A Comparison of the Flood of Gilgamesh and the Bible People grow up hearing the story of Noah and the flood. They remember very vividly the duration of the flood, the dove and the rainbow. However, most people do not realize that the story is told in many different cultures and with accounts older than the version of Genesis in the Bible. Although each of the accounts talks about the flood, there are many variations in the story. One such story can be found in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Although the Epic of Gilgamesh is similar to the Genesis version, there are some differences in the days before, during, and after the flood. The days leading up to the flood are different and similar in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis version of the flood. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods decided to send a flood because the people on Earth were noisy. A man, Utnapishtim, received a dream from one of the gods due to an oath. In contrast, in Genesis, God sent a flood to destroy the evils man had created. He warned Noah of the flood because Noah was good. Both Utnapishtim and Noah built boats to survive the flood. Utnapishtim's barque was 120 cubits and was a perfect cube. It was completed by seven decks divided into nine sections each. Instead, Noah's ark was three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. It had a skylight and a side door. It was only three stories tall. After the boat was built, Gilgamesh ³loaded into it all that I (he) had of gold and living things, my family, my relatives, the best of the field both wild and tamed, and all the craftsmen²(p . 37). Noah, likewise, loaded his family, food, and a male and female pair each… into the center of a paper… both men were told of the flood. They both built boats and filled their boats with animals and their families. Afterwards, they released the birds to test the waters and both made sacrifices. However, the boats were different in construction. The number of days differed based on the length of the flood, when the waters receded, and when each man left his boats. Even the birds that didn't return to their boats were different. It is very easy to see that the flood story may be true based on these two accounts because it is easy to see how two different cultures, the Samarians and the Jews, shaped the flood story to fit their cultures. Although the stories are different, there seems to be one important common thread, the flood. Resources Mack, Maynard, ed. World masterpieces. Norton's anthology. Expanded edition. W. W. Norton and company: New York, 1995.