The photoflood fib you may be most familiar with is likely Noah ’s Ark , but it ’s far from the only tale of a great alluvion sent by a god to put down a culture . There are eight basic plots in storytelling , not seven : Overcoming the freak , rags to rich , the pursuance , voyage and return , funniness , tragedy , reincarnation – and religious family line get by god ’s wrath by build a with child sauceboat .

According to one former flood myth , the Babylonian god Ea send a flood that pass over out all of humanity except for Uta – napishti ( also known as Utnapishtim ) and his family , who safely stow aside on an Ark of the Covenant full of animals while everybody else drowns . Sounds familiar ? It should do : The Babylonian storey – etched on 3,000 - year - erstwhile stiff pad of paper forming part of theEpic of Gilgamesh – is thought to have exalt the Bible ’s interlingual rendition .

Where it differs , according to Dr Martin Worthington of the University of Cambridge in his bookEa’sDuplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood , is the way in which the ark was stretch . An Assyriologist who specialise in Babylonian , Assyrian , and Sumerian grammar , lit , and medicine , Dr Worthington analyzed Ea ’s nine - line message etched into the ancient tablets and conclude the Babylonian people were fob into construct the ark by the god Ea .

“ Ea trick humanity by diffuse fake news program . He tells the Babylonian Noah , know as Uta – napishti , to promise his citizenry that food will rain from the sky if they help him establish the ark , " Worthingtonexplainedback in 2019 when the book was write .

" What the people do n’t realise is that Ea ’s nine - line message is a trick : it is a sequence of sounds that can be sympathise in radically unlike ways , like English ‘ ice cream ’ and ‘ I cry ’ . "

“ While Ea ’s substance seems to prognosticate a pelting of solid food , its hidden significance warns of the Flood , " he continue . " Once the ark is built , Uta – napishti and his kinfolk clamber aboard and survive with a zoo of animate being . Everyone else drowns .   With this other sequence , set in mythological fourth dimension , the use of information and speech has lead off . It may be the former ever example of fake news . ”

The key tricksy bit come down to two lines , which can be construe in several ways :

" ina šēr(-)kukkī"and"ina lilâti ušaznanakkunūši šamūt kibāti "

The confident interpretation , Worthington translates , differentiate the people that " at dawn there will be kukku - cakes , in the evening he will rain down upon you a shower of wheat . " Meanwhile , there are several negative ways the same sentence can be interpreted . Worthington suggests they could also be interpreted to mean :

" By means of incantations ,   by means of confidential information - demons , he will rain down down upon you pelting as thick as ( grains of ) wheat berry , " and " at morning , he will rain down upon you darkness   ( then ) in ( this ) pre - nocturnal crepuscle he will rain down upon you rain as thick as ( grains of ) wheat . "

Essentially , people in the myth appear to have look at a literal"cake or death"scenario and interpret it as bar . In the tarradiddle , they help Uta – napishti to lade up his Ark of the Covenant with animate being , and are promptly killed by drown for their troubles . Which is very miserable etiquette after you ’ve help oneself somebody move .

" Ea is clearly a overlord wordsmith who is capable to press multiple coinciding meanings into one duplicitous utterance , ” Worthington said . fundamentally , it ’s a pun where the upshot of interpreting it wrongly was the death of the whole of man , bar one kinfolk . What a trickster .

aside from the obvious similarities in the tales , the god of the   Gilgamesh myth had different motivations from the god of the Bible .

“ Babylonian gods only survive because multitude feed them , " Worthington said . " If humanity had been wiped out , the gods would have starved . The god Ea wangle language and misdirect the great unwashed into doing his will because it attend his ego - pursuit . innovative parallels are legion ! ”

An earliest interlingual rendition of this clause was published in January 2021 .