ARCHAEOLOGY: Nippur Flood Tablet

"During the last decade of the nineteenth century, the University of Pennsylvania conducted a number of archaeological digs in the ancient Babylonian city of Nippur. Among the remains of the temple library, they found a tiny tablet fragment containing another account of the Flood. It was translated by Hermann Hilprecht, an expert Assyriologist, and was found to agree with Genesis remarkably in its details. It speaks of a deluge that would destroy all life, and how God commanded the building of a great ship in which the builder, his family and animals were to be preserved.

The Nippur tablet (c. 2100 BC) with Hilprecht’s translation below. The words in square brackets are not decipherable in the text, but were added by Hilprecht according to the context.
(2)……[the confines of heaven and Earth I] will loosen
(3)……[a deluge will I make, and] it shall sweep away all men together;
(4)……[but seek thou l]ife before the deluge cometh forth;
(5)……[For over all living beings], as many as there are, I will bring overthrow, destruction, annihilation
(6)……Build a great ship and
(7)……total height shall be it structure.
(8)……it shall be a houseboat carrying what has been saved of life.
(9)……with a strong deck cover (it).
(10)….[The ship] which thou shalt make
(11)….[into it br]ing the beast of the field, the birds of heaven,
(12)….[and the creeping things, two of everything] instead of a number,
(13)….and the family …
In Genesis 6:16, God commanded Noah to make the Ark with a roof and a door. Line 9 states that the vessel was to be covered with a strong deck. In line 8, the word Hilprecht translates as “houseboat” signifies a boat with a door and is closely related to an old Semitic word meaning ‘ark’, a chest or box in which something can be carried safely. An alternative translation of line 8 was given by the assyriologist, Alexander Heidel: “The same [ship] shall be a giant boat, and its name shall be ‘Preserver of Life’”. The word translated “Life” is napishtim. In the Atrahasis account of the Flood, Noah is given the title Ut-napishtim, meaning “Man of Life”, perhaps referring to his life-preserving role.

The Nippur Flood tablet is kept at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and is designated CBS 13532. According to the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.ucla.edu), it is assigned to the Early Old Babylonian period and is dated to 2000–1900 BC. Its antiquity, however, is subject to some controversy. Although some consider a very early date plausible others would assign the tablet to a later period, possibly 1700 BC, fifteenth century BC, 1300 BC or even as late as 1000 BC. All these estimates, however, predate the Jewish exile by centuries, confuting the claim that the biblical account of the Flood was derived from Babylonian myths during this period." CMI

And the waters prevailed,

and were increased greatly upon the earth;

and the ark went upon the face of the waters.

Genesis 7:18