Michael Siemon
Sep-28-93 06:23PM
Mediocre Flood

(Warren Vonroeschlaub) writes:

> Were there any mediocre floods in the appropriate area some time
> between,say, the founding of civilization and the first known
> writing of the oral tradition?

Definitely.  The Euphrates/Tigris plain has been subject to disastrous
flooding since the earliest settlements there (quite late, in the pre-
history of the Near East, incidentally.)  There were several major
incidents in the cultures immediately preceding the emergence of history
in the Early Dynastic II period, not only of cities destroyed, but of
major shifts of power becuase of shifting water courses.  There are
some comments about all this in Hans Nissen's excellent book _The Early
History of the Near East_ (or something quite close to that; I think it's
a University of Chicago book, and is fairly recent.)  However, there is
*not* anything which came even close to a major wipe-out of all or many
cities at once, despite some extreme claims by Wooley about Ur.  I quoted
some comments by Seton Lloyd and Georges Roux (_Ancient Iraq_) on this,
not long ago on talk.religion.misc.  The substance of that article follows:
------
As it turns out, the discussion I was thinking of in Roux is supplemented
in Seton Lloyd's _The Archaeology of Mesopotamia_, revised edition 1984,
Thames & Hudson.  Let me quote from that first; from p. 93ff:

      "One intial problem concerned the date and significance of
      'the Flood', which figures so prominently in Sumerian tradition
      and whose memory has indeed been bequeathed to ourselves through
      the medium of Hebrew scriptures.  The archaeological evidence in
      this connection was unfortunately extremely equivocal.  Great
      floods were a commonplace of Mesopotamian history until quite
      recent times; and it was therefore less than surprising to find
      that, in deep soundings at relevant Sumerian sites, clean strata
      of water-borne sand or clay appeared in stratigraphical contexts
      which varied in time from the 'Ubaid period at Ur to the end of
      the Early Dynastic phase at Kish.  At Farah (Shuruppak), however,
      a stratum of this sort occurs at the end of Early Dynastic I, and
      in this single case it could, as we shall now see, be cited
              ------ [emphasis added]
      (without much conviction) as supporting evidence for an inference
      from the Sumerian textual evidence.

      "Where the king-list is concerned, there can no longer be any
      doubt that the semi-historical epoch, represented by a succession
      of 'rulers before the Flood', must be equated with the archaeo-
      logical series defined as 'Early Dynastic I'.  The individual
      names of these 'rulers' are of little interest, since only the
      last to be listed has any historical significance.  And here there
      is a connection of some importance with an episode in the Epic of
      Gilgamesh, when its hero made a journey to consult Utnapishtim,
      the Babylonian Noah, about the secret of eternal life.  It had
      always been a matter of some surprise that this individual should
      receive no mention in the king-list, where the last name before
      'the Flood' appeared as Ubartutu, a ruler of Shuruppak.  In another
      version of the Deluge story, however, its hero is given the alter-
      native name Ziusudra, and a surviving fragment of the text makes
      it clear that he was the son of Ubartutu.  The implication here
      that Ziusudra and Gilgamesh were contemporaries is unfortunately
      refuted by the fact that the former was deified after the Flood,
      and was accordingly already a god when Gilgamesh met him.

Lloyd goes on to discuss further synchronisms of Gilgamesh, Agga of Kish,
and Mesannipadda of Ur and concludes

      "we are safe in dating all three kings to the third phase of the
      Early Dynastic period, perhaps between 2650 and 2550 B.C.  Between
      the Flood and Gilgamesh, we are now left with a period of time
      (computed by Mallowan at about 100 years), correpsonding archaeo-
      logically with Early Dynastic II.  Many of the kings' names alloted
      to this period are either Semitic intrusions or recognizable divin-
      ities; but two of them have proved historical.  The first of these
      is Enmebaragisi, father to Agga of Kish, whose name has been signi-
      ficantly found in an Early Dynastic II setting at one of the Diyala
      sites.  The other is Enmerkar of Erech, subject of a very early
      Sumerian epic, who appeas in the Greek version of the king-list as
      grandfather of Gilgamesh.  With these two figures now authenticated,
      our line of enquiry is rapidly approaching its _terminus post quem_
      in the person of Ziusudra, the Babylonian Noah."

Roux, _Ancient Iraq_, 2nd edition 1980, Pelican Books, is rather less author-
itative.  His discussion (pp. 110ff) quotes a lot of the flood tradition as
it was unearthed in the late 19th century, and then goes on to say:

      "Quite naturally, the question arose: are there traces of such a
      cataclysm in Mesopotamia?

      "The first and, so far, the only archaeologist to answer positively
      was the late Sir Leonard Woolley.  Between 1929 and 1934, in the
      course of his brilliant excavations at Ur, Woolley sank several
      deep 'test pits' near the wall of the inner city, within the area
      of the famous 'Royal Cemetery' (Early Dynastic period).  Having
      crossed several occupation levels, he came upon 'eleven feet of
      clean, water-laid silt' practically free from remains of any kind.
      Immediately above and below this sterile level were potsherds and
      various objects pertaining to the Ubaid culture and, at the bottom
      of the pits, the virgin soil.  'Eleven feet of silt,' reasoned the
      archaeologist, 'would probably mean a flood no less than 25 feet
       deep; in the flat, low-lying land of Mesopotamia a flood of that
      depth would cover an area about 300 miles long and 100 miles across.'
      There was therefore evidence of 'an inundation unparalleled in any
      later period of Mesopotamian history', and the flood which at Ur
      had submerged the settlement of the Ubaid period was boldly equated
      with the Flood with a captial F, the biblical Deluge.  ...

      "This was almost too good to be true, and no one but Woolley in
      scientific circles took the 'discovery' very seriously, for neither
      the extent nor indeed the reality of a flood can be deduced from
      the depth of mud deposited in a limited area.  According to Woolley's
      theory, the surface covered by the Flood would have encompassed
      practically the whole of southern Iraq.  Yet Eridu, only fifteen
      miles from Ur and lying somewhat lower, has yielded no trace what-
      soever of a flood.  Layers of silt, it is true, were found on various
      sites, but they vary widely in thickness as well as in chronological
                 ---------------------------------------------------------
      position.  The 'flood level' of Kish, for instance, belongs to the
      Early Dynastic and not to the Ubaid period, and the same applies to
      the thin alluvial deposits found at Uruk, Lagash and Ut-napishtim's
      own city, Shuruppak.  All these 'sterile' levels have been interpre-
      ted as local inundations rather than traces of a _general_ flood.
      We may therefore conclude that archaeological excavations in Iraq
      have afforded no evidence of a cataclysmic Deluge."
                    -----------------------------------
--
Michael L. Siemon     "Will you serve God with words of fraud?
mls@panix.com          For His sake speak deceit?
    - or -             Him do a favor? Play advocate to God!
mls@ulysses.att.com    What if He searches you through?" Job 13:7-9