Atra-Hasis

Atra-Hasis (Akkadian: 𒀜𒊏𒄩𒋀, romanized: Atra-ḫasīs) is an 18th-century BC Akkadian epic, recorded in various versions on clay tablets,^[1] named for its protagonist, Atrahasis ('exceedingly wise').^[2] The Atra-Hasis tablets include both a cosmological creation myth and one of three surviving Babylonian flood myths. The name "Atra-Hasis" also appears, as a king of Shuruppak in the times before a flood, on one of the Sumerian King Lists.

The oldest known copy of the epic tradition concerning Atrahasis^[i] can be dated by colophon (scribal identification) to the reign of Hammurabi’s great-grandson, Ammi-Saduqa (1646–1626 BC). However, various Old Babylonian dialect fragments exist, and the epic continued to be copied into the first millennium BC.^[3]^: 8–15

The story of Atrahasis also exists in a later Assyrian dialect version, first rediscovered in the Library of Ashurbanipal, though its translations have been uncertain due to the artifact being in fragmentary condition and containing ambiguous words. Nonetheless, its fragments were first assembled and translated by George Smith as The Chaldean Account of Genesis, the hero of which had his name corrected to Atra-Hasis by Heinrich Zimmern in 1899.

In 1965, Wilfred G. Lambert and Alan Millard^[4] published many additional texts belonging to the epic, including an Old Babylonian copy (written c. 1650 BC) which is the most complete recension of the tale to have survived. These new texts greatly increased knowledge of the epic and were the basis for Lambert and Millard’s first English translation of the Atrahasis epic in something approaching entirety.^[3] A further fragment was recovered in Ugarit.

^ Bottéro, Jean. 2000. Ancestor of the West: Writing, Reasoning, and Religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226067155. p. 40.
^ Helle, Sophus (2021-10-26). Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-26259-9.
^ ^a ^b Lambert, Wilfred G., and Alan R. Millard. 1999 [1969]. Atrahasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. London: Eisenbrauns. ISBN 1-57506-039-6.
^ Lambert, Wilfred G., and Alan Millard. 1965. Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum. London.

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[1] Bottéro, Jean. 2000. Ancestor of the West: Writing, Reasoning, and Religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226067155. p. 40.

[2] Helle, Sophus (2021-10-26). Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-26259-9.

[:0-4] Lambert, Wilfred G., and Alan R. Millard. 1999 [1969]. Atrahasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. London: Eisenbrauns. ISBN 1-57506-039-6.

[5] Lambert, Wilfred G., and Alan Millard. 1965. Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum. London.

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