The story of a primordial, global Deluge popularized in the Noah’s Ark narrative endures as one of antiquity’s most baffling enigmas. Old Testament theologians unanimously agree that the Biblical Flood story is a sixth-century BC reworking of a narrative that originated in Mesopotamia. The first reference to a great Flood appears as a two-sentence factoid in the circa 2050 BC Sumerian King List. Yet the oldest, extent Flood drama—with a Deluge deity, flood hero, ark and denouement—does not appear for another three-and-a-half centuries. Modern scholars informally refer to this earliest Deluge drama as the Tale of Atra-Hasis after the name of the Babylonian flood hero ( Atra-Hasis, ‘Exceedingly-Wise’). The Tale of Atra-Hasis Flood Text was modified throughout the remainder of
