In 1872, George Smith, a British Museum assistant who had left school young, was sorting tablets from an ancient library at Nineveh. On one he read of a man warned by the gods to build a great boat, save his family and the animals, and send out birds to find dry land. It was part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the parallels with Noah stunned Victorian London.
Truth label: Established. Strong evidence and broad agreement among experts.
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The man in the boat
His name is Utnapishtim. After the storm his boat comes to rest on Mount Nimush. He sends out a dove and a swallow, which come back, then a raven, which does not. That is how he knows the waters have gone down.
A famous reaction
Accounts say that when Smith realised what he was reading, he leapt up and ran around the room in such excitement that he began taking off his clothes.
Where it came from
The tablet was dug up at Nineveh, in today's Iraq, from the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, who reigned in the 600s BCE. It is in the British Museum as K.3375.
Learn
- A self-made scholar. Smith had almost no schooling. He worked as a printer's apprentice and taught himself to read cuneiform in his spare time at the museum.
- Back to Nineveh. A London newspaper paid for him to travel to Mesopotamia to find more pieces of the story. He died there on a later trip in 1876, aged just 36.
Test yourself
Which bird did NOT return to Utnapishtim's boat?
The raven. The raven found land and stayed away, a sign the flood was over.
When did George Smith announce the flood story?
1872. He read his translation to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in December 1872.
Sources
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