Did Noah's Flood Come From Gilgamesh? The Older Story Behind Both

Did Noah's flood come from Gilgamesh? In 1872 George Smith, a former banknote engraver then working at the British Museum, read a flood story on a clay tablet from Nineveh: a god warns a man, the man builds a boat, and afterward he sends out birds. The tablet belongs to the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the question has followed it ever since. This documentary follows the tablets backward, copy by copy. A newspaper pays a thousand guineas for a missing piece. A tablet from Sippar carries a date in the reign of King Ammisaduqa. A Sumerian king list splits history into before and after the flood. Then it reads Noah's flood in Genesis 6 to 9 as closely as the tablets: the reason, the birds, the offering, the promise, and the two counts inside the story. Scholars, Catholic notes, evangelicals and creationists read the same evidence in different ways, and you will hear each of them in their own words. One rule runs through the whole video: the date of a tablet is the date of a copy, and the story on it can be older. No sermon and no mockery. Just the tablets, the dates, and the words the sources actually use. 🔍 IN THIS DOCUMENTARY: • George Smith, the flood tablet, and the Daily Telegraph's dig at Nineveh • Tablet Eleven of Gilgamesh and its hero's other name • Atrahasis: gods who could not sleep • A tablet that describes a boat of a very different shape • The Sumerian flood story and the Sumerian King List • Noah's flood read closely: what Genesis keeps and what it changes • Woolley at Ur, the Black Sea proposal, and the claims about the ark 🕒 CHAPTERS: 00:00 The tablet in the British Museum 02:42 A thousand guineas 04:41 A name on Tablet Eleven 06:20 Too loud 08:27 A boat of a different shape 10:06 A king list with a flood in it 11:52 Same scenes, another reason 14:15 Two counts in one story 16:17 Looking in the ground 18:54 Behind both 21:44 In the order of the copies 📚 SOURCES: — Genesis 6–9, NRSV Updated Edition; NABRE (USCCB) notes on Genesis 6 and 8 — A. R. George, trans., Gilgamesh Tablet XI; B. R. Foster, trans., Atrahasis — electronic Babylonian Library (LMU Munich) — R. Campbell Thompson, The Epic of Gilgamish (1928) — ETCSL 1.7.4 "The Flood story" and 2.1.1 "The Sumerian king list" (Oxford) — C. Hayes, RLST 145, lectures 4–5 — Open Yale Courses — G. Smith, Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 2 (1873); Assyrian Discoveries (1875) — British Museum: K.3375, DT.42, BM 78941; J. Taylor (2018) and I. Finkel (2014), British Museum blog — Ashmolean AN1923.444; CDLI P265876 (CBS 10673) — Berossus in I. P. Cory, Ancient Fragments (1832); Josephus, Antiquities I.3 — C. L. Woolley, Ur of the Chaldees (1929); S. N. Kramer, Expedition 9.4 (1967) — A. E. Aksu et al., GSA Today 12.5 (2002); L. G. Collins & D. F. Fasold, J. Geoscience Education 44 (1996) — J. Geoghegan, Bible Odyssey (SBL); G. J. Wenham, Vetus Testamentum 28 (1978) — J. Day, "The Mesopotamian Origin of the Biblical Flood Story," TheTorah.com (2020) — BioLogos (2023); N. Osanai (2005) and J. Morris (1990), Answers in Genesis ⚠️ A NOTE ON THE EVIDENCE: ancient dates are given as ranges, and they are the dates of the copies that survive, not of the stories themselves. Genesis is dated by its sources, as scholars reconstruct them, not by a surviving copy. Museum classifications quoted in the video are the current catalog descriptions. The tablet that describes the boat is privately owned and known here through its decipherer's published description; any converted measurement is our arithmetic. Reenactments are made with AI tools and marked RECONSTRUCTION on screen. Narration is AI-generated. Research, script and editing are by this channel, in good faith, for education. 📜 Before the Doctrine traces where a Bible text, doctrine or belief actually came from, with the date and the document. For Christians and for the curious, without a sermon and without mockery. 🔔 Subscribe for the next investigation. Shared details can mean borrowing, a shared memory of real floods, or a common older tradition behind both texts. After seeing the tablets, which reading do you find strongest, and why? CREDITS (Wikimedia Commons): O. S. M. Amin, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Flood Tablet, Smith portrait, Shuruppak, Ur, Assyrian reliefs); Mike Peel, CC BY-SA 4.0; SpeakingArch, CC BY-SA 4.0; Onceinawhile, CC BY-SA 4.0; Zunkir, CC BY-SA 4.0; M.atkinsonross, CC BY-SA 4.0; Gts-tg, CC BY-SA 4.0; Paul Hudson, CC BY 2.0; David Stanley, CC BY 2.0; AVRAMGR, CC BY-SA 4.0; Armen Manukov, CC BY-SA 3.0; Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0; Serouj Ourishian, CC BY-SA 4.0; Wikkiwooki, CC BY-SA 4.0; Irek i Kasia, CC BY 4.0; Mfikretyilmaz, CC BY 3.0. Leningrad Codex: B. E. Zuckerman / West Semitic Research Project. Matson Collection, Library of Congress. Other archive images: public domain or CC0.