Page 39 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition

In the Assyrian text the old man who built the ship to save
mankind is referred to as King Utu-nipishtim rather than Noah, but
both names arc probably allegorical. The ocean-god Enki also takes
the place of the monotheistic Jahve of the Hebrews. The Assyrians
pretend that the story of the Universal Deluge was told to one of
their ancestors by the boat-building King Utu-nipishtim himself
while he was still alive in Dilmun. He claimed that the ocean-god
took a liking to him and revealed the secret conspiracy of the other
gods to drown all mankind. It was the ocean-god who had told him
to build a large ship and to take on board his family, his attendants,
and his livestock. King Utu-nipishtim followed this advice and
built the ship:
‘On the seventh day the ship was ready. As the launching was
heavy, rollers were used . . . With all my property I loaded the
ship, with all my silver I loaded it, with all my gold I loaded it,
with all my living seed I loaded it. All my family and servants I
brought on board, the livestock, the beasts of the field, all the
craftsmen I brought on board ... To the master of the ship, the
captain Puzur-Amurri, I entrusted the large structure and its
cargo.’4

For six days and seven nights the flood raged over the land, and
on the seventh day the big ship grounded on a mountain top in
upper Kurdistan, the region where the Hebrews had Noah landing
on Mount Ararat. The Assyrian text says that a dove and a swallow
were in turn sent out, but returned, and only when a raven was let
loose and never came back did the King realise that the waters had
abated and he was on safe ground with his followers and live­
stock. They all disembarked and offered sacrifices to the gods,
who promised never again to punish all mankind for the sins of
some.
It is interesting that in this Assyrian text the survivors from the
big ship were told to go and ‘dwell in the distance, at the mouth of
the rivers’. To the Assyrians this meant the mouth of the Euphrates
and Tigris, the former Sumerian territory. In other words, the
Assyrians recorded that the gulf coast and marsh area of southern
Iraq was the part of their world first resettled by the new genera­
tions of mankind.
It would therefore be particularly interesting to know what the
older Sumerians themselves had to say in this connection. Their
version of the same event was discovered subsequently by a team of

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