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- [00:00]
Tristan Hughes
Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe so how did Rome begin with a throne, a triumph, or a murder between brothers? Well, according to legend, the mighty city was founded by the twin sons of Mars, Romulus and Remus. Abandoned as infants, suckled by a she wolf and destined for greatness until ambition poisoned their bond. I'm Tristan Hughes and I cannot wait to get into the explosive story of Romulus and Remus. On the Ancients Live tour in Australia and New Zealand this August, I'm going to be joined by the fantastic Jeremy Armstrong. He's a professor of ancient history and an expert on early Rome. And together we'll follow the myth from divine origins to blood soaked founding legend, teasing apart what the Romans believed, what archaeology can actually tell us, and how a city built on stories became one of the greatest powers in history. Tickets are on sale now. We're coming to Canberra on the 2nd of August and we're going to be in Auckland on the 8th. The tickets, they are selling fast, so book yours now@fane.com au can't wait to see you there.
- [01:46]
Dr. Sophus Hell
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- [02:30]
Dr. Sophus Hell
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- [02:44]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. When the gods Were man they bore, the toil carried the load. The load of the gods was great. The toil was heavy, the misery too much.
- [03:30]
Tristan Hughes
Those are the opening lines to one of the greatest epics of antiquity, performed to crowds of people in the streets of Babylon and beyond some 4,000 years ago. A story about their creation, how humans came into existence, and how they were living in a world that had followed a divine flood. We know the epic today as the Atrahasis, named after its central character, a man who survived this divine flood by building a great boat, taking some companions with him, and two of every animal. Sound familiar? This Babylonian epic has many striking similarities to the biblical flood of Noah and his ark. And today, we're going to shine a light on it. Welcome to the Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of the oldest flood myth known from anywhere in the world. Our guest is Dr. Sophus Hell, a writer, translator, and expert on ancient Babylonian literature. Sophus, welcome back to the show.
- [04:50]
Dr. Sophus Hell
So great to be back. I really enjoyed being on the Ancients the first two times, and I'm so delighted to be here again.
- [04:56]
Tristan Hughes
Well, we've done the Epic of Gilgamesh and Babylon's epic of creation, and this is another epic, isn't it? Can we say that this is the. This is the original flood myth story?
- [05:07]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Well, it's one of the oldest floodmuths, and in my opinion, the greatest. And we'll get to talking about why in a moment. But yeah, this is yet another Babylonian epic. It's also one of the earliest Babylonian epics. So we're actually long before the composition of the Enuma Elish, this epic of creation we talked about, and also before the standard Babylonian Gilgamesh that we talked about. So this is really one of the great first classics of Babylonian literature.
- [05:37]
Tristan Hughes
And I think as we'll see as we explore key parts of the story, it can't be missed. You can't miss it. There are clear inspirations on the later the Flood story from the Hebrew Bible.
- [05:49]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yes, exactly. And the flood story also appears in Gilgamesh, as we talked about in that episode. But actually, recent research has shown that the flood story we see in Atrahasis that we're talking about today is. Is closer to the version we find in Genesis than the one in Gilgamesh is. There's still a lot of, like, open questions about how exactly the transmission happened, but it's worth keeping in mind.
- [06:11]
Tristan Hughes
Okay, so how far back in time are we going with this flood myth story?
- [06:17]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, so as I said, like, we're really at the beginning of Babylonian literature. So we are in a period known as the Old Babylonian period, and that basically means the beginning of the second millennium bce. It's really hard to say when this poem that we're looking at today was first composed, but we have a set of manuscripts, so a set of clay tablets on which it was written down that are just, like, really high quality. So these are like, you know, there are other copies of this text, but we're especially reliant on these texts that were copied by a man named Ipik Ayer when he was sort of like, at the equivalent of the end of his university education. And he copied these tablets in the year 1635 BCE. So again, we can't exactly say when it was composed, but often when we sort of try to place this text in time, we use these manuscripts by Ibik Ayya to give it a sort of specific context. And he lives in the city of Sippar, very close to what is today Baghdad. And yeah, As I said, 1635, Sophis.
- [07:18]
Tristan Hughes
This is what I love with Mesopotamian epics, with Mesopotamian literature, is that you can have these copies surviving that are almost 4,000 years old. And look at the writing today because it's baked into clay. You have those surviving rather than, let's say, later, like the Iliad and the Odyssey or later text, where it's kind of little bits of fragments of papyrus that have survived. You have the clay tablets surviving from when that figure wrote it down almost 4,000 years ago. That just always blows my mind.
- [07:46]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, exactly. And I agree. It's part of what makes clay this wonderful material. And I really feel like sometimes it gives us this sense of intimacy with these ancient people, because not only do we have the Atrahasis epic by Ipik Aya, but we can actually follow him through his education. We can see the other texts he was studying in his quote unquote, university degree. And so we can sort of reconstruct what mindset he might have been in as he was copying this text, which
- [08:13]
Tristan Hughes
is really exciting, the mindset as well. So you get indications into the. The manner, the nature, the mind of the copier, the writer down as well.
- [08:21]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, so we know that he was being taught by his father, and we can sort of see the other texts that his father is choosing for him. And a lot of them have to do with, like, the end of an era. A lot of them have to do with sort of like death and tragedy, but also with, like, words and, you know, what it means to be a good servant of the God Enki, this trickster, creative God that we're going to talk about a lot today.
- [08:44]
Tristan Hughes
And the name that they gave to this myth, is it. They call it the Atrahasis, do they?
- [08:50]
Dr. Sophus Hell
So, no, that's actually a modern title. And we name it after its main human character. As we're going to see, there are three main characters in this text. Two gods and one human. And the human is called Atrahasis, their name for it. And this sort of launches us straight into the story because the Babylonians called their poems by the first line. And it's, you know, one of the best examples of this. It's Enuma ILU avilum, which means when gods were man, which is just a fantastic opening title, to be honest. And it then goes on to explain what it means with this rather puzzling sentence, when gods were man, which is that in the beginning, gods were like men are today in that they were burdened with work. So if I can just read, like, opening lines of the text, it goes, when gods were men, weighed down by work, they bore the burden. The burden of the gods was great. Their work was heavy, their torment long. And it then goes on to explain that it's not all the gods that are working. There are two classes of gods. There is the Anuna and the Igigi. Now, the Anunna and the Igigi, those words mean different things in different Babylonian texts, so it's easy to get confused. But in this text, the Anuna are the gods of heaven and the Igigi are the working gods. And it literally tells us that the Anunna gods are idle. It uses that word. So they're quite literally an idol class. They are the power holders, and the Igigi are the working class of the gods. And so the text begins with setting up this class conflict that is actually going to power the rest of the myth. Because the first thing that happens, the first episode, is a labor strike.
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Tristan Hughes
A labor strike?
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Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, yeah. Where the Igigi rise up in rebellion against the Anuna. They put down their tools and they say, we are being mistreated. Our working conditions are awful. Genesis is really hard work because the have to dig out the riverbeds and they have to build the mountains. And after centuries of doing this, they're exhausted. And so they launched this labor strike, which is just a crazy thing.
- [10:59]
Tristan Hughes
The work that those lesser gods are doing in this story, it isn't constructing a great building or anything like that. It is literally building Geography, creating the world as we know it.
- [11:10]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, exactly. Right. And I think it's, you know, you have a lot of other creation myths, including Enuma Elish, that we talked about. But, you know, I'm sure you talked about all sorts of other creation myths on the podcast, where, like, creation often seems this very sort of, like, magical or perhaps sometimes instantaneous thing. And this. This is a myth that really looks at, like, what is the labor involved in creation? What physical work does it take to make the world? I just find that fascinating.
- [11:41]
Tristan Hughes
And before we go on with the story, you read out that lovely part right at the beginning there. And, I mean, straight away, the wording itself sounded quite beautiful, quite poetic. And is there a particular style in which this epic should be delivered?
- [11:56]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, so, again, just to flag this fact that we're at the beginning of the literary history of Babylonian literature, and in the early periods, it's quite pared down. The lines are very short. The words tend to be very simple, but at the same time, it's very musical. There's a lot of, like, alliteration and play on words and that kind of thing. But, you know, the lines of later texts can be almost twice as long and actually sometimes three times as long as those natrahasis. So it's a very sort of like, yeah, condensed literary form. I find it very, very beautiful, to be honest, which is also why I pushed myself to convey it as well as I could in the translation.
- [12:36]
Tristan Hughes
And can we imagine it being spoken aloud in Akkadian or whatever the language was at the time, to a room full of people by someone who knew the text or who could read the text?
- [12:46]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, absolutely. And so I think Athrahasis is actually a really good example of how these ancient texts in the Babylonian culture would have circulated. And we tend, I think, in part, based on the Greek model, to assume that there is sort of this duality, that either texts are circulating in written form or they're circulating in a spoken form. But Atrahazis makes it quite clear that it has a dual form. So the very last line, and we'll get to the context for that later, but the very last line is just the word listen, which is being spoken to the audience.
- [13:20]
Tristan Hughes
Listen.
- [13:21]
Dr. Sophus Hell
And so that, you know, makes it very clear that this, you know, and a text actually calls itself a song as well. A zamaro, which means song. Yeah. And at the same time, this is also an object made of clay. You know, our Ipik Aya, copying his manuscripts in 1635, you know, he's Working with clay. And as we'll see, this is a text that sort of brings clay and sound together in interesting ways. So you can. You should imagine it, like, circulating in two forms at once.
- [13:48]
Tristan Hughes
So we have, as you've highlighted at the beginning, these two levels of gods. And the lesser gods, should we say, or. They're the workforce, they're the labor building the world, creating. And as you say, there's a strike. So how does this strike go? Lesser gods against the higher gods? It feels like. It doesn't feel like it's going to be very fortunate for the strikers.
- [14:10]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah. But it actually is, which is, again, one of the crazy things about it. Like, the revolution works. So the igigi are being led by a God called Wei. And just to quote another bit, Wei says to his brothers, the striking igigi, he says, now cry war. Let us stir battle and strife. The gods heard his words. They set fire to their tools. They set fire to their spades. They burned their burden, which I think is also very dramatic. And then they marched to the house of the leader of the heavenly gods, a God called Enlil, the king of the gods. And they sort of surround his house and, yeah, they demand better working conditions. And it literally says, you know, the workers revolted, which is. I don't know. That's part of why the text feels so bizarrely modern, even though so very, very old.
- [15:03]
Tristan Hughes
I'm guessing Enlil, he's not too pleased to be risen by these people who he expected to be working.
- [15:08]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Nope, not at all. And Enlil is, like, famously angry. It's like one of his main character traits. And Atrahas is no exception. I actually think it really was one of the texts that helped establish this perception of Enlil as a God who is just very trigger happy. He's easily angered, especially when he's being woken up. And that's exactly what happens. He's woken up and he is furious. He first wants to isolate who the leader of the rebellion is so that he can quite literally cut off the head of the rebellion. But the igigi, they have a real Spartacus moment. And they say, all of us called for this strike. And they actually say something very interesting when they have their Spartacus moment. They say, every one of us called for this war. We formed our assembly in the ditch. And the reason that that's important is that there is this concept in Babylonian mythology of the assembly of the gods. So all major decisions in Babylonian mythology are taken in this assembly. Like, it's a polytheistic system, there's many gods, and the gods meet in their council, in their pukhur, as it's called the Puhur ili, and then they make decisions. And this is according to Atrahasis, the first of these assemblies takes place in the ditch, and its first decision is a labor strike.
- [16:34]
Tristan Hughes
Right.
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Dr. Sophus Hell
So the use of that phrase, we formed our assembly in the ditch. It might not mean much to a modern audience, but in its original context, it's actually quite a striking phrase. But yeah, so Enlil, you know, he can't isolate the leader. And so instead he says, well, let's scrap this universe and start another one. Like, he literally says, let's just rewrite the rules of the cosmos because he's sort of that angry. But that's when we get the intervention of the God Enki, also called Ea. And I think we've talked about Enki before on the podcast.
- [17:09]
Tristan Hughes
I think we almost certainly have. Give us, like, so Enlil, we should be thinking almost kind of this king of the gods, maybe Zeus or Jupiter. Like, should we think just as a comparison.
- [17:20]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yes, but somewhat less powerful, much less omnipotent than Zeus and Enki.
- [17:25]
Tristan Hughes
More of a trickster, more of a. I'm just trying to think it, like, more Athena, like. Or, I don't know, a direct comparison, but. But another God, but known for their cunning.
- [17:36]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Is it? Yeah, like Athena, in that he's known for his cunning, but a God of the water. So he has this underground lake that he lives in and. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, I feel like Athena is often doing Zeus's bidding, but I guess you'll know more about that than me.
- [17:51]
Tristan Hughes
It's difficult to make. Yeah, it's to cross compare. Yeah, of course.
- [17:55]
Dr. Sophus Hell
But like, Enki is more often subverting Enlil's rule than helping Enlil's roar. And yeah, I think that's again, Athrahasis is a great example of that, because just when Enlil is about to say, well, you know, scrap this cosmos, Enki intervenes, and he intervenes on the side of the strike. And he says, well, we've heard them complain for a long time and we should take that seriously. And so Enki proposes a solution to the strike, and that's us. We are the solution. We are the compromise. He says, let's create a new creature, humanity, and they will then take on the labor of the gods. And, you know, our work, our daily work is sort of presented as an extension of Genesis. Right. So, like, in the same way that the gods dug the rivers, we dig canals to, you know, sort of perfect where the water is going. Right. To guide it the rest of the way. And in the same way that they build mountains, we build cities, you know, and we build temples in those cities. And so I think there is no clear cut line between nature and culture in Babylonian mythology, but you can sort of have the equivalent of that, be that the gods, they made what we would call nature and humans, we sort of continue that creation, but we make the human environment in a sense.
- [19:15]
Tristan Hughes
And it's not completely random to pick out canals because I guess we should remind us that in Mesopotamia, like the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, these great cities of Mesopotamia, you know, they renowned for their, their management of water and the creation of these beautiful canals, right?
- [19:29]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And yeah, people should really stick a pin in that point because like this, this idea of the management of water is going to come back later in a major way.
- [19:39]
Tristan Hughes
But also this idea that humans, they are created to work. So this idea, I think you also see with Adam and Eve as well and the like with the creation stories, humans, right from the get go, you've got to go out and toil. You've got to go out and be a labor force.
- [19:54]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah. And as I said, I think part of what I find interesting here is that it really sees our work as an extension of divine creation. And, you know, I think the text has a point because, like, the way that I put it in my book about atarhasis is that all work is world making. And I think that's also true today. You know, the way that we make the human world, the world that we live in, is through labor. Whether that's delivering packages or making podcasts or building buildings or whatever it might be, we make the world that we know through labor. And I think Athra Hasa sees that with a lot of clarity. But I think it's also important to emphasize that on the one hand, it does make us into what I call holy robots. We have to feed the gods, we have to bring them offerings, we have to, you know, give them grain and beer and incense and song, you know, but on the other hand, like, the text doesn't only give us the burden of labor from the gods, it also gives us something else. And this is where things become a bit technical. But there's a lot of puns in this passage that sort of describe what also happens. And so, for example, the name of this rebel leader way is written with a sign that also means ear, and ear also means intelligence. And Enki explains that he will have to sacrifice one of the gods, and that God will be Way and use his blood to create humankind. And when Enki says this, he says that we will sacrifice the God who had the idea, meaning the idea for the rebellion. But the word for idea in that context, another beautiful Babylonian word, not to be confused with the modern Teimo, as it were. But this idea of Temo doesn't mean just the idea specifically for the rebellion. It can also mean something like consciousness. And so the rebel leader is sacrificed, and his blood is then used to create humankind. But also we inherit his sort of rebellious instinct, and his idea for the rebellion becomes our consciousness. Like, that's sort of the divine blood in us.
- [22:09]
Tristan Hughes
The spirit of Way lives on inside us. That idea is it?
- [22:12]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, exactly right. And the text expresses this rather beautifully here. It says, forever after, let us hear the drum from the flesh of the gods. Let a spirit remain, and let it make the living know its sign. So as not to forget, let a spirit remain. And it's then, you know, shown that the spirit is ways spirit living on inside us. But I particularly like this line of let us hear the drum because that's. That's our heartbeat, you know, and it's that drum inside us that is constantly reminding us of. Of this, you know, rebel God who lives on in our blood, in our minds.
- [22:47]
Tristan Hughes
That's quite something. Okay, ways. The. The heartbeat. Okay, but ways out of the picture. Way sacrificed himself for us, for humans, and then Sophis. How do we get to these first humans? What does the story tell us about the earliest humans?
- [23:00]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Well, it actually has a very long and detailed description of them. And that brings us to our second main character. So our first main character is Enki. He's going to be really a plot engine throughout the story. And he's this trickster God, but he needs a collaborator. He says, I cannot create humanity alone. And so he brings in the Mother Goddess. The Mother Goddess has roughly 15 different names, but today we're going to use the name Mami. And Mami then takes this sort of living flesh, this living clay blood mixture that Enki has made and actually shapes it into humanity. And Mami lays the design of the people, as the poem puts it. And what she designs in that moment is the system of procreation. She designs the system of reproduction. And so the Mother Goddess has a very extended description of first making the genders and then making mutual attraction. And then she invents sex. And she invents consent also, which is quite interesting. Like, it's actually repeatedly emphasized that these people who have sex must consciously choose one another, which is a great Acadian word. And then they have sex, and then she designs the process of pregnancy and childbirth and delivery and nothing. And, like, it's a very long speech. I think it goes on for almost 100 lines in which the Mother Goddess sort of lays out her vision for motherhood with each and every step that that entails. And so she's, you know, created essentially a perfect system where the gods can just get free labor forever and ever
- [24:32]
Tristan Hughes
and ever and ever, but no death at this point. It's just birth and creation.
- [24:37]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Okay, exactly right. Because the Mother Goddess's perfect system has one big flaw in it, which is that she creates life and she creates the means for creating new life, but she does not create death. And that's the big problem here, because then 1200 years pass and there's been no death. It seems to be that you can still sort of die of premature causes. I think the best way to think about this is that you can still die if the God Erra kills you. And Erra can kill you with sickness and with war and with murder and that kind of thing. But you don't die of old age. You can die in era, coming and snatching you in the various ways he does, but you don't sort of. There's no limit to your lifespan. It just goes on and on and on. And after 1200 years, this has become a problem, and it's become a problem in the way that we've already met, because what it does is that it keeps Enlil awake.
- [25:35]
Tristan Hughes
This is the thing with Enlil, like the king of the gods, but at the end of the day, the thing that really matters to him is getting his good night's sleep.
- [25:44]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, exactly right. And, like, to be fair, it seems that he's not been able to sleep for centuries at this point. But still, the way that he puts it is as follows. Enlil heard their noise and said to the great gods, humanity's noise is too heavy for me. I cannot sleep for their roar. And, you know, I think, like, this is often the passage that people most remark on when I tell them the story of Atrahasis, because it just seems sillier than the Bible, whereas this question of sin and all of that. But I honestly, I like this better, you know, I think in part because, like, sound plays such a role throughout the story. You know, we heard that When Wei is created, he becomes this drum beat inside of us. And then the lead up to the Flood is sort of this. Yeah. This sense of humanity's noise becoming louder and louder and louder, and then Enlil being kept awake by it. And then, as we're gonna see, the flood itself is an explosion of sound. And since we heard that this text is a song, I actually think it's quite clever of it that it lets the prime engine of the plot be sound. Right. It's working with its own medium. And you can just sort of imagine this epic being performed and just becoming louder and louder itself, you know? So I think, even though it seems a bit silly at first, I actually think it would have been very effective.
- [27:06]
Tristan Hughes
I think you're quite right. And actually, the more I think of it, I think. I think it's like almost a pantomime or, you know, kind of. I say a live performance where you have the person reading it out, but maybe assisted by one or two people who are helping with the sound effects for those key parts of the story. And then all of a sudden, you can get more of a sense how this performance is. Could well have what it could have looked like when it was being performed in a street in Babylon almost 4,000 years ago. That's cool.
- [27:31]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, exactly. And the drums resounding in the background when we hear that way becomes a drum.
- [27:37]
Tristan Hughes
So Enlil can't get some sleep. Does that lead to him directly thinking it's time for a genocide, quite frankly, or what's his next step?
- [27:46]
Dr. Sophus Hell
No, not yet. We're not at the genocide yet. And I think it's actually like, this is a really interesting. This is actually a really interesting aspect of a lot of these ancient epics is that a lot of them do depict a genocide, but often they show us sort of the way there. So if you think of the Iliad, there's this mounting tension between the Greeks and the Trojans. And in book six of the Iliad, you reach the tipping point. And that's when the Greeks begin to talk about killing all of them. Not killing their warriors, but literally killing the women and the children and the elders. Right. And you see the same in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, that there's a sort of sense of tensions mounting before you get to the full genocidal attack. And in the case of Atrahasis, Enlil makes three failed attempts at culling humanity before eventually resorting on the sort of final solution, which is the Flood. Right. But, yeah, so. And in between each of these three attempts, 1200 years pass and there's a lot more humans and a lot more sound.
- [28:45]
Tristan Hughes
So these early attempts, they fail because humans, they have the spirit of way, the spirit of resistance, the spirit of kind of fighting back against. Even by what Enlil sent to try and get rid of them, humans prove incredibly resilient to it.
- [29:00]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, exactly. And there is one man who possesses this, this intelligence, you know, this arguably artificial intelligence, this created intelligence more than any of the other humans. And that's our third main character and that's Atrahas. Okay, right. And his name literally means super intelligent and. And he uses that intelligence. I think the, the intelligence in question which is expressed with the word hasis is very much the intelligence, not sort of of internal meditation, but very much the intelligence of being able to listen to others and being able to speak himself. And in Atrahasis case, that is especially his conversation with his God Enki, the trickster God that we already met. And Atrahasis skill is that he can talk with Enki and Enki talks with him, right? And it is by talking with the God of creativity that he again and again comes up with these creative solutions to foil Enki's plans. And those often involve manipulating the one tool that humanity has at their disposal. Because the God have given the humans control over their food supply, right? Which might not have been the best idea because now the humans can withhold the food and they can also decide to give all their food offerings to one specific God. So when Enki tries to send a disease a pandemic, again, there are too many way to relatable, way too relatable things about Atrahasis, right? But Enlil attempts a pandemic and so the humans bring all of their offerings only to the God of disease. So nobody else gets any. All the other gods are starving and suddenly the God of disease is sitting there with all of these offerings and he literally feels shamed, he feels embarrassed. And so he lets the disease leave the land. And that's the first round of plague. But eventually sort of Enlil catches on to what Enki and Atrahasis are doing. So he makes it still more difficult to. For them to communicate with each other.
- [31:04]
Tristan Hughes
I do that God and that clever person or that extraordinary human figure, the conversations, because I mean, you do think of things like Odysseus and Athena or Telemachus, you know, these extraordinary figures from Greek mythology, these so called heroes, you know, who are, because they are a bit better as they're portrayed Or a bit different to everyday figures. They have that connection with the gods. And you have that similar theme here in this epic in Babylon, you know, with the figure of Atrahasis and the God Enki as well. It's funny how you can see parallels there.
- [31:37]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, absolutely. There are various culture heroes in Babylonian mythology. You know, we've all saluted Gilgamesh, of course. But what I think interesting about is that he's such an empty character. Like, he is his intellect and nothing more. Like, we learn almost nothing else about him, his personality or, you know, even, like, his condition in life. It's unclear what his profession is. Is he a king? Is he a priest? Is he just a commoner? It's not. It's not fully certain, but. And, you know, I like to call him the exceptional everyman because I think we can really project ourselves into him because he is this empty character. But the one thing that he is is he is Atrahasis. He is super smart. Right. He is extra intelligent.
- [32:19]
Tristan Hughes
So let's get to the flood. I know there are a few other things that happen, but you cover them in detail in your book. So I don't want to give everything away, but how do we get then to Enlil deciding, right, I need to do something different. We need a flood.
- [32:35]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah. Unfortunately, the answer to that question is not fully clear because the text is fragmentary. But I think we can sort of reasonably extrapolate from what we know so far that it gets to a point where Enlil has again and again tried to foil. First of all, he's tried to cull humanity. He's tried to foil Enki's and Atrahasis schemes. And then he just has enough. And he says, okay, this is it. No more humans. I'm sick of this cycle. It's been going on for 3,600 years. Enough of this. And so he decides on, yeah, this final solution. And, you know, the text gives us like, a lengthy treatment of the meeting of the gods, the assembly of the gods, in which they decide to call
- [33:15]
Tristan Hughes
the flood to another assembly. Okay, interesting.
- [33:17]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Another assembly. Exactly. And I think that's also really worth worth noting that Atrahasis has a lot of reversals between the first and the second part. So first we get the creation of humanity in the first assembly, and then we get the destruction of humanity in the second assembly. And there are specific lines that are repeated from the first part and the second where they flip meaning and, you know, really tying the two parts together and establishing this sense of Contrast. But yeah, so I mean, unfortunately the minutes of this meeting are lost because that, that the description of that assembly is very fragmentary, but that's what happens. The gods decide to call the flood. And I think it's also very interesting that the text will repeatedly insist that Enlil subverted what we could call the sort of in quote unquote, democratic process of the assembly. Right. Like, he doesn't listen to everybody else in the assembly and he really sort of forces his own agenda through. And it's said that he confused the assembly, he subverted the assembly. So I think it's also a reminder that, and this is really a widespread trope in Babylonian literature, that if a leader stops listening to his assembly, pretty terrible things happen almost immediately. And Atrahasis in the story of the flood is a great example of that. Like, the reason that the flood happened is that Enlil stopped listening to the other gods, stopped listening to his assembly and his advisors.
- [34:42]
Tristan Hughes
So that could be a reflection on Babylonian kingship and the council and the priests and the. All the people that would have been around him at his court.
- [34:49]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, exactly. And you know, it's a story that's particularly appealing to the people like Ipigaya, our scribe, who is copying out this text as part of his university education. Because what is his job going to be? Well, it's going to be a professional advisor. Right. So like here is a myth which is the crowning moment of his education that tells him, you know, there was once a time where universal disaster could have been avoided if, if the king of the gods had just listened to a person like you. You know, like that's, that's, that's just
- [35:18]
Tristan Hughes
sort of what, an ego boost. There you go.
- [35:20]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Right, right.
- [35:22]
Tristan Hughes
So how is Atrahas? How does he get word of this destruction decision?
- [35:28]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Well, at first it's very difficult because Enlil has ensured that Enki can't just do the same trick again. So he has imposed an oath of silence on all the gods. They've all been sworn to secrecy. And this seems, and this is a bit my interpretation, but, you know, I'll present it and then you'll see whether you agree. But. So it seems to be a Babylonian explanation of why we can't talk with the gods directly. Right. And the Babylonians had a solution to that problem, which is to interpret the omens that the gods sent to them. And this story explains how that system came about, because Enki can't just say to Atrahasis, this is what's about to happen. So he sends to him a series of omens, first in the form of a dream, but then atrahasis can't understand that dream. And then in the form of these reeds. So, you know, Enki is living in this underground lake. So the reeds are like tiny pipes that he's sort of like, you know, piping up through atrahasis house, which is also made of reeds. Right. So it's like the whole house is talking to him. But this thing of communicating through objects, that's an omen, you know, like, that's what an omen is. And the Babylonians, you know, they were obsessed with omens. They saw omens absolutely everywhere. And the story of the flood may have been an explanation of why the gods communicate in this rather bizarre way rather than just talking to us.
- [36:55]
Tristan Hughes
And so Enki manages to get word to Atrahasis through this manner. And what is he told to do?
- [37:02]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Well, let me read you the passage. Okay, so Enki speaks through the wall and says, wall, listen to me. Fence. Heed my every word. Flee the house. Build a boat. Leave your stuff. Save your life. And then he goes into a sort of lengthy description of what this ark, this boat, is supposed to look like, how it is to be shaped, what his measurements are. And Atrahasis is told to take on board the seed of every living things, meaning, at least in the Bible's rendition, two of every kind of animals and also the craftsmen of every kind of craft, so that humanity doesn't lose the crafts that are the bedrock of our society. And Athrahasis is also allowed to take his family. So, slightly roomier boat than in the Bible, but the same basic idea.
- [37:53]
Tristan Hughes
I remember talking to Irving Finkel about this a couple of years ago. And is it actually this idea that the boat was supposed to be round?
- [38:00]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Well, that's actually not as clear in Atrahasis. So Irving found another text that has a more detailed description of the boat than what we see in Atrahasis. It's a little harder to sort of mentally reconstruct the boat if you're just going by the atrahasis description.
- [38:18]
Tristan Hughes
But it sounds like. So Atrahasis is allowed to save a few more people than in the biblical story, but he can't save everyone. Is that true?
- [38:28]
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Yeah.
- [38:29]
Dr. Sophus Hell
And he's clearly heartbroken about it. So he gets all the people of his city to build this boat because he only has a week before the flood is coming. It has to be a very big boat. And so he's truly opening the treasury. He's holding a big feast for all of his workers, but he knows that they're all going to die, and that is a pretty terrible psychological situation. And so at this feast, he's just overcome by emotions. And so the text says they were eating, they were drinking, but he went in and he went out, could not sit and could not crouch. His heart was broken, he vomited gall. And. Yeah, I don't know. It's a tragedy.
- [39:08]
Tristan Hughes
That's like a last supper of beer and barley. And that's the kind of the drink and the food, isn't it, that you should think of as well?
- [39:15]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, exactly right.
- [39:16]
Tristan Hughes
And so the workers build the boat. They're not allowed on it.
- [39:20]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah.
- [39:20]
Tristan Hughes
And then the flood comes. In the story, the flood comes straight away. Is that the idea?
- [39:25]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, exactly right. Literally right after the lines I read right now, the next lines are. Then the face of the weather changed and Adad began to roar in the clouds, Adad being the storm God.
- [39:37]
Tristan Hughes
And. Well, what happens? Take it away, Sophus.
- [39:40]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah. So we get this very dramatic description of the flood. Again, sort of really emphasizes how loud the flood is, which, again, I can very easily imagine a skilled performer having a field day, temperature, recreating the. Right, exactly right. With recreating the sound of the flood. But, yeah, let me just read you a passage like battle, disaster spread over the people. Brothers looked in vain for each other. Men all looked the same in the slaughter. The flood was bellowing like a bull. The winds wailed like an eagle's cry. The darkness was dense. The sun had gone, and the children of men became like flies. The gods grew afraid of the noise of the flood. They hid in heaven and took refuge in the open. They sat and wept.
- [40:32]
Tristan Hughes
It's very uncontrolled. This is just sheer destruction at its maximum.
- [40:39]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Exactly right. And that's one of the big differences from the biblical account, right? Like where in the Bible, you know, think what you will of the God of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, but, you know, he at least knows what he's doing.
- [40:51]
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Right.
- [40:52]
Dr. Sophus Hell
He has control over the operation of the flood. In the Babylonian version, they lose control over it immediately. And I think it's partly also interesting to think about this in class terms, and I'm sorry to be sounding very Marxist in my analysis here, but it does sort of reflect the structure of the text that the revolt of the Igigi in the beginning of the poem was these workers rising up against their masters. And the story of the flood is the inverse of that. And so it is the masters killing their workers, it's the gods killing humanity. And again, there's one of these lines sort of making that link. So earlier we heard that the IGIGI were described as the workers revolted, and here we hear the flood being described as the waters revolted. And so this is, you know, it sort of has again, an eerily modern resonance because it sort of describes catastrophic climate change as class warfare from above. And again, I know that that sounds very Marxist, but I'm still trying to present the poem in terms that make sense to this day. And I think it's kind of crazy how much atrahasis allows for those modern parallels. It's part of why I'm so obsessed with the story.
- [42:15]
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- [42:20]
Dr. Sophus Hell
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- [44:01]
Tristan Hughes
How long does the chaos last then? That you if these very quickly, almost instantly. The waters, the floods, they can't be controlled by the gods as soon as they've issued it in. I mean, how long does this kind of uncontrolled chaos last?
- [44:15]
Dr. Sophus Hell
So it lasts for seven days and seven Nights.
- [44:17]
Tristan Hughes
Okay?
- [44:18]
Dr. Sophus Hell
So it lasts for this very dramatic week. And then at the end of it, the gods, they gather on a mountain, and they sort of begin to take stock of what's happened. And there's another very beautiful mirroring here because we heard earlier about how the heartbeat is created. The heartbeat is created to be this regular reminder of the moment in which humanity was created. And likewise, the mother goddess, who is absolutely devastated at seeing humanity being destroyed, she creates a regular reminder to herself so that she can remember what happened in the flood. And that's again what we see in the Bible, where it's the rainbow. But strangely, in Atrahasis, the rainbow is created by the mother goddess taking jeweled flies. So, you know, how flies have these shimmering wings, and she makes this, you know, cosmic necklace of jeweled flies and hangs it around her neck, and that becomes the rainbow. So, yeah, the heartbeat and the rainbow are respectively these regular, rhythmical reminders of humanity's creation and our near total destruction.
- [45:23]
Tristan Hughes
Gods like her goddesses, are they mourning the complete destruction of humanity at that time. Do they know that Atrahasis and his select few have actually survived aboard this boat?
- [45:34]
Dr. Sophus Hell
So they find out after the flood is over, because Atrahasis does the Noah trick of sending out a series of birds, and then finally, in this case, the. The crow finds the peak that is, you know, Mount Ararat in the Bible. And here it's, at least in the later Babylonian tradition, it's Mount Nizirtu. But either way, the crow finds land and Atrahasis sets up an offering. And, you know, the offering really reveals the idiocy of the enlos, quote, unquote plan. Because, you know, he hadn't thought it through. Like, now that he had obliterated humanity, the gods starve. And because, again, the gods had given their servants humanity control over their food supply. And so the gods also reveal themselves to be dependent on humanity because it's said that they had shrunk to the size of flies, and they're sort of swarming to Atrahasis sacrifice because they've not eaten for a week. And so I think that's what the flood ultimately illustrates. It ultimately illustrates this bizarre balance of power in Babylonian cosmology between the gods and humanity, that the gods are dependent on us, but we're also very dependent on them because they can just wipe us out.
- [46:47]
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Right?
- [46:48]
Dr. Sophus Hell
And so I think that's part of what this myth reveals. And as I said, it began with the sentence in Uma ilua villum, when gods were Men at a moment in time in which the gods are very much like humans. And now they have become very unlike each other. They're so powerful and we're not. But at the same time, much as we've become also very different, we remain very profoundly linked. They depend on us, and we depend on them. That's what this sort of final meeting on the mountain reveals.
- [47:19]
Tristan Hughes
So is this the context for us getting to that third and final meeting, the post flood decision as to what is going to happen to humans?
- [47:29]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Right, exactly right. And what is going to happen to humans is the creation of death. And that is a sort of final supplement that brings the story to a close, because we've had this sort of very dynamic story where each problem was resolved, but then the solution became the occasion for the new problem. Right. So there was this labor strike that was solved with the creation of humanity, but that then became a problem because there were too many of us. And that led to these famines and diseases and so on and so forth, and they were resolved, but that only made the problem worse. And then that led to the quote, unquote, final solution, which is the flood, which then turned into a huge problem. And then out of this sort of rhythm of problems and solutions and problems and solutions, emerges the final problem solution, which is death. And it's a solution because it brings this whole thing to a sort of stable endpoint where humanity now won't sort of explode in population numbers, we won't bother Enlil, and we can just sort of keep providing these regular offerings of food. But it's a problem for us. Right. It might not be a problem for the gods, but it's a problem for us because we have to die. And the one person who is accepted from that is Atrahasis.
- [48:45]
Tristan Hughes
So Atrahasis kind of receives. He's allowed to maintain his immortality then? Is that the idea?
- [48:50]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Right. And in later Babylonian tradition, he is then given a new title. And that new title is the One who Found Life, or in Akkadian, Uttanapishti, which is the name of the character that we meet in Gilgamesh.
- [49:03]
Tristan Hughes
And that's in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where Gilgamesh goes searching for immortality, and that's why he goes to meet Utnapishtin.
- [49:10]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Exactly right.
- [49:10]
Tristan Hughes
Who is actually.
- [49:11]
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Right.
- [49:11]
Tristan Hughes
Okay. So that's how they link together. Okay. We won't go down the Epic of Gilgamesh because we've got two great episodes with you on that. We'll put a link to that in the. In the episode notes. And that's the end of the epic. So humans. Yeah, the family of atrahasis and the other people who are allowed on the boat, the idea is that they will slowly expand, they will slowly populate, repopulate the earth from then on.
- [49:36]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, exactly right. And just as the Mother Goddess was earlier being tasked with creating humanity, and she set up this system of reproduction and procreation, she then is tasked with the opposite. She becomes the creator of death, but she also creates a number of other sort of measures that are anti reproduction, anti procreation. So she creates women who don't give birth, which includes a series of priestesses who were barred from having children. The Naditu women is one example. The N priestesses is another example. So, for example, the first known author in Hiduanna, she was an en priestess, so she was not allowed to have children. The Mother Goddess also creates this demon called Lamashtu, which would snatch newborn babies and was sort of the Babylonian explanation for infant mortality. And all of these measures are made here at the end of the poem.
- [50:32]
Tristan Hughes
And that's the end of the epic. I mean, Sophie, just how long we've covered the main themes there. Really grateful to go through them. Just how long was this epic? Could we imagine that people would have been listening to a performance of this epic and they'd be able to watch the whole thing in one sitting, so to speak?
- [50:49]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah, I do think so. So it's about 50 pages in a modern translation, so I do think you could listen to all of it in one sitting. In the original Akkadian, we don't have the whole thing preserved, but it comes out to what we have. Comes out to around 500 lines. So. Yeah, much shorter than something like the Iliad or the Odyssey. Also much shorter than Gilgamesh, shorter than Beowulf. And I just think, like, it's so amazing how much this poem packs into its story. Like, this is a. It's a history of humanity that in the last lines, it seems to be revealed that this is being told by the Mother Goddess. So this is her account of the history of humanity. And, you know, we've touched on a lot of themes that are relevant for today, like class conflict and labor disputes, climate disaster, arguably artificial intelligence. You know, and we've seen the invention of sex, and we've seen the invention of the opposite of sex. You know, like, we've. We've had all of these themes being explored in, as I said, not a. Not a long. Not a long poem.
- [51:52]
Tristan Hughes
Well, I mean, I was I was. You kind of preempt my next question, which was like, what would have been the main themes for someone listening to this performance and watching it, you know, almost 4,000 years ago? I mean, how would they have interpreted it would be. What do you think would have been the key takeaways for them?
- [52:08]
Dr. Sophus Hell
That's a really good question. And I think our only chance of answering that is by looking at a specific individual which, which in this case is Ipigaya. So as I said, like Ipigaya is, is being taught by his father.
- [52:20]
Tristan Hughes
Describe who created the copy that we've talked through.
- [52:22]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Okay, yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. We know that he would have been, yeah, let's say, give or take 19 when he's doing this. We know that his, his family are. He comes from a family of scribes and the family was devoted to the God Enki. So most people in his city were. Were devoted to other gods, including Ishtar and Shamash. But his family is sort of pro Enki. And this is very much a myth about Enki. So I think that would have been important to him. But as I mentioned earlier, his father had recently in his education been teaching him texts that have to do with the end of an age. So he had been studying texts that have to do with the end of the old Akkadian empire, where according to myth, the sort of vainglorious King Naram Sin brought this great empire crashing down. He had been studying some texts related to the fall of the Ur3 empire, which is a couple of centuries after the fall of the old Akkadian empire, where the Urthri, this great Sumerian speaking empire, was toppled by an invasion from Iran. And so he is studying texts that have to do with one period giving way to another. And I think he would have seen the flood myth in those terms because this is sort of quite literally about the end of an antediluvian age and the beginning of a new age, about the end of an age in which we could talk directly to the gods, in which we were without death to what was broadly conceived for the Babylonians, the present like our age. And so I think that's one way in which he would quite likely have understood it.
- [53:53]
Tristan Hughes
Do you think work is a big thing at all or kind of this idea that we are to work?
- [53:57]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Absolutely, yeah. Sorry to cut you off here, but yeah, sorry. There is certain things enthusiastic in answering is that the book that I've written about Atrahasis is literally called for its subtitle, Babylonian Reflections on Labor, because I think that's what this is. Atrahasis sees human life as being shaped by labor, both in the sort of obvious sense that we are created to serve the gods and to labor for the gods and to extend the labor of the gods. But labor also becomes many other things in the poem as well, including it becomes crucially linked to inequality. And this sort of dynamic of labor and inequality and how they shape each other really propels the entire poem. So, yes, I absolutely think that labor is central not just to this poem, but to the entire sort of period of cultural history that Ipigaya lived in the Old Babylonian. There are many stories about labor in different ways at that time.
- [55:00]
Dan Snow
If you love a good story, why aren't you listening to Dan Snow's History Hit podcast? It's a show where we tell you every amazing, crazy and important thing that's ever happened in human history, from the perilous voyages of the first Polynesians, the discoveries of Captain Cook, the deadly Viking raids on Britain and Ireland, the rise of rise and fall of the great English kings and queens. We'll tell you how Waterloo was won, the Alamo was lost, and all the history in between. So make sure you check it out. Dan Snow's History Hit for the best true stories ever told. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [55:51]
Tristan Hughes
Sophie, I must ask because you, you highlighted this earlier, like kind of the strength of natural disasters like the floods and of course, how the flood gets out of control of the gods almost instantly.
- [56:01]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah.
- [56:02]
Tristan Hughes
Could there be any elements of truth behind this story of the flood? Could there be any harkening back of like, historical memory of Babylonians that. Could there have been a memory of a very terrible flood that occurred, the Tigris of the Euphrates, from long before from which the story of this myth could have been loosely or at least slightly based on.
- [56:27]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yes, it's a really good question. And when we think about the flood myth in the Trhasis, there's two big questions that pop up. One we've already talked about, which is is there a direct connection to the Bible? We don't know, but it seems like Athrahasis is at least closer to the Bible. So that's one question. And the other question is, was this based on a real flood? And I'm just going to start with the argument against it being based on a real flood, and then we can sort of look at the arguments for. But the main argument against is that the stories about floods really begin to circulate in the Babylonian and Sumerian literature, in the early second millennium bce. So we have Sumerian literature from the third millennium in which the word flood just means, like what it means in English, you know, like a flood of water.
- [57:19]
Tristan Hughes
Right.
- [57:19]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Like a lot of water coming, rushing down from a mountain or whatever. It doesn't mean, like this cataclysmic event. And then around year 2000, we have this political event I briefly mentioned a bit ago, the fall of the Uathui Empire. And that political event really leaves a huge scar in the political and cultural memory of Babylonian culture. They return to this event quite obsessively. They sort of process it over the couple of centuries that follow. And it's in that context, when you're getting things like the lamentation of the destruction of the land, which is a great text, you also at that time, get the flood myth exploding in importance. And so there is a scholar called Samuel Chen who has written a really good book about this called the Primeval Flood Myth, where he argues that the flood myth becomes what we know today through this sort of process of taking this political shock and then turning it into a myth. Right. So you're processing this great empire that fell. Imagine the fall of the Roman Empire, and you're sort of trying to make sense of it. And so you come up with this myth of a time in which the world changed radically in a single week. And I actually find Chen's argument very convincing. But again, that does leave us with less of a connection to the real flood. But, I mean, it is definitely possible that real geological events informed this. I think it's a discussion that's very similar to Atlantis where, you know, it was Plato who came up with the myth of Atlantis. Is it possible that his coming up with the myth was informed by real events? Yes, it's possible, but that just becomes a lot harder to prove and to establish.
- [59:13]
Tristan Hughes
Very much so. But I saved that question to the end, and I have it in big, bold letters on my questions for you right before we finish, because I have to ask it. Sophists, this has been so much fun. Last, but certainly not least, you have written a book which goes into this story in so much more detail and explains why this flood myth is so important and deserves to be better known. It is called.
- [59:37]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Yeah. So I have the book Babylonian Reflections on Labor, which is out with University of Chicago Press in May. May 2026. But I would also like to flag another book that I have on the way with Tamsin Hudson's illustrated myth series. That book is called Babylonian Myths, and I also have one chapter there talking about the Atrahasis myth, but then I have other chapters dealing with a range of other Babylonian stories.
- [60:02]
Tristan Hughes
Fantastic. Sophus, we'll get you back on for more stories in the future, but it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show.
- [60:09]
Dr. Sophus Hell
Thank you so much for having me. It's always a delight to be on the Ancients.
- [60:16]
Tristan Hughes
Well, there you go. There was Dr. Sophis, hell of returning to the podcast. Such a great guy and a brilliant expert on these great epics, these stories of ancient Mesopotamia, of Babylon and beyond. Always a pleasure having him on the show to talk through them and I really do hope you enjoyed this latest episode with him. If you want more episodes about these stories that we've done in the past with Sophus, well, we'll put a link to them in the show. Notes. We've done a two parter with him all about the effort. Epic of Gilgamesh, the most well known epic of ancient Mesopotamia. We've also done the story of Babylon's epic of creation too and I'm sure there'll be other great stories we can cover with Sophus in the future. Really do hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Now, if you're enjoying the Ancients, please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us. You'll be doing a special a big favor if you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well. Well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up@historyhit.com subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.