Before Noah: Utnapishtim and the First Great Flood

Utnapishtim tells his story to Gilgamesh on the far side of the Waters of Death. It begins in the city of Shuruppak, on the banks of the Euphrates, in a time when the gods had decided to flood the earth. The god Ea cannot bring himself to tell his favorite mortal directly — that would violate the divine oath of secrecy. So he speaks to the reed wall of Utnapishtim's house. He tells the wall. Utnapishtim listens.

He is told to build a boat of a precise description: six decks, divided into nine sections, sealed inside and out with bitumen. He is to load it with the seed of all living things. He tells his neighbors he is building because the god Enlil has driven him from the city — this part at least is true — and that he must sail to the bottom of the ocean. He loads his family, his craftsmen, the wild and tame beasts, and all his silver and gold.

The storm comes. Even the gods are terrified — they crouch against heaven's wall like dogs. The goddess Ishtar weeps at the destruction she consented to. For six days and seven nights, wind and flood and darkness rule the earth. On the seventh day, the sea calms. Every human being has returned to clay.

Utnapishtim opens a hatch. He weeps. He finds a ledge of mountain — Mount Nimush, not Ararat — and runs the boat aground. He waits seven days. He sends out a dove; it returns, having found nowhere to land. He sends a swallow; it returns. He sends a raven; the raven does not return.

He opens the boat. He makes an offering. The gods — famished, since the sacrifices of human worship have been silenced by the flood — swarm around the offering like flies.

Then the god Enlil arrives, furious. Who survived? Ea argues: you should not have drowned everything — you should have used targeted punishments. Enlil, mollified, touches Utnapishtim and his wife on the forehead: You were mortal. Now you and your wife shall be like gods. He sends them to the mouth of the rivers, the end of the earth, to live forever.

And this is the gift Gilgamesh came for. Not any plant, not any secret — just the terrible knowledge that immortality was given once, arbitrarily, to a man who didn't ask for it, and will not be given again.