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[hiromasaki]

I had something I wanted to write about today, but I'm having a hard time remembering what it was

Comments

[davywavy]

When the epic was discovered, it was thirty years before the Akkadian could be read and the first translation of it was made in the 1880s by a chap called George Smith in the British Museum.
Working late one night, he suddenly came to realise what he was reading: independant verification of the Biblical Flood. It was the first time such a thing had been found, and a vital discovery in archaeology.
Such was his astonishment and wonder that he later admitted to having 'torn off all his clothes and run naked around the empty museum, laughing and whooping like an ape'.

[hiromasaki]

The translation I was reading was by Maureen Kovacs, and is very spotty... Lots of segments going "Nothing for 40 lines" and "Babylonian copy used to fill in here", but is mostly based off of the Akkadian tablets. (The tablets are even used to serve as chapter markers.)

I agree that finding another party (of another religion) telling of the flood is very exciting. It's about the only reason why I'm excited about this class now.

[davywavy]

The flood is a common myth in that part of the world, it turns out - the Canaanites and the Egytians had it as well.
Contemporary archaeology theorises that it was a group memory of an early civilisation being destroyed when the Bosphorus broke and the Black Sea flooded in about 5,500BC.

[hiromasaki]

How lucky they all were to have just had a large zoological boat handy! ;)