There is a broken clay tablet in London that tells a story you have known since childhood. It was not written by a Hebrew prophet. It came out of the ground in Assyria, and when it was finally read, the man reading it could not stay in his chair.
The Day George Smith Leapt From His Chair
In 1872, a man named George Smith was working his way through broken clay tablets at the British Museum when he read something that made him leap from his seat. The tablet was the eleventh of the Epic of Gilgamesh, dug out of the royal library at Nineveh, and it described a great flood.
What the Tablet Remembers
Read what it says, and see if any of it sounds familiar.
- A man is warned by heaven that a flood is coming.
- He builds a huge boat and seals it with pitch.
- He loads it with animals.
- The boat comes to rest on a mountain.
- He sends out birds to find dry land.
- When he steps out, he offers a sacrifice.
Every one of those details has a counterpart in the account of the Flood in Genesis. No wonder Smith could not stay seated.
A Memory the Whole World Shares
The tablet from Nineveh is not alone. Flood traditions like this one appear among peoples on nearly every continent. The details differ from place to place. The names change, the boat changes, the mountain changes. The core memory does not change: a great flood, a warning, a boat, and a mountain.
And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. (Genesis 7:19)
So here is the question I would put to anyone who treats the Flood as a fairy tale. If it never happened, why does the whole ancient world remember it? A tale invented in one valley does not usually travel to every continent on earth. A memory of something that actually happened would.
The tablet is catalogued as Gilgamesh Tablet XI, British Museum K.3375, translated by George Smith in 1872. You can read it for yourself. I suspect you will recognize it.
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