The Epic of Atrahasis and Mesopotamian flood chronology
- Date of account
- Old Babylonian composition, c. 18th century BCE; older traditions
- Location
- Mesopotamia
- Source
- model_recalled_reference
- Record updated
- 2026-10-10
Record summary
The Atrahasis Epic is an Akkadian composition about creation, labor, population pressure, divine punishment, and a catastrophic flood survived by Atrahasis in a specially built vessel. Its manuscripts provide an important predecessor and parallel to the flood episode in Gilgamesh and Genesis. Researchers use it to reconstruct Mesopotamian ideas about human origins, divine-human relations, and scribal adaptation, while flood geologists and popular writers sometimes treat it as testimony to a single historical disaster. The text’s chronology, literary development, and mythic genre must remain central to evaluation.
Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.