![\"Flood](\"https:\/\/unionchapel.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Flood-Tablet.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn the account, Utnapishtim tricks the people from the town of Shuruppak to labor in building, provisioning, and filling his ship.<\/p>\n
The Gilgamesh ship is rather interesting. Here is how the tablet reads (words in square brackets \u201c[ ]<\/span>\u201d are added by the translator to complete fragmentary or supply missing words. Words in parentheses \u201c( )<\/span>\u201d are added for clarity. Italics<\/i> are used to indicate a questionable translation.):<\/p>\n 48 \u00a0 With the first glow of dawn,<\/p>\n 49 \u00a0 The land was gathered [about me].<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (Lines 50-53 are too fragmentary to translate)<\/p>\n 54\u00a0\u00a0 The little ones [carr]ied bitumen,<\/p>\n 55\u00a0\u00a0 While the grown ones brought [all else] that was needful.<\/p>\n 56 \u00a0 On the fifth day I laid her framework.<\/p>\n 57\u00a0\u00a0 One (whole) acre was its floor space,<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Ten dozen cubits the height of each of her walls,<\/p>\n 58\u00a0\u00a0 Ten dozen cubits each edge of the square deck.<\/p>\n 59 \u00a0 I laid out the contours (and) joined her together.<\/p>\n 60 \u00a0 I provided her with six decks,<\/p>\n 61\u00a0\u00a0 Dividing her (thus) into seven parts.<\/p>\n 62\u00a0\u00a0 Her floor plan I divided into nine parts.<\/p>\n 63 \u00a0 I hammered water plugs into her.<\/p>\n 64 \u00a0 I saw to the punting-poles and laid in supplies.<\/p>\n 65\u00a0\u00a0 Six \u2018sar\u2019 (measures) of bitumen I poured into the furnace,<\/p>\n 66 \u00a0 Three sar of asphalt [I also] poured inside.<\/p>\n 67 \u00a0 Three sar of oil the basket-bearers carried,<\/p>\n 68 \u00a0 Aside from the one sar of oil which the calking<\/i> (sic)<\/span> consumed,<\/p>\n 69 \u00a0 And the two sar of oil [which] the shipman stowed away.<\/p>\n 70 \u00a0 Bullocks I slaughtered for the [people],<\/p>\n 71\u00a0\u00a0 And I killed sheep every day.<\/p>\n 72 \u00a0 Must, red wine, oil, and white wine<\/p>\n 73\u00a0\u00a0 [I gave the] workmen [to drink], as though river water,<\/p>\n 74\u00a0\u00a0 That they might feast as on New Year\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n 75 \u00a0 I op[ened \u2026] ointment, applying (it) to my hand.<\/p>\n 76 \u00a0 [On the sev]enth [day] the ship was completed.<\/p>\n 77 \u00a0 [The launching<\/i>] was very difficult,<\/p>\n 78\u00a0\u00a0 So that they had to shift the floor planks above and below,<\/p>\n 79 \u00a0 [Until<\/i>] two-thirds of [the structure<\/i>] [had g<\/i>]one<\/i> [into the water<\/i>].<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (Pritchard, 93-94)<\/p>\n \u201cSar,\u201d 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<\/i> of \u201ca little over two gallons\u201d (Rehwinkle, 157, note 12). In line 63, the \u201cwater plugs\u201d 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).<\/p>\n From the text, Utnapishtim\u2019s 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\u2019s crew three days to build the entire structure.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2014or frames, to give them their technical name\u2014and 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)<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n All-in-all, except for the framework first construction, Utnapishtim\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Bibliography<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Lionel Casson, The Ancient Mariners<\/i> (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991)<\/p>\n James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Referring to the Old Testament<\/i> (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969)<\/p>\n Alfred M. Rehwinkel, The Flood in the Light of the Bible, Geology and Archaeology<\/i> (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1951)<\/p>\n Andrew A. Snelling, Earth’s Catastrophic Past<\/em>, vol. 1 (Dallas, Texas: Institute for Creation Research, 2009)<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.engineeringtoolbox.com\/hydrostatic-pressure-water-d_1632.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently a good friend pointed me to a family member\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pastorsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unionchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unionchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unionchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unionchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unionchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/unionchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"https:\/\/unionchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unionchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unionchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unionchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}