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Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic: Sumerian Origins of the Flood Myth

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This book examines six versions of an ancient flood legend (The Ziusudra Epic, The Atrahasis Epic, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Genesis 6-9, The Berossus History, and The Moses of Khoren. The author begins by listing phases and words common to each version, to demonstrate they are related and have a common origin. He then extracts the plausible and possible portions of each legend and removes the mythical (physically impossible or highly improble) elements. He draws upon archeological evidence of actual historical events, sites, and persons, examines early numbering systems, and the various meanings of key words in early written languages. The result: a very realistic, readable, and convincing reconstruction of the flood myth.

The author attributes the Noah story to a six day flood on the Euphrates River, around 2900BC. Noah (Ziusudra, a known king of the Sumerian city-state Shuruppak) and his family are swept down the river into the Persian Gulf on Noah's commercial river barge. They drift for nearly a year and eventually ground in an estuary near the mouth of the river.

This book is the most convincing and plausible account of the Noah legend I have read, or ever expect to read. The author examines every detail of the legend, and shows how mistranslations of key words and phrases led to faulty modern interpretations, such as the ark grounding on Mt. Ararat.

Also included is an analysis of the ages of Noah and the other antediluvians. Again, the author is totally convincing. This book is a scientific "tour de force". The author sifts through a mountain of information and extracts its essence ... what REALLY happened to Noah.

This book should be read by anyone interested in biblical history including (1) creationists, who may be disappointed, (2) those who are wasting their time searching for an ark on Mt. Aratat, (3) advocates of the Black Sea innundation theory, and even (4) biblical skeptics, who will discover the story is not so farfetched as it seems!

At last there is a well-reasoned proposal for the historical reality underlying the legend of Noah and the Flood. Best does not speculate that the Flood is merely an allusion to one of the many floods of the Tigris-Euphrates plain. Rather "Noah" is a king/priest who lived at the beginning of the third millenium. The Flood is the flood of 2900 BCE. Best includes chapters on the transmission of the text, the construction of the Ark, the voyage of the Ark, and what happened to Noah and his family after the voyage. Most thought-provoking is Best's detailed explanation of the biblical fi- gures found in Genesis 11. This book is fascinating and worth reading by anyone interested in the stories of Noah and the Flood.

A great book.An excellent guide to the origin of the Noah myth and the other flood myths from the area.Great detail had been achived in researching possible origins for the many wild statements made in Genesis,and in showing that the flood was not global. A great book to give to a creationist as a present.

I read this book a few years ago and found the author's theory to be the most logical explanation of both the Sumerian and Biblical flood myths. One of the ideas I found fascinating was the possible explanation of the exaggerated reigns of both the antediluvian Sumerian kings and biblical patriarchs. It seems an Akkadian scribe may have used Semitic base-10 number symbols to represent the Sumerian base-60 number system when translating texts. It's not hard to imagine an incompetent bureaucrat making such a mistake.

There are plenty of gems in Robert Best's book to keep you happily reading for hours at a time. And don't think the author's assertions are mere flights of fancy. Robert Best backs up his theory with plausible science, archeology and paleography as the story of the Sumerian Noah unfolds. If we're not talking about a physically impossible global flood, then we're talking local. In this antecedent to the flood myths, Ziusudra is not only a local king, but a business man with a transport barge loaded with animals and grains on the way to be delivered to buyers. When a flash flood occurs at a time of high river levels, it becomes the perfect storm.

I won't give any more of it away but when you read what transpires during the local flood between the two rivers, you can understand why it would look like a global flood to anyone unfortunate enough to be on a runaway barge headed into the Persian gulf. This book would make a nice present for anyone who takes the Bible literally...or the Epic of Gilgamesh for that matter.Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic: Sumerian Origins of the Flood Myth

Some matters are best left to the experts. I read Best's book while I was a full-time professor of Bible some years back. Not a stickler for dull academic work, I welcome the creative voices of non-specialists into the sometimes dull world of academic discussion. Nevertheless, Best's hypothesis seeking to ground the Bible's flood myth to a historical episode was fraught with difficulty from the start. To begin with, the field he attempts to tap for support -- Sumerology -- is a highly complex field. I hold a doctorate in Ancient Near Eastern religions, and I seldom attempt to tackle the complexities of Sumerian tablets. A fair deal more caution would have been warranted in Best's case. A second major difficulty with his treatment is the problem of historicity. The story of Noah is clearly a myth, as is amply demonstrated by the Near Eastern material that Best himself utilizes. Attempting to force myths into an historical mold does damage to both history and myth. The creation of a fictionalized Ziusudra was inventive, but not reliable. The book deserves credit for creativity, but in the balance of credibility it is weighed in the scales and is found severely wanting.

This book is not without many speculations. What i find interesting is that BBC made a so called documentry using Best's ideas which aired on the History Channel. Some of Robert Best's conculsions are based on outdated ideas of bygone scholars. Scholars ONCE thought that the Biblical account had some how barrowed the flood story from these Near Eastern myths. However when the earliest VERSION OF THE BABYLONIAN DELUGE STORY was unearthed it was soon discovered that the Genesis account and the Babylonian epic were in complete agreement with each other. SEE H. V. Hilpretch "The Earliest Version on the Babylonian Deluge Story." Best's idea for the ark is imaginative. It is true that a tub like barge known as a quffa had been used anciently but Best's speculation of what the ark was doesn't make sense. It has long been told just what the ark was and what it looked like. Anciently another group of people known as the Jaredites who migrated from the Mesopotamian region built similar barges that were actually "patterned" after Noah's ark. These look nothing like the ark that Best purposes. a comparison of Jaredite barges with that of Noah's ark was given by Dr Hugh Nibley in his article "Their were Jaredites."

Let me compare the points from this book and the points from the Bible.

Some of the author's conclusions: (from back cover of the book)
-Noah's flood was a local river flood about 2900 B.C.
-The ark was a commercial river barge.
-Noah was a king of the Sumerian city Shuruppak.
-The river flood last only six days.
-The ark grounded twice but not on a mountain.
-After grounding, Noah met other survivors of the flood.
-The site of Noah's altar has been found and excavated.
-Noah lived to be 83 not 950.

The author also thought that the ark only carried fewer than 280 animals, there were no elephants, no kangaroos and no giraffes. (from Chapter 6 of the book)

The Bible says:
-The Flood was a worldwide flood and covered the whole Earth.
-God ordered Noah to build the Ark. (Noah's Ark was not a commercial river barge.)
-Noah was the only righteousness man in the world. (The Bible does not say Noah was a king of the Sumerian city Shuruppak.)
-The Flood last more than a year: 40 days were under the rain, for several months the Flood covered the whole Earth. After the Ark had stopped in Mount Ararat, Noah, his family and the animals waited in the Ark for several more months until the dry land came out from the water and later God ordered Noah to leave the Ark.
-Beside Noah, his wife, Noah's 3 sons and their wives, there were no other human beings survived in the Flood. Only 8 people were survived in the Flood, they were all in the Ark. All other people at that time were killed in the Flood.
-God told Noah to bring 2 animals (a male and a female) of every kind into the Ark, all those animals in the land and the birds in the air. Insects of every kind were also brought into the Ark two by two. Some clean animals were brought in seven by seven.
-Noah lived up to 950 years old. One week before the Flood came, Noah and his family went into the Ark, Noah was 600 years old at that time. After the Flood, Noah lived 350 more years until he died.
-God created rainbow after the Flood.
(from Genesis, The Bible)