Utnapishtim vs. Noah: War of the Ships (Part 1)

By Stephen Mitchell

Recently a good friend pointed me to a family member’s blog in which the claim was made that the Genesis account of the Flood was derived from the Babylonian flood account in the Gilgamesh Epic. This claim has been made by liberal scholars since the discovery of the Epic in the nineteenth century. Along with this goes the claim that pretty much the entire Old Testament was a fabrication by the Jews, after returning to Israel from Babylon, to create a history for themselves. In these posts I want to compare the two accounts to consider the likelihood that the Genesis ship was derived from the Gilgamesh Epic ship.

The Gilgamesh Epic is recorded on twelve clay tablets discovered in the palace of Ashurbanipal, the grandson of Sennacherib. This Epic, among many other things, records an account of an ancient flood in which all mankind was killed except for Utnapishtim, his family, and others, who were in the ship with Utnapishtim. This flood account is recorded on tablet eleven, the largest single tablet of the twelve. It can be seen in the British Museum in London.

In the account, Utnapishtim tricks the people from the town of Shuruppak to labor in building, provisioning, and filling his ship.

The Gilgamesh ship is rather interesting. Here is how the tablet reads (words in square brackets “[ ]” are added by the translator to complete fragmentary or supply missing words. Words in parentheses “( )” are added for clarity. Italics are used to indicate a questionable translation.):

48   With the first glow of dawn,

49   The land was gathered [about me].

        (Lines 50-53 are too fragmentary to translate)

54   The little ones [carr]ied bitumen,

55   While the grown ones brought [all else] that was needful.

56   On the fifth day I laid her framework.

57   One (whole) acre was its floor space,

              Ten dozen cubits the height of each of her walls,

58   Ten dozen cubits each edge of the square deck.

59   I laid out the contours (and) joined her together.

60   I provided her with six decks,

61   Dividing her (thus) into seven parts.

62   Her floor plan I divided into nine parts.

63   I hammered water plugs into her.

64   I saw to the punting-poles and laid in supplies.

65   Six ‘sar’ (measures) of bitumen I poured into the furnace,

66   Three sar of asphalt [I also] poured inside.

67   Three sar of oil the basket-bearers carried,

68   Aside from the one sar of oil which the calking (sic) consumed,

69   And the two sar of oil [which] the shipman stowed away.

70   Bullocks I slaughtered for the [people],

71   And I killed sheep every day.

72   Must, red wine, oil, and white wine

73   [I gave the] workmen [to drink], as though river water,

74   That they might feast as on New Year’s Day.

75   I op[ened …] ointment, applying (it) to my hand.

76   [On the sev]enth [day] the ship was completed.

77   [The launching] was very difficult,

78   So that they had to shift the floor planks above and below,

79   [Until] two-thirds of [the structure] [had g]one [into the water].

       (Pritchard, 93-94)

“Sar,” in lines 65, 66, 67, and 69, is the Babylonian number 3,600. The measure is not supplied though it has been assumed that it is the Babylonian sutu of “a little over two gallons” (Rehwinkle, 157, note 12). In line 63, the “water plugs” probably refer to wood driven between the planks to make them water-tight (Ibid., note 10). From lines 57 and 58, the cubit was most likely the Babylonian royal cubit of about 19.8 inches (Snelling, 35).

From the text, Utnapishtim’s ship is a perfect cube. At ten dozen, 120, cubits on a side, it would have been 198 feet on each side with decks of about 28 feet 4 inches height and rooms 22 feet square. This does not account for wall thicknesses, etc. Again, from the text, it seems like it took Utnapishtim’s crew three days to build the entire structure.

One fascinating detail is in line 56. If we take “framework” to mean the internal structure of the cube and then “contours” of line 59 to refer to the planking, we have an historical anomaly.

There are, basically, two ways to construct a wooden ship. The one we are familiar with, because it has been standard practice in the Western world for centuries, is to set up a skeleton of keel and ribs—or frames, to give them their technical name—and then fasten to this a skin of planks. The other method, favored in Africa, Asia, and certain parts of northern Europe, is just the reverse: first a shell is erected by pinning each plank to its neighbors, and then a certain amount of framing is inserted to stiffen the shell. In northern Europe planks are set to overlap each other and pinned together by driving rivets through where the thickness is double. Elsewhere planks are set edge to edge and are held together by pegs or staples or nails or are even sewn together with twine made from coconut husks or split bamboo or whatever fiber happens to be available. (Casson, 27-28)

This second method of fastening the planks together first and then adding a framework of some type was used in all known ancient ship-building, not changing to the framework first construction until many centuries A.D. (Casson, 173-175). Therefore, Utnapishtim’s ship-building could be considered an historical anomaly as it is the best known way today to build a large sturdy craft but was never known to be used in ancient times.

Of course, imagining a ship that is a perfect cube shows a complete lack of any practical knowledge of seaworthiness. While it would be quite difficult to tip over if it had enough ballast in the base, it would be most likely fatal in any vigorously rough sea with roll, pitch, and yaw. Nothing in its structure would align it along the line of wave motion. Instead, the waves would spin it like a top and dash it around. As a craft, it would be unstable in the extreme. Also necessary to consider would be the water pressure on the hull. With exactly half the ship below the water line, the pressure on the hull at the lowest point would be slightly over 43 psi (http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/hydrostatic-pressure-water-d_1632.html) or a little over 3 tons of pressure on each square foot of hull. This would necessitate an extremely large framework at the bottom of the cube.

The fact that it was launched does not mesh well with its intended purpose of surviving a flood. A flood would simply lift it from where it was built. Line 64 mentions punting-poles. These were used to move along a craft in relatively shallow water but would be useless in a flood, especially from 198 plus feet, if one could imagine even holding and manipulating a pole 198 plus feet long.

All-in-all, except for the framework first construction, Utnapishtim’s ship seems like a vessel dreamed up by a city dweller with no concept of seaworthiness or conditions in deep water and only a slight knowledge of small ships punted about in relatively shallow and calm water, something we should not be surprised at in ancient mythology beside the shores of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Bibliography

Lionel Casson, The Ancient Mariners (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991)

James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Referring to the Old Testament (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969)

Alfred M. Rehwinkel, The Flood in the Light of the Bible, Geology and Archaeology (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1951)

Andrew A. Snelling, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, vol. 1 (Dallas, Texas: Institute for Creation Research, 2009)

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/hydrostatic-pressure-water-d_1632.html