The Flood: Irony in the Epic of Gilgamesh

Irene Banks
Apr 11
11 min read

Updated: Apr 18

Book Information

Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse (#ad)

David Ferry

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York

ISBN: 978-0-374-52383-1

Flood tablet from the Epic of Gilgamesh housed in the British Museum. Photo by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg).

In the 19th century, when the fragmentary tablets about Gilgamesh were first discovered and then translated, they caused a sensation because they referred to the flood. Not just any flood, but the Flood. When I set out to read the Epic of Gilgamesh, I was already aware of the reference and looked forward to reading about it because I wanted to learn more about the origins of the Flood story. Yet, after my initial reading, I was disappointed. My disappointment may have been rooted in frustration with Gilgamesh himself. He seeks out Utnapishtim and his wife, the sole survivors of the Flood and, because of their sacrifice to the gods, the only humans granted immortality. Rather than learning from Utnapishtim’s story, Gilgamesh maintains his selfish immaturity. It is not until he both fails a challenge issued by Utnapishtim and carelessly loses a gift from him that Gilgamesh accepts his mortality and becomes a better person.

The flood story itself was familiar with similar key points as the biblical Flood story. However, it felt out of place, almost as if it had been appended to Gilgamesh’s journey. This feeling turned out to be rooted in fact. According to Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley, “[The Flood] story seems to have been an independent tale in Sumerian. It was used not only as an episode in the final version of the epic, but was also incorporated... as one method by which the gods tried to reduce overpopulation. It had no connection originally with Uruk or with Gilgamesh, and may not have been included in the Old Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh.” (Dalley 43)

The key aspects of the story as told by Utnapishtim are familiar. The gods decide to bring about a devastating flood. Enki warns Utnapishtim and tells him to build a boat. Utnapishtim is to bring an example of every living thing onto the boat so that it may survive. He builds and populates the boat according to Enki’s specifications. The flood rains down and is so destructive that even the gods are afraid. After six days and nights, the rain subsides. There is total devastation, and no survivors, save those in the boat. After another six days and nights, Utnapishtim releases a dove. The dove finds no place to perch and returns to the boat. A released swallow has the same experience. Finally, Utnapishtim releases a raven. The raven finds a place to perch and eat because vegetation has sprouted. The animals are released from the boat and Utnapishtim sacrifices a sheep to the gods. Enlil, the chief god, is angry that Utnapishtim has survived. Enki intervenes on Utnapishtim’s behalf, and he and his wife are granted immortality.

Given the Flood’s importance in Western culture, when trying to make sense of how it fit into Gilgamesh’s story, it was easy to get sidetracked. I read an excellent book by J. David Pleins, Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University, called When the Great Abyss Opened: Classic and Contemporary Readings of Noah’s Flood. So much has been debated about the Flood story – religion versus science or myth versus history – that I had to remind myself that The Epic of Gilgamesh is a work of literature. For that reason, I feel that literary interpretation is most appropriate. In my own interpretation, I’ve come to two conclusions:

First, the Flood tale, in general, was formulated out of the geographic realities of ancient Mesopotamia. Literature reflects humanity back to itself and enables us to see things that we wouldn't see otherwise. The Flood tale enabled this sort of awareness for Sumerian and later Akkadian, Babylonian, and Hebrew cultures. Second, the inclusion of the Flood tale in The Epic of Gilgamesh provides a sense of irony that helps the reader learn from Gilgamesh's travails sooner than he learns them himself. Understanding this helped me to see that the inclusion of the tale, rather than being an incongruous attachment, is key to understanding the lessons the Gilgamesh poet intends for the reader to learn. After all, it is not Gilgamesh, a fictional character, who has to learn anything. It is us.

Geographic Realities

The late Cambridge archaeologist, Joan Oates, described Mesopotamian geography in her book Babylon. “The land of [Mesopotamia] is a flat alluvial plain laid down by the Tigris and the Euphrates whose floods, unlike the annual inundation of the Nile in Egypt, are both violent and unpredictable. In ancient times rain was scarce and the country depended almost exclusively, as it does today, on artificial irrigation for its crops… Indeed, with the exception of the ubiquitous mud of the alluvial plains, which served as the medium for building and providing clay for pottery and other containers, the country was virtually devoid of natural resources. For this reason trade was of crucial importance, and at an early period an extensive network of routes grew up linking [Mesopotamia] with the rest of the Near East. The rivers, in particular the Euphrates, and their tributaries served throughout Mesopotamian history as the major trade routes to and from all parts of the country…” (Oates 11)

Most striking about Oates’s description was her observation that the Tigris and Euphrates watercourses shifted during the violent flooding. This period in ancient history is considered to be the dawn of civilization and, by this time, people were living in cities. Disastrous flooding events caused people to be frequently displaced and concentrations of population to move about. Necessity is the mother of invention, however, and the population learned to control water. “Not only did technical innovations such as irrigation and the plough, both attested before the dawn of history, make possible the intensive occupation of these otherwise unproductive areas, but the employment of such techniques helped increase agricultural efficiency and even the proportionate yield of the land. These developments served to free some members of the community for part, if not whole-time, specialization, and led ultimately to a definite polarization of society into those who controlled resources, such as land, manufacturing or trading enterprises, and those dependent on them.” (Oates 14) Specialization also included the development of the priestly class.

People developed an openness to moving about when cities relocated because the rivers changed their courses. “At the same time, the open nature of the [Mesopotamian] terrain served both to discourage social isolation and to facilitate the rapid spread of new ideas, whether technical or political, while the lack of raw materials engendered an outward looking attitude that was to influence political thinking and encourage expansion.” (Oates 15) The openness to new ideas must have included an openness to religious ideas and contributed to the spread of the Flood tale.

What would a culture so dependent on water for survival fear more - drought or flood? People who live in drought-prone areas learn to adapt by developing specialized food preservation and water conservation techniques. During violent flooding, however, preservation of anything is almost impossible especially if a river’s course moves to an area difficult to predict. A flood so severe as to produce total devastation would be an ancient Mesopotamian's worst fear.

In a specialized and polarized society, people had to find a way to stick together during hard times. David Pleins suggests that “Myth bound the whole of society together. Kings, the elite, the temple complex, and the numerous workers and farmers beneath them - mythical stories cemented the ancient social pyramid in its place.” (Pleins 101) Not only were people committed to their urban way of life, because of their beliefs, they insisted on rebuilding it, time and time again. “The essential belief underscored by myth was that the natural world, however chaotic it may seem, provides a way of escape and that this way of escape is for people to keep rebuilding civilization, even after great disasters. The gods (or God) order and reorder the cosmic powers in heaven and the social apparatus on earth. Of course, the implication is that the keepers of the stories - the palace and the priests - are the ones chosen to guard and nourish that rebuilt world. This, too, is encoded in the story, in which sacrifices by obedient priests are required to appease the gods and a divinely elected human sovereign must govern the land beneath a sometimes hostile sky.” (Pleins 101-102)

Because literature reflects humanity back on itself, we have the conditions that made the Flood tale the pertinent story for ancient Mesopotamian civilization. Additionally, we have the circumstances that enabled that tale to flourish and grow in subsequent cultures. This expansion explains why the story continues to influence our own culture. While the biblical Flood story of Noah has been influential for over three thousand years, the original Sumerian pantheon, from which is was inspired, was worshipped for at least three thousand years before that – going back to a time when the only way to transmit stories was through oral storytelling. Writing did not yet exist. By the time writing was invented, life in the Mesopotamian city-state included extensive exposure to travelling tradespeople which enabled the transmission of the oral stories beyond the land of the Tigris and Euphrates. These stories were eventually written down because it seems that the Sumerians, inventors of writing, wrote everything down. “The [Mesopotamian] scribe was the ultimate cataloguer, compiling and copying painstakingly detailed lists of all the facts he knew about every imaginable subject.” (Oates 18)

The conditions necessary for the spreading of the stories beyond Mesopotamia are described by Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley in her book, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. “Akkadian myths and epics were universally known during antiquity, and they were not restricted to the Akkadian language… Akkadian was the language of diplomacy throughout the ancient Near East from the mid-second to mid-first millennium BC, even in Egypt… [S]trong nomadic and mercantile elements in the population travelled enormous distances, because national boundaries frequently changed, and because trading colonies abroad were ubiquitous. Therefore Akkadian stories share common ground with tales in the Old Testament, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the works of Hesiod, and the Arabian Nights; they were popular with an international audience at the dawn of history.” (Dalley xviii-xix)

Irony as a Tool

The geographic stage is now set for the Flood and its inclusion in the Gilgamesh story. Rather than an appendment, the Flood story serves a specific function in Gilgamesh’s journey toward knowledge. Literary critic Northrop Frye’s theories of Modes and Myths help explain how. Gilgamesh sets out on a quest for immortality. But what his quest becomes is one of knowledge. The knowledge he gains is the most sobering reality for a person – that human beings are mortal. They must die. Gilgamesh resists this knowledge about himself until the bitter end of his journey. The Gilgamesh poet needed a device that would enable the reader to learn before Gilgamesh could. The device chosen was irony.

According to Frye, “The term irony, then, indicates a technique of appearing to be less than one is, which in literature becomes most commonly a technique of saying as little and meaning as much as possible, or, in a more general way, a pattern of word that turns away from direct statement or its own obvious meaning… Irony… takes life exactly as it finds it. But the ironist fables without moralizing, and has no object but his subject… Tragic irony, then, becomes simply the study of tragic isolation.” (Frye 40-41)

We should recall that epics served as educational tools in ancient society. The poet of the Gilgamesh epic could have explicitly said: 'Gilgamesh, humans are mortal so it’s best you focus on being a good king in this life.' End of story. However, we wouldn’t have a story if it was that simple. And, because humans resist moralistic finger-wagging, if they can’t get out and go on adventures themselves, they live vicariously through reading about them. For the irony to work, the poet needed an alternative to Gilgamesh’s tragic character. Enkidu, Gilgamesh’s beloved friend, served this purpose. While Gilgamesh is a tragic hero, Enkidu is a romantic hero. Frye explains the difference. “In romance the suspension of natural law and the individualizing of the hero’s exploits reduced nature largely to the animals and vegetable world... [Recall that Enkidu grew up among animals, not humans.] The hero's death or isolation thus has the effect of a spirit passing out of nature, and evokes a mood best described as elegiac. The elegiac presents a heroism unspoiled by irony.” (Frye 36) Gilgamesh’s entire journey after Enkidu’s death reads like an elegy to his dead friend. Gilgamesh, in comparison, is a tragic hero and it is irony which makes the tragedy possible. In tragedy, “[the leader] has to fall because that is the only way in which a leader can be isolated from his society… In elegiac romance the hero's mortality is primarily a natural fact, the sign of his humanity; [in] tragedy it is also a social and moral fact. The tragic hero has to be of a properly heroic size, but his fall is involved both with a sense of his relation to society and with a sense of the supremacy of natural law, both of which are ironic in reference.” (Frye 37) Gilgamesh was a half-divine king. In terms of societal rank, he is a giant compared to Enkidu. Therefore, his fall impacts not only himself but society at large. “Thus the incongruous and the inevitable, which are combined in tragedy, separate into opposite poles of irony. At one pole is the inevitable irony of human life... The archetype of the inevitably ironic is Adam, human nature under sentence of death. At the other pole is the incongruous irony of human life, in which all attempts to transfer guilt to a victim give that victim something of the dignity of innocence. The archetype of the incongruously ironic is Christ, the perfectly innocent victim excluded from human society. Halfway between is the central figure of tragedy, who is human and yet of a heroic size which often has in it the suggestion of divinity.” (Frye 42) This describes Gilgamesh to a tee.

The inclusion of the Flood story in Gilgamesh’s epic serves to emphasize man's mortality, the very thing that Gilgamesh resists acknowledging about himself. What is important is not Utnapishtim’s immortality, but the inevitability of Gilgamesh's death. The gods used the flood to kill people, not save them. The Flood story itself is less important than what Gilgamesh learns about himself. In his theory of myths, Frye discusses the phases of tragedy. “The fourth phase is the typical fall of the hero through hybris and hamartia... we cross the boundary line from innocence to experience, which is also the direction in which the hero falls. In the fifth phase the ironic element increases, the heroic decreases, and the characters look further away and in smaller perspective.” (Frye 221) We see this diminishment of Gilgamesh before our very eyes. He starts out the story as a larger-than-life character, central to his society, dressed in splendor, and going on the grand and foolhardy adventures of youth. He ends his journey isolated, gaunt, unkempt, and barely dressed save for animal skins. He is no longer heroic however he is more human.

The irony of Gilgamesh is that in his quest for immortality, he learns that he is mortal and there's not a darned thing he can do about it. He finally accepts that the best thing he can do is be a good king. He returns to Uruk, improves his subjects’ daily lives through building campaigns, including better control of water, and ensures that society sacrifices to and worships the gods appropriately. This is the knowledge he gains from the Flood story. The lesson is that human beings should spend their time fulfilling the expectations of their role and place in the social order. We end Gilgamesh’s tale with a mature man resigned to his fate. We like him more perhaps because we know that we all will experience the same fate.