The flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is clearly related to
the flood story in Genesis, is known from tablets from Nineveh from the
7th century BCE and surely is older. It was believed to predate the
written Genesis account. But a fragmentary tablet (CBM 13532)
discovered in Nippur dated to around 2200 BCE is consistent with the
Genesis version and differs from the Babylonian version, confirming the
priority of Scripture.
The claim rests entirely on Hilprecht's translation of the tablet
(Hilprecht 1910). Because the tablet is so fragmentary, Hilprecht's
translation includes interpolations based on context, and sometimes
these are mere guesses. In particular, Hilbrecht's translation of
bringing "creeping things, two of everything" is supplied purely from
Hilbrecht's imagination based on a translation, dubious in itself,
where he renders, "instead of a number." Barton (1911) renders the
same line, "let the artisans (or people) come" and calls Hilprecht's
version "grossly mistranslated." (See also Prince and Vanderburgh
1910.)
Without the "two of everything" line, everything in the CBM 13532
fragment is as consistent with the Babylonian flood version as it is
with Genesis.
The early date ascribed to the tablet is unsupportable. The exact
location where the tablet was excavated was not recorded, and when
Hilbrecht came to it, it had been kept in boxes mingling tablets from
different periods (Barton 1911). The philology and style of writing
indicate a date from the Cassite period (c. 1750-1170 BCE), and not
before the First Babylonian Dynasty (ca. 1830-1531 BCE) (Barton
1911).
Sumerian and Assyrian versions of the flood story, quite similar to
the Babylonian version, date back to 1700 BCE or earlier (Tigay
1982).
References:
Barton, George A. 1911. Hilprecht's fragment of the Babylonian
deluge story (Babylonian Expedition of the University of
Pennsylvania, Series D, volume V, fasc. I). Journal of the
American Oriental Society 31: 30-48.
Hilprecht, H.V. 1910. The earliest version of the Babylonian deluge
story and the temple library of Nippur. The Babylonian Expedition
of the University of Pennsylvania, Series D, Volume V, Fasc. 1.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
Prince, John D. and Frederick A. Vanderburgh. 1910. The new
Hilprecht deluge tablet. The American Journal of Semitic Languages
and Literatures 26: 303-308.
Tigay, Jeffrey H. 1982. The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic,
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
