Babylonian Account of the Great Flood

BABYLONIAN FLOODThe story of the Great Flood shows the punishment upon humankind by the Gods. In this story, people in Sumeria are prosperous, multiplying their populace, and this makes an annoying amount of noise on earth. The Gods become irritated, due to the noise, saying that it continues to keep them awake day and night, affording no time to sleep. They come upon the God of the Earth, Ellil, who makes sickness and disease, and say let illness such as, suruppu, asakku, and headache knock into them like a storm. When the disease hit, the moral man, Atrahasis, who had his “ear open to his god Enki”, used his association with this God to spare the people. He was told to and directed to do personal sacrifices and rituals with his people, to be freed from the illness (Mark, 2011).Enki and Ellil were furious with each other; why did they create a race of people, just to wish to have them destroyed? They had created an entire race of people to do the chores that the gods no longer wanted to do themselves. In their fickle way, the gods just tortured the human people when the slightest disturbance occurred. In the radical form of demolition, the gods cause a massive flood to “roar across the land” and destroy all in its path. Enki sent a dream to Atrahasis after he heard about the plan, and through Atrahasis’ intervention and wisdom of that dream, a few humans were warned and told to build a boat with nourishments and shelter enough to survive for the seven days and seven nights of flooding.