Note 982 — Chapter XXIII

The Hebrew account, it must be remembered, consists of two narratives dovetailed into one another. According to the one version—the Yahwistic—the rainstorm continued for forty days and forty nights; according to the other—the priestly narrative—one hundred and fifty days pass before the waters began to diminish and a year elapses before Noah leaves the ark. The Yahwistic narrative lays stress upon the ritualistic distinction of clean and unclean animals, but on the whole, the Yahwistic version approaches closer to the Babylonian tale. Evidence has now been furnished that among the Babylonians, too, more than one version of the tradition existed. At the Eleventh International Congress of Orientalists (September, 1897), Scheil presented a tablet, dating from the days of Hammurabi, in which the story of a deluge is narrated in a manner quite different from the Gilgamesh epic. The tablet also furnishes the phonetic reading pï-ïr, and Scheil is of the opinion that these two syllables form the first element in the name of the hero. Unfortunately, the tablet is badly mutilated at this point, so that the question of the reading is not absolutely certain. See p. 488, note 2. [The reading Ut-napishtim is now generally adopted.]