Ancient floods

The Flood Tablet, George Smith and the Gods Who Sent the Deluge

The Flood Tablet, British Museum K.3375, is the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. George Smith read its flood story to a London audience on 3 December 1872. Older tablets, Atrahasis and the Sumerian Ziusudra story, tell the same flood and say the gods sent it. This investigation follows the tablets, the readings of Zecharia Sitchin and the Assyriologists, and what is still open.