, probably dates to around 800-750 BC. The part that describes the dimensions of the ark, the Priestly source, probably dates to around 705-701 BC (in the reign of King Hezekiah).

Just some information so we can stop bickering about which myth is less ridiculous. --Rob117 02:39, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Some Would argue that the Bible is not a monotheistic Document, to some it is polytheistic, and to others trinitarian.(anon.)

Added a paragraph on the Ziusudra legend. While they obviously belong together, the Utnapishtim and Ziusudra stories are not one and the same. Incidentally, the article as a whole needs a bit more detail - such as when/where the Gilgamesh and Ziusudra texts were discovered, how many versions they come in (only one for Ziusudra), differences between the various versions, ages of the texts, and significant details. PiCo 04:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC) Sorry, fogot to say that I also edited out some material from the final para og the article, as it seemed to me rather dubious (it was about influences between the Mesopotamian stories and the Biblical one) - while some influence is unendiable, just how it operated is pure speculation (except that it was the Mesopotamians who came first). PiCo 04:13, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Asian mythology

I don't know where this comment belongs, but I'll put it here and maybe someone can move it to the right place: Anyway, calling this myth Asian and using Japanese or Chinese characters as the identifying icon seems rather a stretch. Surely this is a Middle Eastern myth, not simply an Asian one? PiCo 23:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Laurence Gardner, Noah, and ancient Mesopotamian myth

I deleted the entire para that says, basically that (a) the Noah and Utna stories are 'amost' identical', and (b) that a certain Mr Laurence Gardner has written a book claiming that Noah and Utna are "the same person."

The problem with the Utna/Noah nexus is that attracts cranks, of whom LG is one. A best-selling crank perhaps, or at least so he claims, but a crank nevertheless. LG has no academic qualifications to help him read, let alone evaluate, Mesopotamian and Hebrew myth (I can find no evidence that he can read Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew, or any other relevant language), has never studied comparative religion in an academic environment (or if he has he's keeping uncharacteristically quiet about it), and has published no scholarly papers in peer-reviewed journals. What he has done is write some pot-boiling popular pseudo-history. In short, he's a crank. As such, he has no part to play in Wiki as a source, although he should of course have an appropriate entry devoted to himself alone, along with others of his ilk (Graham Hancock, Dan Brown, etc). If the individual who keeps trying to put Mr Gardner and his thoughts into this article persists, I fear we'll have a dispute on our hands. PiCo 10:20, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Why? They are "almost identical", and it's widely known that Hebrew myths took their cue from Babylo-Sumerian myths, such as the Enuma Elish creation story. Perhaps Gardner is a 'crank' in your estimation, but the fact is that both Untapishtim and Noah are mythical characters, and they have been associated with each other by a number of authors - not all of them "cranks" by any stretch of the imagination. So if people have equated them as the same person, what does it matter since neither existed in reality? We're not dealing with historical fact here, we're dealing with mythological events and characters. --Stevefarrell 16:20, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad we agree that Utna and Noah are both mythical. But if they're mythical, then they can't be called persons. The correct wording would be something along the lines that the Genesis story of Noah contains many of the elements found in the earlier Utnapishtim/Ziusudra myth. (Given the huge difference in time between the earliest extant text of Utna - about 1600 BC - and the earliest Genesis text, (composed maybe 5th century BC but texts several centuries later), I doubt very much that one can say that Noah is based directly on Utna: Berossus's text is much closer in time). If you want to write something about correspondences between these two myths, make it scholarly - quote scholars, not potboilers like Gardner. PiCo 23:35, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I will look it up, but I'm half sure that Joseph Campbell was one person who equated the two myths, and I don't think he's a potboiling folk-etymology using crank (Gardner's explanation for the origin of the word 'human' is quite amusing, yes, I've gone off him). Of course, there's also arguably links to the Deucalion myth from Greece, but then there are so many flood myths from all over the world. It's a universal mythical theme, which is probably what the likes of LG and others grabbed onto to form their theories. --Stevefarrell 14:21, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

There's no doubt that the Noah story and the Utnapishtim story come from the same body of myth, but the relationship between them isn't simple. No-one knows what the Utnapishtim story is really all about. One theory is that it's a solar myth - the storm comes in winter, and Utnapishtim is a solar deity 'saved' from winter storms by a heavenly boat. Another is that Utna (Ziusudra) was a real king, and that the story derives from some near-catastrophe in which his city was saved by the city-god via the city temple, the ziggurat, which explains why his boat is square (otherwise a very unseaworthy shape!) Certainly it seems that the various gods of the Sumerian pantheon were originally gods of individual cities, and the mythologies might reflect struggles between those cities. And we shouldn't overlook the sheer story-telling aspect - Enlil, Enki and Ziusudra are simply great characters, and make great stories. As for Noah, his story in the bible has many distinct strands - it's even been suggested that the piece about the rainbow comes from a Hindu myth, as it isn't found in Babylonian stories but is found in India. Noah himself may not have been the original hero of the ark story - it may originally have belonged to Enoch (the two names are almost identical in Hebrew), who according to Jewish tradition was given the gift of immortality and sent to live at the ends of the earth, just like Utna. (The "real" Noah seems to have been the one who invented wine - a very useful sort of guy). Anyway, what could make a very useful addition to this article would be an account of the discovery of these myths, a clear account of the various texts (too often articles like this simply conflate separate texts in an effort to re-create the "real" story), and maybe a brief outline of the more obvious similarities &differences with the Noah story (and an overviwe of theories on exactly how the Noah story is based on the Mesopotamian stories). PiCo 23:29, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I would say that a better place than this for an encyclopedic discussion on the links between the Near Eastern flood myths is in the Deluge (mythology) article, rather than in articles on individual mythical characters. An interesting note is that the etymological root of the word 'ark' is 'a box or chest', and ultimately denotes something that is enclosed or hidden (whence 'archaeology'), which probably explains why the mythical ark of Utnapishtim was a 'square', since that's the general shape of a box or chest. Enoch is a very interesting character since he is the only person in the Bible other than Jesus who never actually died, but I'd never seen the link between he and Noah before. My personal basis for the theory that the Noah myth was lifted from the Utna myth is that the Pentateuch was written during or after the time of the Jewish exile in Babylon, where the Utna flood myth originated and had already been written down. As far as Mesopotamian myth in general goes, I'm very surprised that the likes of Enki, Enlil, Ninkharsag and Dumu-zi haven't captured peoples' imagination in the way that the Olympian deities or the Aesir did. --Stevefarrell 13:49, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

What you write about 'ark' and 'archaeology' immediately makes me suspicious. For me, this supposed etymological connection was perfectly new and, as far as I can tell, is not supported by any reliable dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, traces 'ark' back to the Latin arca 'box'. The first morpheme in 'archaeology' comes from archæo 'old'. If you have other citations about this proposed connection between 'ark' and 'archaeology', I'd very much like to see them. Given my doubts about the accuracy of this proposed etymology, I find I want to take other things you've written cum grano salis. Interlingua ^{talk email} 14:02, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

You raise some very interesting points. I'm afraid you might strike some resistance if you try to introduce them into the Deluge article, but you could try. The square shape of Utna's vessel is one of the more curious aspects of his myth - surely any priests dreaming up a tale to explain why their god (Enki in this case) is the greatest, would have spotted the problem of a box-shaped boat - after all, they already had boat-shaped boats, the connection should have been obvious. Be careful about suggesting that the Pentateuch was "written" in the 4th century - it was put into its final form then, but the elements were around much earlier, some of them very much earlier. The ark story comes from the Jahwist source, written around the 8th or 9th century, in Judah - thus prior to the Babylonian exile. But the Utna stiory, or versions of it, were already known in the Levant at that time - texts have been found in the general region (though I can't recall off-hand just where they were found). Anyway, point is that it seems the bible-authors didn't draw direct on Babylonian texts. As for the way Enki and his friends lack the popularity of Greeek and Roman gods, well, we've had 2000 years of Hellenistic culture to drive them deep into our psyches and our cultuer, whereas the Mesopotamians were only discovered a bit over a hundred years ago. And of course, somehow they seem to have become identified with demons and general bad guys - have a look at Ghostbusters :). Let me know if you do put something on some other article. PiCo 14:37, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why there is a controversy here. Even if the portion of the Pentateuch dealing with the flood was written before the Babylonian exile, wouldn't Abraham (assuming there was such a person and he was from Ur) have been familiar with the story, if versions of it date back to 2100 BC or before?--Ff11 03:49, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was Move. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:56, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

Ziusudra is the earlier Sumerian name of this person, and it is in this form that he appears in both the older version of the Gilgamesh epic and in the Sumerian king list as found in tablets from any era. In order to coherently discuss both in the same article, it appears to me to make more sense to move the article to Ziusudra and change Utnapishtim to a redirect. TCC (talk) (contribs) 05:20, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I support retitleing of Utnapishtim page as Ziusudra and then redirect of Utnapishtim to Gilgamesh flood myth or to Ziusudra for 3 reasons. Anybody interested in Utnapishtim will probaby access it through Gilgamesh or Gilgamesh flood myth. A book title search in Amazon.com shows only one book with Utnapishtim in the title in contrast to 143 books with Gilgamesh in the title. Unlike Utnapishtim, Ziusudra is named in some of the Sumerian King Lists in addition to being the flood hero in the Sumerian flood myth, and hence Ziusudra should be accessible directly from the Sumerian king list and other Sumerian and mythology pages, without bumping into Utnapishtim. Yes, the names mean almost the same thing in Sumerian and Akkadian, but Ziusudra as a King List name should not have to link through Gilgamesh or Utnapishtim to get to the Ziusudra page. When people access flood-myth pages and Ancient Near East myth pages and want to link to pages on the flood myths and flood heros, the See-Alsos and mid-sentence links should be able to point to all 4 flood heros Atrahasis, Utnapishtim and Gilgamesh flood myth, Ziusudra, and Noah. Retitleing the Utnapishtim page as Ziusudra will accomplish this. Alternatively, the redirect of Ziusudra to Utnapishtim could be disconnected from Utnapishtim and directed to a new Ziusudra page which can be split from the Utnapishtim page I just expanded to include a section on Ziusudra. Greensburger 15:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

Support retitling as "Ziusudra".. Greensburger 02:52, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Please don't say "click here"

For now, most people are reading Wikipedia online with a web browser and a mouse, and they will be able to "click here", but there are many reasons why we shouldn't say that. What if someone's reading it on a touch screen? What if a blind person is listening to a recorded version or using text-to-speech software? What if someone is reading a paper version of Wikipedia? —Keenan Pepper 22:29, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Well said. Greensburger 22:46, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

BTW, great work on the article! —Keenan Pepper 22:59, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Redundant parent categories

User:Sumerophile has repeatedly edit warred with me, adding at least 4 or 5 times today alone, the parent categories category:Sumer, category:Mesopotamia category:Ancient history. The article is already in the subcategories of these and no compelling reason or explanation has been offered for repeatedly re-adding these categories in exception to the normal guidelines. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 22:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)