Atra-Hasis

Atra-Hasis (Akkadian: 𒀜𒊏𒄩𒋀, romanized: Atra-ḫasīs) is an 18th-century BC Akkadian epic, recorded in various versions on clay tablets and named for one of its protagonists, the priest Atra-Hasis ('exceedingly wise'). The narrative has four focal points: An organisation of allied gods shaping Mesopotamia agriculturally; a political conflict between the gods, pacified by creating the first human couples; the mass reproduction of these humans; and a greate deluge, as has been handed down many times in the different flood myths of mankind. Probably the relic of a natural catastrophe (melting of glacial ice cap as documented in Drain the Oceans or Platos allegory of Atlantis), the epic links this flood with the gods' intention to eliminate their artificial creatures.

The name "Atra-Hasis" also appears, as a king of Shuruppak on the Euphrates in the times before that flood, on one of the Sumerian King Lists. The oldest known copy of the epic tradition concerning Atrahasis can be dated by colophon (scribal identification) to the reign of Hammurabi’s great-grandson, Ammi-Saduqa (1646–1626 BC). However, various Old Babylonian dialect fragments exist, and the epic continued to be copied into the first millennium BC.

The story of Atrahasis also exists in a later Assyrian dialect version, first rediscovered in the Library of Ashurbanipal, though its translations have been uncertain due to the artifact being in fragmentary condition and containing ambiguous words. Nonetheless, its fragments were first assembled and translated by George Smith as The Chaldean Account of Genesis, the hero of which had his name corrected to Atra-Hasis by Heinrich Zimmern in 1899.

In 1965, Wilfred G. Lambert and Alan Millard published many additional texts belonging to the epic, including an Old Babylonian copy (written c. 1650 BC) which is the most complete recension of the tale to have survived. These new texts greatly increased knowledge of the epic and were the basis for Lambert and Millard’s first English translation of the Atrahasis epic in something approaching entirety. A further fragment was recovered in Ugarit.

Myths and facts

Cuneiform tablet with the Atra-Hasis epic in the British Museum

The epic of Atra-Hasis contains the myth of the creation of mankind by Enlil, Anu and Enki— the pantheon of a third generation of the earliest gods (Sumerian: 𒀭, romanized: dingirs) mentioned in writing. Only the goddess Tiamat – a personification of the saltwater ocean imagined as a giant serpent – and the god Abzu, a symbol of the cosmic freshwater ocean, who both created earth together, represent the first generation. The gods Enlil, Anu and Enki are also known as Anunnaki and Igigi, the superior and the inferior gods. They seem to have been united in an organization similar to that which existed in Greece between Zeus – as ‘pure spirit or air’ the leading party – and the groups round Poseidon (ocean) and Hades (earth). (Compare also the triple alliance of the party around Zeus and the two from Atlantis to Greece defected groups around Epi- and Prometheus.)

It is not unlikely that the story refers to the era of the Neolithic Revolution, when Homo sapiens, similar to chimpanzees evolving in small autarkic hordes, began to establish political inter-group organisations. Instead of fighting each other as before (and as our closest relatives in the animal kingdom seem to have no choice in doing in an overpopulation crisis), these groups of hunter-gatherers came together – according to K. Schmidt's thesis – to share their coveted territory in peace, to defend it and to erect impressive monuments like those at Göbekli Tepe. More or less from this date, they also developed agriculture, became sedentary and transformed Mesopotamia's steppe into the blooming landscape that went down in the myths of mankind as the Garden of Eden.

Overview

Illustration of K. Schmidt's thesis of how autarchic hordes began to form inter-group organisations already at the early Neolithic period.

In the main, the epic reports on a conflict between some of the first Sumerian gods and draws on the earlier myth of the separation of air and earth (‘above’ and ‘below’) in the midst of the cosmic freshwater primordial ocean to clarify their hierarchical relationship. Enlil represents the leading party in the council of gods; the party of Anunnaki around Anu belongs more to the upper heaven, and that of Igigi around Enki more to that below the earth (half) sphere.

All three parties are bound by the Tablet of Destinies, which Enlil is the only one to possess. In the Sumerian myths, its bestowed on him by the earth mother goddess Ninḫursag herself (cf. Anzu myth). His aptitude as the greatest warrior and chief strategist of the divine tribal alliance gives him power over the other parties of gods; only he has the ability to transform present circumstances back into their original state – redefining the course of fate.

As a permanent legal document the tablet was provided with a seal, a sign mechanically applied by means of a special technique, which in ancient Mesopotamia was regarded as a symbol of a contract. Contracts have been directly related to tribute payments to be made: often to shares of the food produced (see the cattle to be divided equitably between Prometheus and Zeus), but generally to assistance in battle or labour, such as the construction of mighty irrigation channels as described in the epic discussed here. As far as the male groups of gods were concerned, the separate task of reproduction fell to the seven divine wombs, the shassuratu presided over by Ninḫursag (Mami).

The plot of the epic follows a simple pattern:

• The creation of earth and all creatures that inhabit it is already complete.
• An organisation of at least three male parties of gods exist; they seem to specialise in ‘thinkers and workers’.
• The gods doing the hardest farm labour are dissatisfied and rise up against Enlil (master of the universe).
• With help of divine women* the victorious party arranges the production of a first pair of humans who, with all their descendants, are to serve all the gods as labour slaves for eternity /* cf. Athena's contribution to Pandora.
• As result of the unrestrained multiplication of the humans, an overpopulation crisis breaks out, which the upper gods try to get under control, among others by triggering a global flooding to wash humanity as a whole off the face of mother earth.

As is well known, this genocidal project failed. In the tale of Atra-Hasis the reason for this divine misadventure was not so much the human's shipbuilding skills (Noah's Ark), but the quarrelling between the gods. Finally, they seal their fate as well as that of mankind by agreeing on a utopian method to regulate the reproduction of their creatures to a bearable level.

Two aspects of Atra-Hasis were adopted in the Epic of Gilgamesh around 1200 BC: the primal scene of the 7-day mating period of a man with a woman (Enkidu's domestication) and the devastating deluge. Obviously ^', the authors of Old Testament also referred to the epic, so we recognise the former as the creation of Adam and Eve and latter as the Flood unleashed by the omnipotent but in this case again failing god YHWH. The God-fearing priest Atraḫasis – the only one who was therefore allowed to survive the attempted delation with his wife and sons, ensuring continued existence of artificially constructed humanity – appears there as Noah.

Synopsis

Tablet I

The epos taking place according to its incipit, "When the gods had to work like humans (inuma ilu awilum = when the gods were humans)", there was a quarrel between the upper Anunnaki and the Igigu, the lower gods. While the latter had the task of ensuring the supply of the land through construction of irrigation canals by digging out the beds of big rivers, the Anunnaki ruled from above, presumably watching over the implementation of their plans and dividing the fruits of this great civilising project as they saw fit. After 40 years, however, the lesser gods rebelled and refused to do strenuous labor. At night, they surrounded the dwelling place of Enlil, who was considered the main god of Sumerian civilisation, the seperator of air and earth in the midst of the cosmic ocean.

Enlil was surprised and called for Anu and Enki. Nusku, one of the sons and Enlil's ambassador here, tried to negotiate with the rebellious party, but had no success. Enlil, who also was the benevolent, wise leader of all the gods, didn't want a battle with the risk of serious injuries and deaths, and to avoid this he came up with the idea of starting to produce humans from a sacrifice to do the hard labour instead of the rebellious gods. He asked Mami – leader of the 7 goddess wombs – to do this. Mami declared that she could only fulfil this request with Enki's assistance. Enki, agreeing, advised the assembly of all gods that they should first cleanse themselves for everything else. They do. On the fifteenth day of this project, he cut up Geshtu-E – 'ear', a god or partie who listened for wisdom – into pieces (cf. Plato's dissection of the rebellious spherical people into single individuals) and began to create the first human being to the sound of drums. He took clay from the soil of the steppe (Mami was regarded as primordial mother earth, so with the clay from her body female fertility came into play here), mixed it with some of the spilt blood and added a touch of cosmic water, bringing it to its living form. When the creature awoke, Mami approached, handed it a carrying basket and taught it to work for the gods from then on.

(Here is a gap in the tablet in which it could have been described how the artificial man suffered from the loneliness of his working day and nothing the gods advised him to do was able to restore his zest for life. So the gods may have decided to give him a wife to cheer him up. Where she came from remains open due to the missing passage – there may have been a similarly conceived act of creation. However, this assumption would conflict with Moses' version of the events in the Garden of Eden, according to which the woman was made from a surgically amputated body part of Adam who had been put into deep narcotic sleep for this purpose, with the argument "It is not good that the man should be alone; therefore let Us make a woman (Eve) who fit to him and do help." Gen. 2.18)

Venus of Willendorf, the best-known Stone Age depiction of female fertility and beauty (c. 26,000 BCE)

To complete the construction of humans in the optimal way, Mami encouraged the young couple to celebrate a seven day feast in honour of Isthar, the goddess of war and sexuality.* Both obeyed. After 9 months, the land of the gods gave birth to its first human child, whose purpose in life was to be the same as that of his parents.

(* Cf. Gilgamesh epic: there, too, the gods arranged a seven-day sexual act to pacify a kind of cold war. Protagonists are Enkidu: an almost invincible, rebellious animal-man or son of the "Gazelle" clan, and the female temple servant Shamkat, endowed with all advantages necessary for that purpose. Enkidu, who had previously destroyed so many animal traps with his fierce group of relatives, fell into this new type of trap. After having sex for 7 days, he was ‘weakened’: the herd of alleged animals he had lead fled into the steppe in horror. He was shocked of his lonely separation, but Shamkat, unaware that she was only following the gods' plan to domesticate Enkidu according to his further destiny, tried to comfort him: "Don't grieve; you have knowledge now, just like the gods!" See also Adam's and Eve's enjoyment of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in Eden.)

1200 years later, humans had multiplied to such an extent that they disturbed the gods with their noise. Enlil was annoyed and decided that Namtar, his god of the dead's realm, should carry off most of humans with frost fever, so a great extinction began. Enki, probably worried that he would end up having to work again himself, approached his faithful priest Atraḫasis and advised him to do following: The other gods should no longer be worshipped, but only Namtar. This flattered the god of deadly diseases so much that as soon as he had begun his pandemic work, he ceased to eliminate people.

Tablet II

Babylon's world map. The more vertical lines indicate the banks of Euphrates, one of the rivers, where the Igigu worked. The small circles show city states such as Uruk and the triangles mountains at the world's edge, including Ararat, on which Noah Atra-Hasis stranded. The belt is a symbol of the goodess sea serpent Tiamat surrounding earth since its creation. She, the Abzu and the Flood are probably sources of the Leviathan, a human-consuming cosmic sea monster.

Tablet II is about the unstoppable increase in overpopulation.

After another 1200 years there were many more humans, they roamed around like roaring herds of cattle. Because the gods in upper part of heaven could no longer even sleep, Enlil sent Adad and, again 1200 years later, the fertility goddess Nisaba to devastate the land with storms and dry up the harvests. Enki – dwelling in the lower part of sky – told his priest Atraḫasis what to do about it each time: Only Adad and Nisaba should sacrificed, the other gods should left to starve. The pious priest acted according to this divine advice; Adad and Nisaba were so ashamed of this undeserved favour that they abandoned their endeavour. Enlil now completely enraged against Enki and decreed that a mighty flood should consume all of humanity. In addition, he made Enki swear before the Anunnaki that he would not speak another word to humans; he then began to consult with the assembled gods about the exact date and duration of the deluge to be unleashed.

(Enki in his relation to Enlil can be seen to have parallels to Prometheus rebelling against Zeus. Zeus was also originally the wise leader of a political organisation (primeval Athens), in which the double party of Titans Prometheus and Epimetheus embodied the inferior gods. According to the story, Zeus' character changed after a period of flourishing civilisation: he became stingy and unjust. In any case, these are the arguments Prometheus used to justify his uprising against 'heaven': he stole the god's fire, cheated Zeus out of the best part of a cow and even had an affair with Athena, who let him enter olymp through a back door. Zeus solved this revolt by producing Pandora as Epimentheus' fatal wedding gift, dividing and ruling the titanic brothers. Similarly to Prometheus, Enki defies the orders of the upper gods, who now harbour genocidal intentions against the humans, and proves to be the benefactor of these creatures, who were of course only created as labour slaves to pacify the rebellion of the sub-gods around Enki.)

Tablet III

Tablet III contains the flood myth.

The Sumerian Genesis describes the Abzu as a cosmic freshwater ocean that surrounds our planet (created in its midst) above and below, so the sketch shows the same as Babylon's map, now in sideview. A bubble of breathable air clings to Earth, with the Abzu as roof like on Athrahasis' lifeboat. Further details, such as Noah's island Dilmun, are taken from the epic of Gilgamesh. An important technical detail are the sluices built into sky. Through them, the gods, skilled in construction of irrigation systems, supplied their Garden of Eden with rain, but also unleashed the Flood.

Well informed with all details, Enki went to his priest's reed hut, but waited until Atraḫasis began to lie down to sleep. Then, speaking cunningly to the hut's wall so as not to breach the contract, Enki told 'it' what to do: ‘Separate yourself from your house, build a ship, spurn your possessions, save your life.’ The ship should be cube-shaped and also be watertight from above with a roof "like Abzu" itself. Atraḫasis should not tell anyone about the coming flood, take a large supply of food with him (including live birds and even fish, as the poet added with humorous irony) and keep an eye on the hourglass for seven days from start of the catastrophe. So the priest 'Extremely Wise' hurriedly left his belongings under a pretence and began building the ship. He invited his neighbours to help and had no scruples about promising them that the reward would soon come richly from heaven. The deadline was pressing, so he organised a big party to attract more workers. He himself was unable to eat during the lavish feast, so nauseous was he with fear of the impending punishment of the gods.

When Adad gathered the clouds and the winds began to roar from all ends of the world, Atraḫasis and at least one fertile woman (the masters sons too) climbed into the ship and sealed its entrance hatch from inside with earth pitch. The ark swirled like a pot on the waves of the mighty flood thundering down from the open floodgates of the cosmic primordial ocean. And how furious Enlil was at his foiled plan to destroy mankind! - The other gods, however, suffered from hunger, as they were unable to find any more humans to feed them in the midst of the raging chaos. They cry at the immense destruction, and Mami (Belet-ili) raised serious accusations against Enli: "Why didn't you, the greatest warrior of all gods, fight the rebels" (instead of constructing humans)?!

A few lines are missing here again, but these can be added according to the Epic of Gilgamesh: After the ark is stranded high up on Mount Nisir, Uta-napišti (the name of Atraḫasis in the Epic of Gilgamesh) sends out three birds - presumably at daily intervals: a dove, a swallow and a raven. The raven, the least able to fly, didn't return, so Utanpištim knew that the land – probably still hidden from his view under thick clouds – was accessible again.

Atraḫasis descended from his ark and began to offer a food sacrifice to all the gods indiscriminately with a zeal eager to serve. How happy the gods were who had been starving for so long! As if they were flies lured by the scent, they swarmed in from all sides to the altar's fire and began to feast to their hearts' – for which they later endowed Anthrahais-Noah with their immortality in gratitude and settled him with his wife on the island of Dilmun on the distant edge of the world (see Gilgamesh flood myth).

Enlil, however, who as a wise ruler was responsible for the welfare of this great civilisation, was still furious with Enki, the culprit whose treachery had once again enabled some humans to survive the genocide what was planned this time. Enki, however, as always never at a loss for creative ideas, devised a way that he hoped would finally solve the problem caused by the quarrelling gods themselves. He decreed that from now on the humans would be familiarised with suffering and death from birth, that there would be barren and untouchable women and that their lifespan would be severely limited from the outset (in biblical terms to 120 years), in the hope that their reproduction would be regulated in future. With this promise that the gods would have sufficient living space of their own on earth for all time, Enlil could be content and make peace with Enki.

Alterations and adaptations

Lineage of Atra-Hasis

In later versions of the flood story, contained in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Eridu Genesis, the hero is not named Atra-Hasis.

In Gilgamesh, the name of the flood hero is Utnapishtim, who is said to be the son of Ubara-Tutu, king of Shuruppak: "Gilgamesh spoke to Utnapishtim, the Faraway... O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubara-Tutu." Many available tablets comprising the Sumerian King Lists support the lineage of the flood hero given in Gilgamesh by omitting a king named Shuruppak as a historical ruler of Shuruppak, implying a belief that the flood story took place after or during the rule of Ubara-Tutu.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, first recorded in the 17th century BC (i.e., the Old Babylonian Empire), the hero is named Ziusudra, who also appears in the Instructions of Shuruppak as the son of the eponymous Shuruppak, who himself is called the son of Ubara-Tutu.

The "Sumerian King Lists" also make no mention of Atra-Hasis, Utnapishtim, or Ziusudra. Tablet "WB 62", however, provides a different chronology: Atra-Hasis is listed as a ruler of Shuruppak and a "gudug" priest, preceded by his father Shuruppak, who is, in turn, preceded by his father Ubara-Tutu, as in "The Instructions of Shuruppak". This tablet is unique in that it mentions both Shuruppak and Atra-Hasis.

Gilgamesh and the flood myth

Subsequent versions of the flood myth in the Ancient Near East evidently alter (omit and/or editorially change) information about the flood and the flood hero found in the original Atra-Hasis story. In particular, a lost, intermediate version of the Atra-Hasis flood myth seems to have been paraphrased or copied in a late edition of the Epic of Gilgamesh (Tablet XI). This modern addition of Gilgamesh, known as the 'standard version', is traditionally associated with the Babylonian scribe Sîn-lēqi-unninni (circa 1300–1000 BC), though some minor changes may have been made since his time.

Regarding the editorial changes to the Atra-Hasis text in Gilgamesh, Jeffrey H. Tigay comments: "The dropping of individual lines between others which are preserved, but are not synonymous with them, appears to be a more deliberate editorial act. These lines share a common theme, the hunger and thirst of the gods during the flood."

Alterations

Examples of alterations to the Atra-Hasis story in Gilgamesh include:

• Omitting information, for example:
  • The hero being at a banquet when the storm and flood begins: "He invited his people...to a banquet... He sent his family on board. They ate and they drank. But he [Atrahasis] was in and out. He could not sit, could not crouch, for his heart was broken and he was vomiting gall."
  • "She was surfeited with grief and thirsted for beer."
  • "From hunger they were suffering cramps."
• Editorial changes, for example:
  • "Like dragonflies they have filled the river" was changed to "Like the spawn of fishes, they fill the sea."
• Weakening of anthropomorphic descriptions of the gods, for example:
  • "The Anunnaki (the senior gods) [were sitt]ing in thirst and hunger" changed to "The gods feared the deluge."

See also

• Alan Millard
• Babylonian and Assyrian religion
• Eridu Genesis
• Flood myth
• Gilgamesh flood myth
• Noah's Ark

References

Further reading

• Laessoe, Q. 1956. “The Atrahasis Epic: A Babylonian History of Mankind.” Bibliotheca Orientalis 13:90–102. ISSN 0006-1913
• Wasserman, Nathan. 2020. The Flood: The Akkadian Sources: A New Edition, Commentary, and a Literary Discussion. Peeters. ISBN 9-0429417-4-X.

External links

• English text of The Epic of Atraḥasis