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The Great Flood (Deluge)

The Deluge

majorattestedMesopotamian religionJudaismHinduism

The waters sent to un-make a world grown corrupt, and the single boat that carries the seed of life across them. The Mesopotamian flood of Utnapishtim — leaked to him through a reed wall by a god of wisdom — is a thousand years older than the Genesis telling it so closely resembles, and in the Book of Enoch the deluge is the sentence carried out on the world the fallen Watchers broke.

Reach88

Depth80

Influence75

Mystery73

✦Signature powerThe IdeaA pattern of thought that recurs across every age.

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Voices & connections

Figures bound to The Great Flood (Deluge), family and rivals within the myth, and the thinkers and writers who shaped how we know them.

Book of Enochmentioned in Epic of Gilgameshmentioned in Utnapishtimassociated with The Watchersassociated with Enochassociated with

Relics & objects

Sacred and cursed things that belong to the world of The Great Flood (Deluge).

The AmritaSacred The Forbidden FruitCursed The Golden CalfCursed Tablets of the LawSacred Ark of the CovenantSacred

Read the story

Illustrated chapters where The Great Flood (Deluge) appears. Start reading in a click.

Illustrated storyGilgamesh, Who Saw the DeepThe oldest epic on earth: a tyrant king is given a wild man for a friend, loses him to the one enemy no king can fight, and walks off the edge of the world to un-learn death. The Flood survivor tells him the truth, a snake steals the consolation prize, and he comes home to the wall of Uruk with empty hands and the story itself — which turned out to be the immortality.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Churning of the OceanCursed into weakness, the gods cannot win immortality by force — so they invite their enemies to help churn it out of the Ocean of Milk, with a mountain for a churning-rod, the serpent king for a rope, and Vishnu as the tortoise underneath it all. What rises first is not nectar but Halahala, the poison of everything, and Shiva must drink it and hold it in his throat forever. The nectar comes last, and is won by a single enchanting glance.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Descent of InannaThe oldest descent story ever written, four thousand years old: Inanna, Queen of Heaven, turns her ear to the Great Below and walks through the seven gates of the dead. At each gate a garment of her power is stripped away, until she stands naked before her sister Ereshkigal — and is hung on a hook. Her rescue costs a head for a head, and her eye falls on the consort who did not mourn her.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe WatchersFrom the Book of Enoch: two hundred angels set to watch over humankind descend instead on Mount Hermon, bind themselves by a mutual oath, take wives, teach the forbidden arts — metallurgy, sorcery, the reading of stars — and father the giants. The scribe Enoch is sent to write their judgment. The oldest fall-of-angels story ever written down.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Sleeper in ClayThe Gnostic Genesis: the Archons shape Adam as a trap for the light, the blind god breathes his stolen inheritance into the clay, and the copy stands up greater than its makers. The garden, the tree, the serpent who tells the truth — the oldest story in the world, told from the point of view of the spark.Begin reading →