Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva: 2 (2024-03-30)

Created by: Englund, Robert K.

In this fragment of a Babylonian flood myth, the hero Atra-hasis is being advised by his god, Enki, to build an ark. The back of the fragment bears the scribe's name and part of a date in the 17th century BC.

Much of the cuneiform material in the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, was originally the personal collection of Genevan Assyriologist Alfred Boissier (1867-1945). He published the text shown here in 1931 in Revue d’Assyriologie e et d’archéologie orientale 28, 91-97. The piece was recognized as coming from the same tablet as three fragments in the British Museum; all are reunited in the CDLI record cited below. This artifact is the last of a three-tablet series that recounts the creation of human beings, the gods’ vain attempts to eliminate the rowdy species by famine, plague, and flood, and their final accommodation after being thwarted by the wise human Atra-hasis and his divine patron Enki. The surviving parts of the three tablets, together with other versions of the story, can be found in W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Eisenbrauns 1969). CDLI entry: P285811

credit: Clevenstine, Emmert