015 Flood Tablet

The early writing system that developed in ancient Mesopotamia—now Iraq—is known as cuneiform. It is a wedge-shaped script that was inscribed onto clay tablets using a cut reed tool. Many thousands of these tablets survive, but this particular example is arguably the most famous in the world. When it was translated in 1872 it caused a furore because of its clear connection with one of best known stories of the Old Testament.

The man who translated the tablet was named George Smith. He had become a curator in the British Museum after years spending his lunchtimes poring over the cuneiform tablets, which he had previously taught himself to read. The story he discovered on this tablet tells of a man who is ordered by a god to build a boat, and take on board his family and ‘all living things’ in order to save them from an impending flood. This tale parallels the story of Noah in the Old Testament of the Bible. Importantly for George Smith, it also predates the bible account by around 400 years. According to one witness, when Smith realised what the tablet said he was so excited that he leapt up from his seat and began undressing himself!

Smith’s translation was a momentous discovery because it questioned the originality of the text of the bible—which, unsurprisingly, caused a great deal of controversy. We now know that, in fact, even older versions of the flood story predate this tablet by around a thousand years, and that this is actually a fragment from the tale as it appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first great epic poem of world literature.