When it comes to Noah's Ark, everyone has heard about it, and this story from the Bible is now a household name. You may not know that in the British Museum there is a clay tablet that is more than 400 years older than the earliest version of the Bible, and a similar story is recorded on it.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" ></h1>
Noah's Ark is probably the most famous story in the Bible, and it comes from chapters 6 through 9 of Genesis. The Creator Jehovah, seeing that the human world was full of evil and sinful deeds, was so outraged that he wanted to inflict divine punishment on mankind. But God also saw that there was a good man in the human race named Noah, who did many righteous deeds and good character, so he also had the heart to save him. God then told Noah that he would send a great flood to sweep away the filth and sin of the world, and that Noah would build a great ship and take refuge with his family, and at the same time bring livestock, birds, and other animals to multiply and live after the flood receded. Noah followed the instructions and built a large ship, "Noah's Ark." After the ship was built, the flood also began, and Noah took his family and various animals into hiding in the ark. The Book of Genesis records: "When Noah was six hundred years old, on the seventeenth day of February, the fountains of the Great Abyss were cracked, and the windows of heaven were opened. Forty days and nights heavy rain fell on the ground. "The flood flooded the earth, all the creatures on land died, and Noah's Ark drifted in the flood, saving the lives of all the beings on board.
After 220 days, the floods began to recede and the Ark came to a stop near Mount Aare. Finally, after many days of waiting, the flood all receded, and Noah came out of the ark with his family and everything and began a new life. Later, Noah offered a sacrifice to Jehovah, and God decided to forgive mankind and send a rainbow into the world as a witness. This story in the Bible has historically been the focus of controversy. Some people think it is a true and credible historical record, while others think it is just a legend.
Noah's Ark in the Flood
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" > second, the Great Flood Record Board</h1>
Although we have no way of knowing whether there was really such a person as Noah who accepted god's will to build a great ship to save the world from destruction, it is really possible that this story was not made up out of thin air, and perhaps in ancient times, there was indeed such a great flood that destroyed life. Proof of this is that the British Museum has a clay tablet from mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) dating back nearly 3,000 years, which records a story similar to Noah's Ark, in which God instructed a man to build a boat and place his family and animals on it. For there will be a great flood that will sweep across the whole world, erasing all traces of civilization.
Clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters
In 1872, an Englishman named George Smith stumbled upon the clay tablet while wandering through the British Museum. Originally an apprentice at a local printing house, he taught himself to become an expert by becoming fascinated by the cuneiform script of the ancient Mesopotamian civilization, and it was this man who uncovered the secret of the clay tablet. After successfully deciphering the text on the clay tablet, Smith found that the story bore a striking resemblance to noah's ark in the Bible. "After being forgotten for two thousand years, I was the first to read this story." Smith was so excited after reading the text on the clay tablet that he ran and jumped around the house.
George Smith
The discovery is indeed worth celebrating, as the clay tablet, now known as the "Great Flood Record Board," predates the earliest surviving version of the Bible by about 400 years. The discovery and interpretation of this clay tablet at the end of the 19th century undoubtedly shocked people's understanding of the Bible, which was previously considered to be a unique oracle to God's chosen people, but the story recorded on this clay tablet seems to indicate that the story of Noah's Ark is just a myth widely spread in West Asia. For the religious community at that time, it was equivalent to opening a Pandora's treasure box, and its influence was no less than Darwin's "Origin of Species". Christians and atheists interpreted the text according to their own positions. No matter how much controversy the Story of the Great Flood or Noah's Ark has caused, how much its authenticity really is, when the veil of religion has been stripped away, perhaps there is some historical truth in the text - the former Mesopotamia region did indeed erupt into a terrible flood.
British museum
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" >3, The Epic of Gilgamesh</h1>
The significance of the Great Flood Tablet is not limited to the history of religion, but also has a high status in the history of literature, and to understand this importance, we must put the story recorded on this clay tablet in a more magnificent chapter - the first heroic epic in the history of the world, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the story inscribed on this Great Flood Record Board is part of this heroic epic. Gilgamesh lived around 2600 BC and was the ruler of Uruk. He was a great ruler who was regarded by the people of his time as a demigod, and the Epic of Gilgamesh is a heroic epic that records his life's exploits.
Uruk (imaginary)
In the first half of the epic, Gilgamesh was originally a tyrannical emperor who ruthlessly oppressed the people of Uruk. To stop the tyrant, the gods created Enchidu to fight Gilgamesh. Enchido challenged Gilgamesh, but the two became friends after some battle. Gilgamesh also repented and became a generation of sage kings, and Gilgamesh and Enki both established many deeds together. However, the weather was unpredictable, and the goddess Istar took a fancy to Gilgamesh and courted him, but was refused. Enraged, Istar and the gods decided to kill Enchidu to punish Gilgamesh, the king who had offended the gods. The death of his best friend was a shock to Gilgamesh, and in order to save Enchidu, the King of Uruk embarked on a journey to find the resurrection of the Fairy Grass. After many hardships, he realized the true meaning of life, "Death is predestined by man, because it is god's will."
Gilgamesh (right) and Enchidu (left)
The Epic of Gilgamesh was born in the ancient Mesopotamian civilization and has survived to this day. It seems to have become the origin of a common culture, and its stories can be traced in many other works in the Eastern Mediterranean, such as Homer's Epic, One Thousand and One Nights, and the Bible. It is no exaggeration to say that this work contains a kind of cosmopolitanism, and this work also shows that there may be no opposition between cultures, and that civilizations should adopt an inclusive mentality to look at each other. In this way, the misunderstandings and conflicts between the two sides will also be solved.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > Wen Shijun said</h1>
The Great Flood is found in ancient legends of various civilizations, and the Great Flood Record Board in Mesopotamia, the Bible, and even the Great Yuzhi Water in China are closely related to the catastrophe of the Great Flood. This commonality may stem from the common fear of great natural disasters in ancient societies with low productivity, and it is not surprising that some civilizations regard such natural disasters as God's punishment for mankind. To discern the authenticity of these stories seems a bit redundant today, so let's look at the surface of these stories to explore the cultural connotations behind them. In many stories, the flood is used as a warning to mankind not to fall into evil or to be punished by God, so perhaps this story is recorded on the Flood record board and the Bible, precisely to educate mankind.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="22" > references</h1>
[English] McGregor: A Brief History of the World at the British Museum, translated by Yu Yan, Nova Press, 2014.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2021.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi · Friends of ABC)
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