Floods

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Floods

The flood narrative in Gilgamesh compares very closely to the flood narrative in the bible book of genesis whereby god decides to reshape the earth due to the many things which were happening and he was not pleased. Just in the same way Utnapishtim is given immortality by gods through the floods and the only way possible to do that was through the floods. Therefore he is the only person who is immortal and no one else can be granted immortality because of the rare circumstances through which he is given his immortality (Tigay, 2002). In the history of floods there are many different types of floods mentioned in different mythologies and in other historical records and even in our current day society. However very few floods mentioned anywhere have specific important effects whether in real or in fiction. The two most comparable cases of floods is the Gilgamesh case of immortality and the bible story of Noah being the first man in the new world made possible by God.

What this narrative says about the story of flood is that flood in fiction can be used to represent very important changes not only to the whole world but also at individual level. The whole world is affected in the case of both floods of Noah and Gilgamesh (Ginzberg, 1988). Individuals are also greatly affected in both. In the Gilgamesh case, Utnapishtim becomes immortal while in the Noah story they become the first parents to the world whereby new people have been brought into existence after God destroys the other world due to anger for what was happening then.

References

Ginzberg, L. (1988). Noah and the Flood in Jewish Legend. In The Flood Myth (pp. 319-335). University of California Press Berkeley.

Tigay, J. H. (2002). The evolution of the Gilgamesh epic. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers.