EvidenceDocumentedEvery text quoted here exists and is linked. The Mesopotamian-Biblical link is well supported by the tablets themselves. A single worldwide flood is not supported by geology; real regional floods and post-Ice Age sea-level rise are.What this means
Primary records exist: an original document, a published text, an official file or a dated report. We link to them. This level says the record exists and what it says, not that every claim in it is true.
A god warns one good man, a boat is built, the world drowns and birds are sent out to find land. The same story turns up from Iraq to India to Greece, with cousins in China, Scandinavia and Guatemala.
The flood in Genesis is not alone. Clay tablets from Iraq tell the same story more than a thousand years before Genesis was written down: a god warns one man, he builds a boat, takes his family and the animals aboard, the rain drowns everyone else, the boat grounds on a mountain and he sends out birds to see if the water has gone. India has Manu, saved by a fish that tows his ship to a northern mountain. Greece has Deucalion, who floats for nine days in a chest and lands on Parnassus. The Quran tells Noah's story again, with its own details.
Farther away the story changes shape. In China the flood is not survived in a boat but tamed by engineers over generations. In the Norse Prose Edda the flood is the blood of a dead giant, and one couple escapes in an ark. In Persia it is a killing winter, and Yima builds a walled shelter for the seeds of every living thing. In the Maya Popol Vuh the gods drown a failed first draft of humanity. Below, each version is quoted from a public-domain translation, with a link so you can read it in full.
Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI (Utnapishtim's story)
Where
Mesopotamia (Iraq); tablets from Nineveh
When
Tablet XI copies from Ashurbanipal's library, 7th century BCE; the flood story itself is older (Atrahasis, c. 1700 BCE)
From the text
(Then), when the seventh day dawn’d, I put forth a dove, and released (her), (But) to and fro went the dove, and return’d (for) a resting-place was not. (Then) I a swallow put forth and released; to and fro went the swallow, She (too) return’d, (for) a resting-place was not; I put forth a raven
Same and different: Same as Genesis: a warned hero, a sealed boat, animals, a mountain landing and birds sent out; different: many quarrelling gods, a dove then a swallow then a raven, and the hero is made immortal.
Composed c. 600-400 BCE from older sources; oldest copies are Dead Sea Scroll fragments, c. 250 BCE to 50 CE
From the text
Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth
Same and different: Shares the warning, the ark, the animals, the mountain and the birds with Gilgamesh; differs in having one God who acts from moral judgment and a raven sent first, then a dove three times.
Berossus, Babyloniaca (Xisuthrus), via Alexander Polyhistor
Where
Babylon
When
Written c. 280 BCE; survives only in quotations by Eusebius (4th century CE) and Syncellus (c. 800 CE)
From the text
After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus sent out some birds from the vessel; which not finding any food, nor any place to rest their feet, returned to him again.
Same and different: A Babylonian priest's Greek retelling of the Ziusudra flood: same birds and same mountain landing, plus a detail found nowhere else, burying the old writings at Sippar before the water came.
Composed orally c. 800-600 BCE; written manuscripts are much later
From the text
It spake to him the word, ‘Rear me, I will save thee!’ ‘Wherefrom wilt thou save me?’ ‘A flood will carry away all these creatures: from that I will save thee!’
Same and different: Same warning, same ship, same northern mountain and a lone survivor; different: the warning comes from a fish Manu raised, there are no animals aboard, and Manu repopulates the world through a sacrifice.
Compiled 1st or 2nd century CE from older Greek myth (Hesiod's era); medieval manuscripts
From the text
Deucalion by the advice of Prometheus constructed a chest, and having stored it with provisions he embarked in it with Pyrrha. But Zeus by pouring heavy rain from heaven flooded the greater part of Greece, so that all men were destroyed, except a few who fled to the high mountains
Same and different: Same warning from a friendly god, a boxlike vessel, nine days afloat, a mountain landing and a sacrifice; different: humanity is remade from stones thrown over the shoulder.
7th century CE; early manuscripts such as the Birmingham leaves are radiocarbon dated to c. 568-645 CE
From the text
We said: Load therein two of every kind, a pair (the male and female), and thy household ... And it sailed with them amid waves like mountains ... And it was said: O earth! Swallow thy water and, O sky! be cleared of clouds! And the water was made to subside. And the commandment was fulfilled. And it (the ship) came to rest upon (the mount) Al-Judi
Same and different: Same pairs of animals and same mountain landing as Genesis; different: one of Noah's own sons refuses to board and drowns, and the mountain is named al-Judi rather than Ararat.
Compiled in the Zhou period (1st millennium BCE); carved in the Han stone classics, 175-183 CE
From the text
destructive in their overflow are the waters of the inundation. In their vast extent they embrace the hills and overtop the great heights, threatening the heavens with their floods, so that the lower people groan and murmur!
Same and different: Same image of water rising to the sky; different: no boat and no divine punishment, the flood is a disaster that Gun and then Yu spend years taming with channels and dykes.
Written by Snorri Sturluson c. 1220 CE; oldest manuscripts c. 1300
From the text
The sons of Bor slew the giant Ymer, but when he fell, there flowed so much blood from his wounds that they drowned therein the whole race of frost giants; excepting one, who escaped with his household. Him the giants call Bergelmer. He and his wife went on board his ark and saved themselves in it.
Same and different: Same idea of one family surviving a world-drowning in a vessel; different: the flood is a giant's blood, it happens at creation, and the survivors are giants, not humans (Snorri, a Christian, may have shaped the 'ark').
Avestan text of uncertain age (often placed in the 1st millennium BCE); oldest manuscript 1323 CE
From the text
Upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall bring the fierce, foul frost ... Therefore make thee a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, and thither bring the seeds of sheep and oxen, of men, of dogs, of birds, and of red blazing fires.
Same and different: Same divine warning and same mission to save every kind of living thing; different: the catastrophe is ice and snowmelt, and the refuge is an enclosure on land, not a boat.
Written in K'iche' c. 1554-1558; the only surviving copy was made by Francisco Ximenez c. 1701
From the text
Then by the will of Hurakan, the Heart of Heaven, the waters were swollen, and a great flood came upon the mannikins of wood. They were drowned and a thick resin fell from heaven.
Same and different: Same divine flood sent to wipe out people who failed the gods; different: there is no survivor or boat, and the drowned beings are an earlier, failed attempt at making humans.
The closest matches are in the Near East, and there scholars agree the stories are related by descent. The Sumerian Ziusudra story, the Babylonian Atrahasis epic (copied c. 1700 BCE) and Tablet XI of Gilgamesh are all older than Genesis and share very specific details with it: a boat sealed with pitch, animals taken aboard, a landing on a mountain, birds sent out, and a sacrifice the deity smells. When George Smith read Tablet XI in 1872 the link was obvious, and most scholars now see Genesis as an Israelite retelling of a Mesopotamian story, reshaped around one God. Berossus is the same Babylonian story in Greek, and the Greek Deucalion story probably came in by the same route. Manu's flood in India is debated: it may be independent or may reflect contact with Mesopotamia. Farther away the shape changes so much that most scholars do not see one source. The Chinese flood is tamed by engineers, the Norse flood is a giant's blood, the Persian one is ice, and the Maya one destroys a failed first humanity. For these, the usual explanation is common experience. River valleys like the Tigris, Euphrates and Yellow River flood often (an ancient flood layer was found at Shuruppak, the home city of the Babylonian Noah), and sea levels rose about 120 meters at the end of the last Ice Age, drowning coastlines everywhere people lived. James Frazer, who collected hundreds of flood stories in 1918, concluded that many were local memories of real floods and some were borrowed, including some recorded after missionaries arrived. Geologists find no sign of a single flood covering the whole earth at once.
Sources
Folk-lore in the Old Testament (1918)A three-volume study by James George Frazer, a Scottish scholar of myth and religion, published in 1918. Its chapter on the Great Flood gathers flood stories from around the world and compares them with Noah's. Some of its ideas are dated, but its collection of stories is still useful.James George Frazer, Folk-lore in the Old Testament, vol. 1, chapter 'The Great Flood' (1918)Reference
Encyclopaedia BritannicaAn encyclopedia first published in Scotland in 1768 and now online. Its articles are written and checked by named experts and editors, which makes it a reliable source for basic facts.Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Flood myth'Reference