Grace
Theological Journal 12.2 (Spring, 1971) 3-22
Copyright © 1971 by Grace
Theological Seminary. Cited with permission from
ATRA-HASIS: A SURVEY
JAMES R. BATTENFIELD
Teaching Fellow in Hebrew
Grace Theological Seminary
New discoveries continue to revive
interest in the study of the
ancient Near
East. The recent collation and
publication of the Atra-hasis
Epic is a
very significant example of the vigor of this field, especially
as the
ancient Near East is brought into comparison with the Old Testa-
ment.
The epic is a literary form of Sumero-Babylonian
traditions about
the
creation and early history of man, and the Flood. It is a story that
not only
bears upon the famous Gilgamesh Epic, but also needs to be
compared to
the narrative of the Genesis Flood in the Old Testament.
The implications
inherent in the study of such an epic as Atra-hasis
must
certainly impinge on scholars' understanding of earth origins and
geology.
The advance in research that has been
conducted relative to Atra-
hasis is graphically apparent when one examines
the (ca. 1955) rendering
by
Speiser1 in comparison with the present volume by Lambert and
Millard.2
Although Atra-hasis
deals with both creation and flood, the pre-
sent
writer has set out to give his attention to the flood material only.
Literature
on mythological genres is voluminous. Therefore the present
writer will
limit this study to a survey of the source material which
underlies Atra-hasis, a discussion of its content and its relation to
the
Old Testament and the Gilgamesh Epic.
James R. Battenfield earned the B. A. degree at San Diego State
College,
and the
B. D. and Th. M. at Talbot Theological Seminary. He taught for
two
years at Talbot Theological Seminary and pursued graduate study
at U.
C. L. A. He is presently taking work
toward the Th. D. degree
at
Grace Theological Seminary.
3
4 GRACE JOURNAL
SOURCE MATERIAL
The source material behind the present
edition has been a long
time in
coming to the fore. The great amount of
energies that have
been
expended on this research will hardly be reflected in this brief
study;
however, the main lines of endeavor can be traced.
One may surmise that the Atra-hasis epic flourished in
ian civilization for some 1,500 years. At the time of Alexander the
Great, when
Hellenism figuratively and literally buried what was left
of
Mesopotamian cultural influence in the
hasis was lost.
For over two thousand years the only record known
to man
of a great Flood was the story in Genesis.
Berossus, a Baby-
lonian priest about the time of Alexander, wrote
a Babylonian history
which is
also lost. Fragmented traditions of his
history have come
down to
the present through such worthies as Polyhistor and
Eusebius.3
The middle of the nineteenth century saw
the beginning of serious
exploration in
terests. Reliefs and monuments were unearthed and taken to Western
museums. Thousands of clay tablets awaited
decipherment, an inter-
esting process in its own right.4 Kuyunjik, the
larger mound at
is the
site where much Atra-hasis material was found,
although its iden-
tification was not apparent for a long time. In 1842/3 Paul Emile Botta
first dug
at Kuyunjik, but he did not find any spectacular
museum pieces
such as
were expected in those days. Austen
Henry Layard6 secured
British
rights to dig in the area and this caused a conflict with French
interests. By 1851 the
Rassam, a
Christian of local extraction, who favored the British, be-
came the
leader of native digging efforts. At
first he and his helpers
dug
secretly at night. Having come across
the most magnificent reliefs
found to
date, Rassam continued digging by day. They had dug into the
well
known as one of the great discoveries from antiquity. Practically
all of Ashurbanipal's library was taken to the
to Layard and Rassam.
In
ing the fragments of Ashurbanipal's
collection. This man was George
Smith. At fourteen the humble lad was apprenticed to
a firm of bank-
note
engravers. From an Old Testament
background, his first love
soon took
over in his life as he read with diligence concerning the
archaeology of
before
long, and soon was at work collating the thousands of fragments
of Ashurbanipal's library.
In his own words, Smith mentions with kind-
ness the
labors of Botta.
Botta found Sargon's palace (which dated from
ATRA-HASIS 5
ca.
722-705 B. C.) at Khorsabad, after his work at
afailure.9 He mentions Layard
and Rassam as well, but does not men-
tion Rassam's
nocturnal digging.10 Smith
showed that he knew as much
about the
tablets as anyone and in 1866, at the age of twenty-six, he was
made
Assistant in the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the museum.
Others knew that works of mythology were
preserved,
but only George
Smith collected and joined enough bro-
ken pieces to
reconstruct entire episodes, and only he
could understand
the content. His lack of philological
training was made
up for by hard work and sheer ge-
nius.11
It was on
Smith read a
paper to the Society of Biblical Archaeology concerning his
discovery of a
Babylonian version of the Biblical Flood story.
This paper
rocked the
world of Biblical scholarship. Four
years later Smith pub-
lished The Chaldean
Account of Genesis, and among this selection of
Babylonian literary texts was one Smith called "the story of Atarpi."12
This is now
known as the Epic of Atra-hasis.
An amazing feature of the story of the
gathering of the fragments
that make
up Atra-hasis is the unusual length of time required
to join
the
fragments properly. Smith had three
broken pieces, enough to gain
a plot
and to distinguish this from other creation/flood stories. Smith
mistook
obverse for reverse and his mistake was not corrected properly
until
1956. Even more amazing is the fact
that, after Smith's untimely
death in
1876, the three "Atarpi" fragments became
separated and were
not
joined again until 1899, and the third of the pieces was not published
until
1965, and not joined to the other two until 1967. This is the rea-
son that
Atra-hasis is spoken of as a "new" flood
epic: it is new be-
cause its
tablet sequence has only recently been finalized.
Other fragments of Atra-hasis
naturally experienced independent
histories from
their discovery to their publication. V.
Scheil, a French
priest,
published a fragment of a flood epic in 1898.
His differed from
Smith's, and
he dated it to the reign of Ammi-saduqa (1646-26 B.
C.)
of the
Old Babylonian dynasty.13 The
same year a mythological text
from the
same period was copied by T. G. Pinches.
This last text
describes the
creation of man.14 In 1899,
the German scholar, Hein-
rich Zimmern wrote an article in which he gave the Umschrift of Smith's
two then
available fragments, showed Scheil's and Pinches'
work was of
the same
epic,15 and demonstrated that the name of the hero should be
not Atarpi, but Atra, or Atra-hasis. Still at
this point the correct
order of
the fragments was undetermined, and so the matter remained
for
fifty years.
6 GRACE JOURNAL
It remained for the Danish scholar, Jorgen
Laessoe, to point out
the
proper sequence.16 Lambert
and Millard take credit for publishing
material done
by the same original scribe who wrote Scheil's 1898 frag-
ment.
This material had been in the
CONTENT OF THE EPIC
By way of definition, the Epic of Atra-hasis is more a literary
tradition than
a narrative with precise bounds and limits.
Lambert states
that
plagiarism and a lack of respect for literary rights were common in
the
ancient world.17 The only
"title" that Atra-hasis had in antiquity
is seen
repeated in the colophon at the end of each tablet, inuma
ilu
awilum, "When the gods like man."18
The principal edition used by Lambert was
copied out by Ku-Aya,
"the junior scribe."
This fact is also discernible in the colophons.
Scheil in
1898 had given the name as Ellet-Aya or Mulil-Aya; neither
of these
is acceptable. It is known that ku + divine name is
Sumerian.
At one time
there was some question about ku in Old
Babylonian, but
this sign
is found in the Code of Hammurapi20 as well as in Ammisa-
duqa's own famous "Edict."21 Ku-Aya's text is not that of a schoolboy,
even
though he is called "junior scribe."
He did his copying ca. 1630
B. C., if
one holds to the "middle chronology," the majority opinion,
on
Babylonian chronology.22 The
original must be before 1630 B. C.,
making Atra-hasis one of the oldest, practically complete texts
now
known. Ku-Aya's work is an
edition in three tablets. Other collated
pieces must
be relegated to much later periods, to the late Assyrian
(ca. 700-650 B. C.) in particular. George Smith's "story of Atarpi,"
now brought
into comparison with the other pieces, must be of the
Assyrian Recension, according to Lambert, since it shows marked
Assyrian dialectal forms. The distinction between
Old Babylonian and
Middle
Assyrian would show up in the orthography as well. The Assyr-
ian story is essentially the same as Ku-Aya's, but substantially rewritten,
Neo-Babylonian
fragments differ even more. A Ras Shamra fragment,
written in Akkadian, not Ugaritic, has been
found, and is included in
Lambert. Its first three lines read:
e-nu-ma ilanumes im-tas-ku mil-ka i-na matatimes.ti
a-bu-ba
is-ku-nu i-na ki-ib-ra-ti
The
translation is:
"When
the gods took counsel in the lands,
And brought about a flood in the regions of the world."
ATRA-HASIS 7
The sixth
line reads:
mat-ra-am-ha-si-sum-me
a-na-ku-[ma], "I am Atra-
hasis."24
As to the theme of the text, the essence
of its content, one must
categorize it
as both a myth because gods play a dominant role, and an
epic, because
the leading character is a hero. Most
basically Atra-hasis
deals with
the problem of organization. A certain dialectic goes on here,
viz., there is a conflict which goes through
two phases. Both phases
feature
supernatural forces, but in the first "act" the conflict is among
the gods
for their own sakes and has to do with divine goals; the second
phase
concerns the conflict of the gods for the sake of man, i.
e.,
human
organization enters the picture.
Tablet I
The story begins with a hearkening back to
an earlier time. It
almost has
a "once upon a time" flavor.
Certainly the plot is etiolog-
ical from the outset.25 "How did man become as he is?" "Once it was
like
this," the modern storyteller might commence. Once the gods,
those
superhuman reflections of man's aspirations, worked and suffered
as men
do now. Quite understandably, since
depended upon
man-made waterways to redistribute the capricious flood-
ings, the gods are represented as digging the
canals. This was at a
time when
only the gods inhabited the universe.
The greater and lesser
gods are
mentioned in 11. 5-6.
The seven great Anunnaki are men-
tioned.
The term is used for all gods at times; at other periods the
Anunnaki are
the gods of the nether world.26 Three senior gods are
mentioned
individually. They are Anu, Enlil and Enki. In
evidently cast
lots to determine their particular spheres of influence.
Anu
rules henceforth from heaven; Enlil evidently stayed
on earth; Enki
descended to his
abode in the Apsu, a subterranean body of water. The
Assyrian recension of the epic from
set the Igigi (here, junior gods) to work on the canals.27 The Igigi suf-
fered this humiliation for forty years and then
rebelled, "backbiting,
grumbling in
the excavation" (1:39b-40). They
agree to take their mu-
tual grievance to Enlil. They want not just reduction of their
workload,
but
complete relief from it. In typically anarchous fashion the junior
gods set
fire to their digging tools, and utilize them as torches to
light
their way to Enlil by night. They surround Enlil's
temple, called
Ekur, in
the city of
bring word
to the god29 that he is surrounded.
Lines 93 and 95 of this
first
tablet are a little unclear. Lambert
believes some kind of prover-
bial usage of the word binu/bunu,
"son" is employed. If this
term were
clear, it
might be more readily apparent why Enlil does not
hesitate to
8 GRACE JOURNAL
summon Anu from heaven and Enki from the
Apsu to stand with him
against the
rebels. It must be assumed that the
gravity of the situation
was
reason enough for a coalition of the senior gods to deal with the
matter. It is Anu in 1:111
who seems to be the supreme leader. The
question is
put to the rebels, "Who is the instigator of battle?" (11.
128, 140). The answer comes: "Every single one of us. . . " (1. 146).
When Enlil heard that the extent of the antagonism toward him in
his
realm,
earth, was so great, he cried (1:167).
It is curious that Enlil
seems to recover his composure so quickly
and
begins to command30 Anu to go to heaven
and bring down one god and
have him
put to death as a solution to the problem.
Perhaps more might
be
known about the decision to slay a god, if it were not for the fact
that
right at this juncture (11. 178-89), the text is unclear, and the var-
ious recensions must
be used to fill the gap. At any rate,
when the
text
resumes, Belet-ili is on hand.31 It is she who is summoned to
to
create32 the "Lullu-man."33 Man now will bear the work burden
of the
gods. Belet-ili
is called Mami in 1:193,34
and then it would seem
that she
is also called Nintu.35
Though she is the birth-goddess, she
disavows any
claim to being able to "make things."36 She points to the
skill of Enki in that realm.
But in 1:203 it becomes apparent that Enki
must give
her the clay so that she can create man.
Enki will make a
purifying bath. One god will be killed;
this is
one
called We-ila (1:223). He is not mentioned but this once in the
text.37 His flesh and blood, combined with Enki's clay will result in
man. God and clay, therefore, are mixed to make
man in the Baby-
lonian conception. Line 215 is instructive: "Let there be a
spirit from
the god's
flesh."38
The plan to make a man is agreed upon by the
Anunnaki, the
plan is carried out, and the Igigi spit on the
clay. Mami
then
rehearses before the gods in typically redundant, oriental fashion
what she
has done. The summum
bonum of her work is this: the gods
are
free. Yet, strangely, the work is not
complete, because more
birth-goddesses, fourteen, are called in on the project and the group
proceeds to
the bit simti, "the house of
destiny"39 (1:249) to get at
the work
in earnest. So the creation of man is
not too clear. Four-
teen
pieces of clay designated as seven males and seven females, are
"nipped off, " and separated by a "brick."
(1:256, 259). Another break
in the
story occurs here. Then there are some
rules for midwifery in
the Assyrian
recension that fills the gap. Ten months is the time neces-
sary before the mortals are born. Finally they are born and the text
relates some
rules about obstetrics and marriage, but it is not parti-
cularly clear until 1:352.
At this point the significant statement is
made. "Twelve hundred
years had
not yet passed."40 This sentence begins the second part in
ATRA -HASIS 9
the
plot, if one views its story content apart from the tablet divisions.
This much
time, twelve hundred years, is given as the span of time
from
man's creation to the Flood. During this
period people multiplied
and
their noise became intolerable to Enlil, who becomes
dissatisfied
with the
noise because he cannot sleep. ". . . Let there be plague,"
reads the
last part of 1:360. Enlil
has decided to reduce the noise by
reducing the
source, man. Namtara,
the plague god, is summoned
(1:380), but
first, the reader is startled by the abrupt introduction of
Atra-hasis, the king (1:364).
Perhaps he has been mentioned in some
lost
portion earlier. He must be a king
because his personal god was
Enki himself.
Usually a Babylonian's personal god was a very minor
deity. This is seen in much of the wisdom literature
and prayers.41
Enki is
one of the chief gods; Atra-hasis must be a
king. Atra-hasis
petitions Enki to intervene and stop the plague. Enki advises the
people
to
direct their attentions to Namtara, so that he will
relax the plague.
This is what
then ensues as Tablet 1 closes with the statement repeated,
"Twelve
hundred years had not yet passed."42
Tablet II
The sequence that ended Tablet I is now
paralleled. Enlil
lost
his
sleep again, and decides to use drought/famine to eradicate men.
Adad the
storm god43 should withhold his rain (
arise:
from the abyss. Again Atra-hasis entreated Enki and at
length
Adad
watered the earth, Lambert says, "discreetly. . .
without attrac-
ting Enlil's attention."44
From this point on in the epic the gaps
frequently hide the story
development. Evidently Enlil
slept again but was roused by a third vis-
itation of noise.
By now Enlil must realize that some god is
thwarting
his
extermination plans. Enlil
resumes the drought. In column 3, 4
Atra-hasts is
praying to Enki.
By column 4 the famine is still in prog-
ress. Enki acts in the behalf of Atra-hasis
in column 5. A late Baby-
lonian piece inserted here tells of a cosmic sea
that existed in the bot-
tom of
the universe.46 From this
area, fish were caught up in a type