The Flood Myth

Thousands of years before the story of Noah and the Ark, people in ancient Mesopotamia were already telling tales of a devastating divine flood. Written into the Epic of Atrahasis, this ancient story describes a man chosen to survive catastrophe by building a great boat and preserving life from destruction. Today, Tristan Hughes is joined by Sophus Helle to explore this legend from ancient Babylonian folklore. What does the story of Atrahasis reveal about ancient Babylonian beliefs? How similar is it to the biblical account of Noah? And why did the memory of a great flood become one of humanity’s most enduring stories? MORE Epic of Gilgamesh: Rise of Enkidu Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000643958083 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/2d2jRbieaOFEKlH0ckFeKB?si=_ZAc6ubzSAGBIGs4zTW9Bg Babylon's Epic of Creation Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000684877877 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6GSROyz9JstV5rUaxRjQic?si=feupdzNPSMeQdXTQ_K1C7Q We're going on *TOUR* to Australia and New Zealand! - grab your tickets here https://fane.com.au/whats-on/an-evening-with-tristan-hughes/. Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week PLUS early access, ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 0:44Speaker 01

  When the gods were man, they bore the toil, carried the load. The load of the gods was great. The toil was heavy, the misery too much.

• 1:06Tristan Hughes?

  Those are the opening lines to one of the greatest epics of antiquity, performed to crowds of people in the streets of Babylon and beyond some 4,000 years ago. A story about their creation, how humans came into existence, and how they were living in a world that had followed a divine flood. We know the epic today as the Atreides, named after its central character, a man who survived this divine flood by building a great boat, taking some companions with him, and two of every animal. Sound familiar?

• 1:47Tristan Hughes?

  This Babylonian epic has many striking similarities to the biblical flood of Noah and his ark. And today, we're going to shine a light on it. Welcome to The Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of the oldest flood myth known from anywhere in the world. Our guest is Dr. Sophos Hel, a writer, translator, and expert on ancient Babylonian literature.

• 2:23Tristan Hughes?

  Sophus, welcome back to the show.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  So great to be back. I really enjoyed being on the ancients the first two times and I'm so delighted to be here again.

• 2:32Tristan Hughes?

  Well, we've done the epic of Gilgamesh and Babylon's epic of creation. And this is another epic, isn't it? Can we say that this is the, this is the original flood myth story?

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Well, it's one of the oldest flood myths and in my opinion, the greatest. And we'll get to talking about why in a moment. But yeah, this is yet another Babylonian epic. It's also one of the earliest Babylonian epics. So we're actually long before the composition of the Enuma Elish, this epic of creation we talked about. And also before the standard Babylonian Gilgamesh that we talked about. So this is really one of the great first classics of Babylonian literature.

• 3:13Tristan Hughes?

  And I think as we'll see as we explore key parts of the story. It can't be missed. You can't miss it. There are clear inspirations on the later, the flood story from the Hebrew Bible.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. And the flood story also appears in Gilgamesh as we talked about in that episode. But actually, recent research has shown that the flood story we see in Athrahasis that we're talking about today is closer to the version we find in Genesis than the one in Gilgamesh is. There's still a lot of like open questions about how exactly the transmission happened, but it's worth keeping in mind.

• 3:47Tristan Hughes?

  Okay. So how far back in time are we going with this flood myth story?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So as I said, like, we're really at the beginning of Babylonian literature. So we are in a period known as the Old Babylonian period. And that basically means the beginning of the second millennium BCE. It's really hard to say when this poem that we're looking at today was first composed. But we have a set of manuscripts, so a set of clay tablets on which it was written down that are just like really high quality. So these are like, you know, there are other copies of this text, but we're especially reliant on these texts that were copied by a man named Ippic Aya when he was sort of like at the equivalent of the end of his university education. And he copied these tablets in the year sixteen hundred and thirty five BCE.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  So again, we can't exactly say when it was composed, but often when we sort of try to place this text in time, we use these manuscripts by Ibig Aya to, you know, give it a sort of specific context. And he lived in the city of Sippar, very close to what is today Baghdad. And yeah, as I said, sixteen thirty five.

• 4:53Tristan Hughes?

  So this, this is what I love with Mesopotamian epics, with Mesopotamian literature, is that you can have these copies surviving that are almost four thousand years old. And look at the writing today, because it's baked into clay. You have those rather than, let's say, later like the Iliad and the Odyssey or or later texts where it's kind of little bits of fragments of papyrus that has survived. You have the clay tablets surviving from when that figure wrote it down almost four thousand years ago. That just always blows my mind.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And I agree, like, it's part of what makes clay this this wonderful material. And I really feel like sometimes it gives us the sense of intimacy with these ancient people. Because not only do we have the Atrahases epic by Ibig Aya, but we can actually follow him through his education. We can see the other texts he was studying in his quote unquote university degree. And so we can sort of reconstruct what mindset he might have been in as he was copying this this text, which is really exciting.

• 5:50Tristan Hughes?

  Mindset as well. So you get indications into the the manner, the nature, the mind of the copier, the writer down as well.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we know that he was being taught by his father and we can sort of see the other texts that his father is choosing for him. And a lot of them have to do with like the end of an era. A lot of them have to do with sort of like death and tragedy. But also with like words and, you know, what it means to to be a good servant of the god Enki, this this trickster creative god that we're going to talk about a lot today.

• 6:20Tristan Hughes?

  And the name that they gave to this myth, is it, they call it the Atrahases, do they?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  So no, that's actually a modern title.

• 6:28Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  And we name it after its main human character. As we're going to see, there are three main characters in this text. Two gods and one human, and the human is called Atrahasis. Their name for it, and this sort of launches us straight into the the story. Because they're the Babylonians called their poems by the first line. And it's, you know, one of the best examples of this. It's Inuma Ilu Awilum, which means when gods were man. Which is just a fantastic opening title, to be honest. And and it then goes on to explain what it means with this rather puzzling sentence. When gods were man, which is that in the beginning gods were like men are today in that they were burdened with work. So if I can just read like, uh, opening lines of the text.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  It goes, when gods were men weighed down by work, they bore the burden. The burden of the gods was great. Their work was heavy, their torment long. And it then goes on to explain that it's not all the gods that are working. There are two classes of gods. There is the Anuna and the Igigi. Now, the Anuna and the Igigi, those words mean different things in different Babylonian texts. It's easy to get confused. But in this text, the Anuna are the gods of heaven and the Igigi are the working gods. And it literally tells us that the Anuna gods are idle. It uses that word. So they're quite literally an idle class. They are the power holders and the Igigi are the working class of the gods.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  And so the the text begins with setting up this this class conflict that is actually going to power the rest of the myth. Because the first thing that happens, the first episode is a labor strike.

• 8:08Tristan Hughes?

  A labor strike, that's amazing.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, where the Igigi rise up in rebellion against the Anuna. They put down their tools and they say, we are being mistreated. Our working conditions are awful. Genesis is is really hard work. Because the Igigi have to dig out the riverbeds and they have to build the mountains. And, you know, after centuries of doing this, they're they're exhausted. And so they they launched this labor strike, which is just a crazy thing.

• 8:35Tristan Hughes?

  The work that those lesser gods are doing in this story, it isn't, you know, constructing a great building or anything like that. It is literally building geography, creating the world as we know it.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly right. And I think it's, you know, you have a lot of other creation myths, including in Uma Ailish that we talked about, but you know, I'm sure you talked about all sorts of other creation myths on the podcast, where like creation often seems this very sort of like magical or perhaps sometimes instantaneous thing. And this, this is a myth that really looks at like, what is, what is the labor involved in, in creation? What, what, you know, what physical work does it take to, to make the world? I just find that fascinating.

• 9:16Tristan Hughes?

  And so, and before we go on with the story, you read out that lovely part right at the beginning there. And it, I mean, straight away, the wording itself sounded very, quite beautiful, quite poetic. And is there a particular style in which this, this epic should be delivered?

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. So again, just to, to flag this fact that we're at the beginning of the literary history of, of Babylonian literature. And in the early periods, it's quite pared down. The lines are very short. The words tend to be very simple. But at the same time, it's very musical. There's a lot of like alliteration and play on words and that kind of thing. But, you know, the lines of later texts can be almost twice as long and actually, sometimes three times as long as those at the hases. So it's a very sort of like, yeah, condensed literary form. I find it very, very beautiful, to be honest, which is also why I've pushed myself to convey it as well as I could in the.

• 10:11Tristan Hughes?

  I mean, and can we imagine it being, being spoken aloud in Akkadian or whatever the language was at the time to a room full of people by someone who knew the text or who could read the text?

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And so I think at the hases is actually a really good example of how these ancient texts in, in the Babylonian culture would have circulated. And we tend, I think in part based on the Greece, Greek model, to assume that there is sort of this duality that either texts are circulating in, in written form, or they're circulating in a spoken form. But at the hases makes it quite clear that it has a dual form. So the very last line, and we'll get to sort of the context for that later, but the very last line is just the word listen, which is being spoken to, to the audience. Listen. And so that, you know, makes it very clear that this, you know, and a text actually calls itself a song as well, a samaro, which means song, yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  And at the same time, this is also an object made of clay, you know, our Ippikaya copying his manuscripts in the, in sixteen thirty five, you know, he's working with clay. And as we'll see, this is a text that sort of brings clay and sound together in interesting ways. So you can, you should imagine it like circulating in two forms at once.

• 11:24Tristan Hughes?

  So we have, as you've highlighted at the beginning, these two levels of gods and the

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:29Tristan Hughes?

  lesser gods, shall we say, well, they're the workforce, they're the labor.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:33Tristan Hughes?

  Building the world, creating. And as you say, there's a strike. So how does this strike go? Lesser gods against the higher gods. It feels like, it doesn't feel like it's going to be very fortunate for the strikers.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it actually is, which is again, one of the crazy things about it, like the, the revolution works. So the, the Gigi are being led by a god called Wei.

• 11:56Tristan Hughes?

  Wei.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  And just to quote another bit, Wei says to, to his brothers, the, the striking Nigigi, he says, now cry war, let us stir battle and strife. The gods heard his words, they set fire to their tools, they set fire to their spades, they burned their burden. Which I think is also very dramatic. And then they, they marched to the house of the leader of the heavenly gods, the god called Enlil, the king of the gods. And they sort of surround his house. And yeah, they demand better working conditions. And it literally says, you know, the workers revolted, which is, yeah, I don't know. That's part of why the text feels so bizarrely modern, even though so very, very old.

• 12:39Tristan Hughes?

  I'm guessing Enlil, he's not too pleased to be risen by these people who he expected to be working.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Nope, not at all.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  And Enlil is like famously angry. It's like one of his main character traits and Atrahass is, is no exception. I actually think it really was one of the texts that helped establish this perception of, of Enlil as a god who is just very trigger happy. He's, you know, yeah, easy, easily angered, especially when he is being woken. And that's exactly what happens. He's woken up and he, you know, is furious. He first wants to isolate who the leader of the rebellion is. So that he can sort of quite literally cut off the head of the rebellion. But the geeky, they have a real Spartacus moment and they say, all of us called for this strike. And they actually say something very interesting when they have their Spartacus moment.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  They say, every one of us called for this war, we formed our assembly in the ditch. And the reason that that's important is that there is this concept in Babylonian mythology of the assembly of the gods. So all major decisions in Babylonian mythology are taken in this assembly. Like the, the, it's a polytheistic system. There's many gods and the gods meet in their, in their council, in their puchur. Uh, as it's called, the puchurili, and then they make decisions. And this is according to Atrahases, the first of these assemblies takes place in the ditch and its first decision is a labor strike.

• 14:10Tristan Hughes?

  Yes.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  So the use of that phrase, we formed our assembly in the ditch. It might not mean much to a, to a modern audience, but in its original context, it's actually quite a striking phrase. But yeah, so Enlil, you know, he, he can't uh isolate the, the leader. Uh, and so instead he says, well, let's scrap this universe and start another one. Like he literally says, you know, let's just rewrite the rules of the cosmos because he's sort of that angry. But that's when we get the intervention of the god Enki, also called Eya. And I think we've talked about Enki before on the podcast.

• 14:45Tristan Hughes?

  I think we, we almost certainly have. Give us like, um, so Enlil, we should be thinking almost kind of this king of the gods, maybe Zeus or Jupiter like, should we think, just as a comparison?

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Um, yes, but somewhat less powerful, much less omnipotent than Zeus.

• 15:00Tristan Hughes?

  And, and Enki, more of a trickster, more of a, I'm just trying to think of like more Athena like, or I don't know. Um, or a very direct comparison, but, but another important god, but known for their cunning, is it?

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, like Athena in that he's known for his cunning, but a god of the water.

• 15:17Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  So he has this underground lake that he lives in. And yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, I feel like Athena is often doing Zeus's bidding, but I guess you'll know more about that than me.

• 15:28Tristan Hughes?

  It's difficult to make, yeah, to cross compare. Yeah, of course.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  But like, Enki is more often subverting Enlil's rule than helping Enlil's rule. And yeah, I think that's the, again, the Athrahasus is a great example of that. Because just when Enlil is about to say, well, you know, scrap this cosmos, Enki intervenes and he intervenes on the side of the strike. And he says, well, we've heard them complain for a long time and we should take that seriously. And so Enki proposes a solution to the strike and that's us. We are the solution. We are the compromise. He says, let's create a new creature, humanity, and they will then take on the labor of the gods. And, um, you know, our work, our daily work is sort of presented as an extension of Genesis, right?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  So like in the same way that the gods dug the rivers, we dig canals to, you know, sort of perfect where the water is going, right? To guide it the rest of the way. And in the same way that they build mountains, we build cities, you know, and we build temples in those cities. And so I think, you know, there is no clear cut line between nature and culture in Babylonian mythology. But you can sort of have the equivalent of that be, you know, that the gods, they made what we would call nature. And humans, we sort of continue that creation, but we make, you know, the human environment, in a sense.

• 16:51Tristan Hughes?

  And it's not completely random to pick out canals, because I guess we should remind us that in Mesopotamia, that the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, these great cities of Mesopotamia. Yeah, they were renowned for their, their management of water and the creation of these beautiful canals, right?

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And yeah, people should really stick a pin in that point, because like this, this idea of the management of water is going to come back later in a major way.

• 17:15Tristan Hughes?

  But also this idea that humans, they are created to work. So this idea, I think you also see with Adam and Eve as well and the like, with the creation stories. Humans, right from the get go, you've got to go out and toil. You've got to go out and be a labor force.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and as I said, I think part of what I find interesting here is that it really sees our work as an extension of divine creation. And, you know, I think, I think the text has a point. Because like the way that I put it in my book about Atahases is that all work is world making. And I think that's also true today. You know, the way that we make the human world, the world that we live in is through labor. You know, whether that's delivering packages or making podcasts or building buildings or whatever it might be, you know, like we make the world that we know through, through labor. And I think Atahases sees that with a lot of clarity. But I think it's also important to emphasize that, you know, on the one hand, it does make us into, you know, what I call holy robots.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Like, we have to feed the gods, we have to, you know, bring them offerings, we have to, you know, give them grain and beer and incense song, you know. But on the other hand, like, the text doesn't only give us the, the burden of labor from the gods, it also gives us something else. And this, this is where things become a bit technical, but there's a lot of puns in the, in this passage that sort of describe what also happens. And so, for example, the name of this rebel leader, Wei, is written with a sign that also means ear, and ear also means intelligence. And Enki explains that he will have to sacrifice one of the gods, and that god will be Wei, and use his blood to create humankind.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  And when Enki says this, he says that we will sacrifice the god who had the idea, meaning the idea for the rebellion. But the word for idea in that context, temu, another beautiful Babylonian word, temu, not to be confused with, with, with the modern temu, as it were. But this idea of temu doesn't mean just the idea specifically for the rebellion, it can also mean something like consciousness. And so, the rebel leader is sacrificed, and his blood is then used to create humankind. But also, we inherit his sort of rebellious instinct, and his idea for the rebellion becomes our... Consciousness, like that's sort of the divine blood in us.

• 19:44Tristan Hughes?

  To the spirit of, yeah, the spirit of way lives on inside us, that idea, is it?

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly right. And the text expresses this rather beautifully here. It says, forever after, let us hear the drum. From the flesh of the gods, let a spirit remain. And let it make the living know its sign, so as not to forget, let a spirit remain. And it's then, you know, shown that the spirit is ways, spirit living on inside us. But I particularly like this line of let us hear the drum, because that's, that's our heartbeat, you know? And it's that drum inside us that is constantly reminding us of, of this, you know, rebel god who lives on in our blood, in our minds.

• 20:23Tristan Hughes?

  That's quite something. Okay, ways the, the heartbeat. Okay, but ways out of the picture, ways sacrificed himself for us, for humans. And then, Saphus, how do we get to these first humans? What does the story tell us about the earliest humans?

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Well, it actually has a very long and detailed description of them, and that brings us to our second main character. So our first main character is Enki. He's gonna be really a plot engine throughout the story, and he's this trickster god. But he needs a collaborator. He says, I cannot create humanity alone. And so he brings in the mother goddess. The mother goddess has roughly fifteen different names. But today, we're gonna use the name Mami. And Mami then takes the sort of living flesh, this living clay blood mixture that Enki has made, and actually shapes it into humanity. And Mami lays the design of the people, as the poem puts it. And what she designs in that moment is the system of procreation. She, she designs the system of reproduction.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  And so she, the mother goddess, has a very extended description of first making the genders, and then making mutual attraction, and then she invents sex. And she invents consent also, which is quite interesting, like it's actually repeatedly emphasized that these people who have sex must consciously choose one another, which is a great Akkadian word. And then they have sex and then she designs the process of pregnancy and childbirth and delivery and nursing and like it's a very long speech. Um. I think it goes on for almost a hundred lines in which the the mother goddess sort of lays out her vision for yeah, motherhood with each and every step that that entails. And so she's, you know, created essentially

• 22:04Speaker 02

  a perfect system where the gods can just get free labor forever and ever and ever and ever.

• 22:10Tristan Hughes?

  But no, no death at this point. It's just birth and creation. Okay.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Exactly right, because the mother goddess's perfect system has one big flaw in it, which is that she creates life and she creates the means for creating new life, but she does not create death. And that's that's the big problem here. Because then twelve hundred years pass and there's been no death. It seems to be that you can still sort of die of like premature causes. I think the best way to think about this is that you can still die if the god Erah kills you. An era can kill you with sickness and with war and like with murder and that kind of thing. But you don't die of of like old age. You can die in like era coming and snatching you in the various ways he does.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  But but you don't sort of, you know, there's no limit to your your lifespan. It just goes on and on and on. And after twelve hundred years, this has become a problem. And it's become a problem in the way that we've already met, because what it does is that it keeps Enlil awake.

• 23:11Tristan Hughes?

  This is the thing with Enlil, like some of the king of the gods, but at the end of the day, like the thing that really matters to him is getting his good night's sleep.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly right. And like, to be fair, it seems that he's not been able to sleep for centuries at this point. But still, the way that he puts it is as follows. Enlil heard their noise and said to the great gods, humanity's noise is too heavy for me. I cannot sleep for their roar. And you know, I think like this is often the the passage that that people most remark on when when I tell them the story of Atrahazes, because it just seems sillier than the Bible. Whereas this question of sin and all of that, but I honestly, I like those better, you know, I think in part because like sound plays such a role throughout the story, you know, we we heard that when Way is created,

• 24:04Speaker 02

  he becomes this drumbeat inside of us and then the lead up to the flood is sort of this, yeah, this sense of humanity's noise becoming louder and louder and louder. And then Enlil being kept awake by it. And then, as we're gonna see, the flood itself is an explosion of sound. And since we heard that this this text is a song, I actually think it's quite clever of it that it it lets the prime engine of the plot be sound, right? It's it's own, it's working with its own medium. And you can just sort of imagine this epic being performed and just becoming louder and louder itself, you know? So I think even though it seems a bit silly at first, I actually think it would have been very effective.

• 24:42Tristan Hughes?

  I think you're quite right. And actually, the more I think of it, I think I I think it's like almost a pantomime or, you know, kind of, I say, a live performance where you have the person reading it out, but maybe assisted by one or two people who are helping with the sound effects for those key parts of the story. And then all of a sudden, you can get more of a sense how this performance could well have what it could have looked like when it was being performed in a street in Babylon almost 4,000 years ago. That's cool.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And the drums resounding in the background when we hear that way becomes a drum.

• 25:13Tristan Hughes?

  So Enlil can't get some sleep. Does that lead to him directly thinking it's time for a genocide, quite frankly, or what's his next step?

• 25:22Speaker 02

  No, not yet. We're not at the genocide yet. And I think it's actually like, this is a really interesting. This is actually a really interesting aspect of a lot of these ancient epics is that a lot of them do depict a genocide, but often they show us sort of the way there. So if you think of the Iliad, there's this mounting tension between the the Greeks and the Trojans. And in in book six of the Iliad, you reach the tipping point. And that's when the Greeks begin to talk about killing all of them, not killing, you know, their Warriors, but literally killing the women and the children and the elders, right? And you'll see the same in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata. That there's a sort of sense of tensions mounting before you get to the full genocidal attack.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  And in the case of Atrahasis, Enlil makes three failed attempts at culling humanity before eventually resorting on the sort of final solution, which is the flood, right? But yeah, so and in between each of these three attempts, 1,200 years pass and there's a lot more humans and a lot more sound.

• 26:22Tristan Hughes?

  So these early attempts, they fail because humans, they have the spirit of way, the spirit of resistance, the spirit of kind of fighting back against even by what Enlil sent to try and get rid of them. Humans prove incredibly resilient to it.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And there is one man who possesses this this intelligence. You know, this arguably artificial intelligence.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  This created intelligence more than any of the other humans. And that's our third main character, and that's Atrahasis.

• 26:52Tristan Hughes?

  Atrahasis, okay.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Right. And his name literally means super intelligent. And and he uses that intelligence. I think the the intelligence in question, which is expressed with the word hasis, is very much the intelligence, not sort of of internal meditation, but very much the intelligence of being able to listen to others and being able to speak himself. And in in Atrahasis's case, that is especially his conversation with his god, Enki, the trickster god that we already met. And Atrahasis's skill is that he can he can talk with Enki and Enki talks with him, right? And it is by talking with the god of creativity that he again and again comes up with these creative solutions to foil Enki's plans.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  And those often involve manipulating the one tool that humanity has at their disposal, because the god have given the humans control over their food supply. Right, which might not have been the best idea. Because now the humans can withhold the food and they can also decide to give all their food offerings to one specific god. So when Enki tries to to send a disease, a pandemic, again, there are too many way too relatable, way too relatable things about Atrahasis, right? But but Enlil attempts a pandemic. And so the humans bring all of their offerings only to the god of disease. So nobody else gets any, all the other gods are starving and suddenly the god of disease

• 28:19Speaker 02

  is sitting there with all of these offerings and he literally feels ashamed, right? He feels, he feels embarrassed and so he he lets the the disease leave the land. And that's the first round of of plague. But eventually sort of Enlil catches on to what Enki and Atrahasis are doing. So he makes it still more difficult to for them to communicate with each other.

• 28:41Tristan Hughes?

  I I do have the idea of that that that god and that clever person, that extraordinary human figure, um, the conversations, because I mean, you do think of things like Odysseus and Athena or to them, because you know, these extraordinary figures from Greek mythology, these so-called heroes, you know, who are because they are a bit better as they're portrayed or a bit different to right to everyday figures. They have that connection with the gods and you have that similar theme here in this epic in Babylon. You know, with the figure of Atrahasis and the and the god Enki as well. It's funny how you can see parallels there.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. There are various culture heroes in in Babylonian mythology. You know, we've also looked at Gilgamesh, of course. But what I think interesting about the Atrahasis is that he's such an empty character. Like he is his intellect and nothing more. Like we learn almost nothing else about him, his personality. Or, you know, even like his his condition in life is unclear what his profession is. Um, is he a king? Is he a priest? Is he just a commoner? It's not, it's not fully certain. But and you know, I like to call him the exceptional everyman because I think we can really project ourselves into him because he is this empty character. But the one thing that he is is he is Atrahasis, he is super smart, right? He is is extra intelligent.

• 29:56Tristan Hughes?

  So let's get to the flood. I know there are a few other things that happen, but you cover them in detail in your books. I don't wanna, don't wanna give everything away. But but how do we get then to Enlil deciding, right? I need to do something different. We need a flood.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, unfortunately, the answer to that question is not fully clear because the the text is fragmentary. But I think we can sort of reasonably extrapolate from from what we know so far that it gets to a point where Enlil has again and again tried to foil. First of all, he's tried to call humanity. He's tried to foil Enkies and Atrahassas' schemes, and then he just has enough. And he says, okay, this is it. No more humans. I, you know, I'm sick of this cycle. It's been going on for three thousand six hundred years. Enough of this. And so he decides on, yeah, this this final solution. And, uh, you know, the text gives us like a lengthy treatment of the meeting of the gods, the assembly of the gods in which they decide to call the flood.

• 30:52Tristan Hughes?

  So another assembly. Okay, interesting.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Another assembly, exactly. And I think that's also really worth worth noting that Atrahassas has a lot of of reversals between the first and the second part. So first we get the creation of humanity in the first assembly. And then we get the destruction of humanity in the second assembly. And there are specific lines that are repeated from the first part and the second where they flip meaning. And, uh, you know, really tying the two parts together and establishing this sense of contrast. But yeah, so I mean, unfortunately, the the minutes of this meeting are lost because that that is the the description of that assembly is very fragmentary. But but that's what happens. The gods decide to to call the flood.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  And I think it's also very interesting that the text will repeatedly insist that Enlil subverted the, what we could call the sort of in quote unquote democratic process of the assembly, right? Like, he doesn't listen to everybody else in the assembly. And he really sort of forces his own agenda through, and it said that he confused the assembly, he subverted the assembly. So I think it's also a reminder that, and this is really a widespread trope in Babylonian literature, that if a leader stops listening to his assembly, pretty terrible things. Happen almost immediately. And Atrahasses and the story of the flood is a great example of that.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Like, the reason that the flood happened is that Enlil stopped listening to the other gods, stopped listening to his assembly and his advisors.

• 32:18Tristan Hughes?

  So that could be a reflection on Babylonian kingship and the council and the priests and the, the, all the people that would have been around to meet his court.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it's, it's, it's a story that's particularly appealing to the people like Ippigaya, our scribe, who is copying out this text as part of his university education. Because what is his job going to be? Well, it's going to be a professional advisor, right? So like, here is a myth, which is the crowning moment of his education that tells him, you know, there was once a time where universal disaster could have been avoided if, if the king of the gods had just listened to a person like you, you know? Like, that's, that's, that's a sort of.

• 32:55Tristan Hughes?

  What an ego boost. There you go. Yeah. So how is Atrahasses, how does he get word of this destruction decision?

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Well, at first it's very difficult because Enlil has ensured that Enki can't just do the same trick again. So he has imposed an oath of silence on, on all the gods. They've, they've all been sworn to secrecy. And this seems, and this is a bit my interpretation, but, you know, I'll present it and then you'll see whether you agree. But so it seems to be a Babylonian explanation of why we can't talk with the gods directly, right? And the Babylonians had a solution to their problem, which is to interpret the omens that the gods sent to them. And this story explains how that system came about because Enki can't just say to Atrahasses, this is what's about to happen.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  So he sends to him a series of omens, first in the form of a dream, but then Atrahasses can't understand that dream. And then in the form of these reeds. So, you know, Enki is living in this underground lake. So the reeds are like tiny pipes that he's sort of like, you know, piping up through Atrahasses's house, which is also made of reeds. Right? So it's like the whole house is talking to him. But this thing of, of communicating through objects, that's, that's an omen, you know? Like that's what an omen is. And the Babylonians, you know, they were obsessed with omens. They saw omens absolutely everywhere. And the story of the flood may have been been an explanation of why the gods communicate in this rather bizarre way, rather than just talking to us.

• 34:31Tristan Hughes?

  And so Enki manages to get word to Atrahasis through this manner, and what is he told to do?

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Well, uh, let me read you the passage.

• 34:40Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  So Enki speaks through the wall and says, uh, wall, listen to me, fence, heed my every word. Flee the house, build a boat, leave your stuff, save your life. And then he goes into a sort of lengthy description of of what this this ark, this boat is is supposed to look like. Um, how it is to be shaped, what its measurements are. And Atrahasis is told to take on board the seed of every living things. Uh, meaning in at least in the Bible's rendition, two of every kind of animals. And also the craftsmen of every kind of craft, so that humanity doesn't lose the the crafts that are the bedrock of our society. And Atrahasis is also allowed to take his his family.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  So slightly roomier boat than in the Bible, but but the same basic idea.

• 35:30Tristan Hughes?

  I remember talking to Irving thinking about this a couple of years ago, and and is it actually this idea that the boat was supposed to be round?

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Well, that's actually not as clear in Atrahasis. So Irving found another text. That has a more detailed description of the boat than what we see in Atrahasis. It's a little harder to sort of mentally reconstruct um the boat if you're just going by the Atrahasis description.

• 35:54Tristan Hughes?

  But it sounds like so Atrahasis is allowed to save a few more people than in the biblical story, but he can't save everyone. Is that true?

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and and he's clearly heartbroken about it. So he, you know, um, gets all the people of his city to to build this boat, because he only has a week before the flood is coming. It has to be a very big boat. And so, you know, he's truly opening the treasury. He is holding a big feast for all of his workers, but he knows that they're all going to die. And that is a pretty terrible psychological situation. And so at this feast, he is just overcome by emotions. And so the text says, they were eating, they were drinking, but he went in and he went out, could not sit and could not crouch. His heart was broken. He vomited gall. And yeah, I don't know. It's a tragedy.

• 36:45Tristan Hughes?

  That's like a last supper of beer and barley. And that's the that's the kind of the drink in the food, isn't it, that you should think of as well?

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly right.

• 36:52Tristan Hughes?

  And so the workers build the boat, they're not allowed on it.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:57Tristan Hughes?

  And then the flood comes. In the story, the flood comes straight away. Is that the idea?

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly right. Literally, right after the lines I I read right now, the next lines are, then the face of the weather change and Adad began to roar in the clouds. Adad being the the storm god.

• 37:13Tristan Hughes?

  And well, what happens? Take it away, Sophus.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So so we get this very traumatic description of the flood. Um. Again, sort of really emphasizes how loud the flood is. Which again, I I, you know, I can very easily imagine a skilled performer having a field day.

• 37:30Tristan Hughes?

  Tempestuous.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  We're recreating the, right, exactly right, with with recreating the sound of the flood. Um. But yeah, let me just read you a passage. Like battle disaster spread over the people. Brothers looked in vain for each other. Men all looked the same in the slaughter. The flood was bellowing like a bull. The winds wailed like an eagle's cry. The darkness was dense. The sun had gone, and the children of men became like flies. The gods grew afraid of the noise of the flood. They hid in heaven and took refuge in the open. They sat and wept.

• 38:08Tristan Hughes?

  It's very um uncontrolled. This is just sheer destruction at its maximum.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Exactly right. And that's one of the big differences from the biblical account, right? Like when in the Bible, you know, think what you will of the God of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. But, you know, he he at least knows what he's doing, right? He's he has control over the operation of the flood. In the Babylonian version, they they lose control over it immediately, you know? And I think it's it's partly also interesting to think about this in in class terms and, you know, I'm sorry to be sounding very sort of bark system, my analysis here, but but it does sort of reflect the structure of the text, you know? That the the revolt of the Yiggy in the beginning of the poem. Was these workers rising up against their masters? And the story of the flood is the inverse of that.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  And so it is the masters killing their workers, it's the gods killing humanity. And again, there's one of these lines sort of making that link. So earlier we heard that the Iggy were described as the workers revolted. And and here we're described, we hear the flood being described as the waters revolted. And so this is, you know, it sort of has again, an eerily modern resonance because it sort of describes catastrophic climate change as as class warfare from above. And again, I know that that sounds very Marxist, but I'm still trying to present the the the poem in in, you know, in terms that makes sense to this day. And I think it's kind of crazy how much Atrahassas allows for those modern parallels. It's part of why I'm so obsessed with the story.

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• 41:45Tristan Hughes?

  How long does the chaos last then? If these, very quickly, almost instantly, the waters, the floods, they can't be controlled by the gods as soon as they've issued it in. I mean, how long does this kind of uncontrolled chaos last?

• 41:59Speaker 02

  So it lasts for seven days and seven nights.

• 42:01Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  So it lasts for this very dramatic week. And then, at the end of it, the gods, they gather on a mountain, and they sort of begin to take stock of what's happened. And there's another very beautiful mirroring here, because we heard earlier about how the heartbeat is created. The heartbeat is created to be this regular reminder of the moment in which humanity was created. And likewise, the mother goddess, who is absolutely devastated at seeing humanity being destroyed, she creates a regular reminder to herself, so that she can remember what happened in the flood. And that's, again, what we see in the Bible, where it's the rainbow. But strangely, in Atahases, the rainbow

• 42:43Speaker 02

  is created by the mother goddess taking jeweled flies. So you know how flies have these shimmering wings? And she makes this, you know, cosmic necklace of jeweled flies and hangs it around her neck, and that becomes the rainbow. So yeah, the heartbeat and the rainbow are respectively these regular, rhythmical reminders of humanity's creation and our near-total destruction.

• 43:07Tristan Hughes?

  Gods like her goddesses, are they mourning the complete destruction of humanity at that time? Do they know that Atrahasses and his select few have actually survived aboard this boat?

• 43:18Speaker 02

  So they find out after the flood is over because Atrahasses does the Noah trick of sending out a series of birds and then finally, in this case, the crow finds the peak that is, you know, Mount Ararat in the Bible. And here it's, at least in the later Babylonian tradition, it's mountain Isirtu. But either way, the crow finds land and Atrahasses sets up an offering. And, you know, the offering really reveals the idiocy of the endless quote unquote plan, because, you know, he hadn't thought it through. Like, now that he had obliterated humanity, the gods starve. And because, again, the gods had given their

• 44:00Speaker 02

  servants, humanity, control over their food supply. And so the gods also revealed themselves to be dependent on humanity, because it's said that they had shrunk to the size of flies, and they're sort of swarming to Atrahasses's sacrifice because they've not eaten for a week. And so I think that's what the flood ultimately illustrates. It ultimately illustrates this bizarre balance of power in Babylonian cosmology between the gods and humanity, that the gods are dependent on us, but we're also very dependent on them, because they can just wipe us out, right? And so I think that's part of what this myth reveals. And as I said, it began with the sentence, inum a ilu a vilum, when gods were men, at a

• 44:43Speaker 02

  moment in time in which the gods are very much like humans, and now they have become very unlike each other. They're so powerful and we're not. But at the same time, much as we've become also very different, we remain very profoundly linked. They depend on us and we depend on them. That's what this sort of final meeting on the mountain. Reveals.

• 45:03Tristan Hughes?

  So is this the context for us getting to that, that, that third and final meeting, the post flood decision as to what is going to happen to humans?

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Right, exactly right. And what is going to happen to humans is the creation of death. And, and that is a sort of final supplement that, that brings the story to a close. Because we've had this sort of very dynamic story where each problem was resolved, but then the solution became the occasion for the new problem, right? So like, there was this labor strike that was solved with the creation of humanity, but that then became a problem because there were too many of us and that led to these, you know, famines and diseases and so on and so forth. And they was resolved, but that only made the problem worse. And then that led to the quote unquote final solution, which is the flood, which it then turned into a huge problem, right?

• 45:54Speaker 02

  And then out of this sort of rhythm of, of problems and solutions and problems and solutions emerges the final problem slash solution, which is death, right? And it's a solution because it brings this whole thing to a sort of stable endpoint where humanity now won't sort of explode in population numbers. We won't bother Enlil and we can just sort of keep providing these regular offerings of food, but it's a problem for us, right? Like, it might not be a problem for the gods, but it's a problem for us because we have to die. And the one person who is accepted from that is, is Atrahassus.

• 46:29Tristan Hughes?

  So Atrahassus kind of receives, he's allowed to maintain his immortality then, is that, that the ideal?

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Right. And in later Babylonian tradition, he is then given a new title and that new title is the one who found life, or in Akkadian, Utanapistin, which is the name of the character that we meet in Gilgamesh.

• 46:47Tristan Hughes?

  And that's in the Epic of Gilgamesh where Gilgamesh goes searching for immortality and that's why he goes to meet Utanapistin.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 46:55Tristan Hughes?

  Who is Atrahassus. Okay. So that's how they link together. Okay. We won't go down the Epic of Gilgamesh because we've got two great episodes of the U on that. We'll put a link to that in the, in the episode notes. And that's the end of the epic. So humans.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 47:07Tristan Hughes?

  The family of Atrahassus and the other people who were allowed on the boat. The idea is that they will slowly expand, they will slowly populate, repopulate the earth from then on.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly right. And just as the mother goddess was earlier being tasked with creating humanity and she set up this system of reproduction and procreation, she then is tasked with the opposite. She becomes the creator of death, but she also creates a number of other sort of like measures that are like anti-reproduction, anti-procreation. So she creates women who don't give birth, which includes a series of priestesses who were barred from having children. The Naditu women is one example. The N priestesses is another example. So for example, the first known author in Hiduana, she was an N priestess. So she was not allowed to have children.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  The mother goddess also creates this demon called Lamashtu, which would snatch newborn babies and was sort of the Babylonian explanation for infant mortality. And all of these measures are, yeah, made here at the end of the poem.

• 48:16Tristan Hughes?

  And that's the end of the epic. I mean, Sophie, just how long, we've covered the main themes there, really grateful to go through them. Just how long was this epic? Could we imagine that people would have been listening to a performance of this epic and they'd be able to watch the whole thing in one sitting, so to speak?

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do think so. So it's about fifty pages in a modern translation. So I do think you could listen to all of it in one sitting. In the original Akkadian, we don't have the whole thing preserved, but it comes out to, what we have comes out to around five hundred lines. So yeah, much shorter than something like the Iliad or the Odyssey. Also much shorter than Gilgamesh, shorter than Beowulf. And I just think like it's so amazing how much this poem packs into its story. Like this is a, it's a history of humanity that in the last lines, it seems to be revealed that this is being told by the mother goddess. So this is her account of the history of humanity. And, you know, we've touched on a lot of themes that are relevant for today,

• 49:17Speaker 02

  like class conflict and labor disputes, climate disaster, arguably artificial intelligence, you know? And we've seen the invention of sex and we've seen the invention of the opposite of sex, you know? Like we've We've had all of these themes being explored in, in, as I said, not a, not a long, not a long

• 49:36Tristan Hughes?

  Well, I mean, I was, I was, you kind of preempted my next question, which was like, what would have been the main themes for someone listening to this performance and watching it, you know, almost four thousand years ago. I mean, how would they have interpreted it? What would be, what do you think would have been the key takeaways for them?

• 49:52Speaker 02

  That's a really good question, and I think our only chance of answering that is by looking at a specific individual, which, which in this case is Ibegaya. So as I said, like Ibegaya is, is being taught by his father.

• 50:04Tristan Hughes?

  Describe who created the copy that we talked through. Okay, yeah.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  Exactly right, exactly right. We know that he would have been, yeah, let's say, give or take nineteen when he's doing this. We know that his, his family are, he comes from a family of scribes. And the family was devoted to the god Enki. Um, so most people in his city were, were devoted to other gods, including Ishtar and Shamash. But his family is sort of pro Enki, and this is very much a myth about Enki. So I think that would have been important to him. But as I mentioned earlier, his father had recently in his education been teaching him texts that has to do with the end of an age. So he had been studying texts that have to do with the end of the Old Decadean Empire. Where according to myth, the, the sort of vainglorious king Narum Sin brought this great empire crashing down.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  He had been studying some texts related to the fall of the Ure III Empire, which is a couple of centuries after the fall of the Old Decadean Empire. Where the Ure III, this great Sumerian speaking empire was toppled by an invasion from Iran. And so he is studying texts that have to do with, with one period giving way to another. And I think he would have seen the flood myth in those terms, because this is sort of quite literally about the end of an Antediluvian age um, and the beginning of a new age, about the end of an age in which we could talk directly to the gods and which we were without death. To what was broadly conceived for the Babylonians, the present, right? Like our age. Um, and so I think that's one way in which he would quite likely have understood it.

• 51:38Tristan Hughes?

  Do you think work is a big thing at all? Or kind of this idea that we are to work?

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. Sorry to cut you off here, but yeah, sorry. Like, the reason I was so enthusiastic in answering is that the book that I've written about Atahases is literally called, for its subtitle, Babylonian Reflections on Labour. Because I think that's what this is, right? Like, Atahases sees human life as being shaped by labour, both in the sort of obvious sense that we are created to serve the gods and to labour for the gods and to extend the labour of the gods. But labour also becomes many other things in the poem as well, including it becomes crucially linked to inequality. And this sort of dynamic of labour and inequality and how they shape each other really propels the entire poem.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  So, yes, I absolutely think that labour is central, not just to this poem, but to the entire sort of period of cultural history that Ipegaia lived in, the Olvadlongian. There are many stories about labour in different ways at that time.

• 52:45Speaker 05

  If you love a good story, why aren't you listening to Dan Snow's History Hit Podcast? It's a show where we tell you every amazing, crazy and important thing that's ever happened in human history. From the perilous voyages of the first Polynesians, the discoveries of Captain Cook, the deadly Viking raids on Britain and Ireland, the rise and fall of the great English kings and queens. We'll tell you how Waterloo was won, the Alamo was lost, and all the history in between. So make sure you check it out, Dan Snow's History Hit, for the best true stories ever told, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 53:35Tristan Hughes?

  So, Sophia, I must ask, because you highlighted this earlier, like the strength of natural disasters like the floods and of course how the flood gets out of control of the gods almost instantly.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:46Tristan Hughes?

  Could there be any elements of truth behind this story of the flood? Could there be any harkening back of like historical memory of Babylonians? That could there have been a memory of a very terrible flood that occurs, the tigris of the Euphrates from long before, from which, you know, the story of this myth could have been loosely or at least slightly based on?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's a really good question. And, you know, when we think about the flood myth in Atahazas, there's two big questions that pop up. One, we've already talked about, which is, you know, is there a direct connection to the Bible? We don't know, but it seems like Atahazas is at least closer to the Bible. So that's one question. And the other question is, was this based on a real flood? And I'm just going to start with the argument against it being based on a real flood. And then we can sort of look at the arguments for. But the main argument against is that the stories about floods really begin to circulate in the Babylonian and Sumerian literature in the early second millennium BCE.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  So we have Sumerian literature from the third millennium, in which the word flood just means like what it means in English, you know, like a flood of water, right? Like a lot of water coming rushing down from a mountain or whatever. It doesn't mean like this cataclysmic event. And then around year 2000, we have this political event, I briefly mentioned a bit ago, the fall of the Uthri Empire. And that, that political event really leaves a huge scar in the political and cultural memory of Babylonian culture. They, they, they return to this event quite obsessively. They sort of process it over the couple of centuries that follow. And it's in that.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  Context, when you're getting things like the lamentation of the destruction of the land, which is a great text, you also at that time get the flood myth exploding in importance. And so there is a scholar called Samuel Chen, who has written a really good book about this called The Primal Flood Myth, where he argues that the flood myth becomes what we know today through this, the sort of process of taking this political shock and then turning it into a myth. Right? So you're, you're processing this great empire that fell. Imagine the fall of the Roman Empire. And you're sort of trying to, yeah, to make sense of it. And so you come up with this myth of,

• 56:20Speaker 02

  of a time in which the world changed radically in, in a single week, you know? And I actually find Chen's argument very convincing.

• 56:30Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Uh, but again, that does, that does leave us with less of a connection to the real flood. But I mean, like, it is definitely possible that real geological events like informed this, you know? I think it's a discussion that's very similar to Atlantis, where, you know, it was, it was Plato who came up with the myth of Atlantis. Is it possible that his coming up with the myth was informed by, by real events? Yes, it's possible, but that just becomes a lot harder to prove and to establish.

• 56:57Tristan Hughes?

  Very much so. But I, I save that question to the end and I have it in big, bold letters on my, on my questions for you right before we finish, because I have to ask it. So, this has been so much fun.

• 57:09Tristan Hughes?

  Last but certainly not least, you have written a book which goes into this story in so much more detail and explains why this flood myth is so important and deserves to be better known. It is called?

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I have the book Human Babylonian Reflections on Labor, which is out with University of Chicago Press in May, May twenty twenty six. But I would also like to flag another book that I have on the way with Thames and Hudson's Illustrated Myth Series. That book is called Babylonian Myths. And I also have one chapter there talking about the Atahasa myth. But then I have other chapters dealing with a range of other Babylonian stories.

• 57:46Tristan Hughes?

  Fantastic. So first we'll get you back on for more stories in the future. But it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me. It's always a delight to be on the ancients.

• 58:00Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Dr. Sophos Hell returning to the podcast. Such a great guy and a brilliant expert on these great epics, these stories of ancient Mesopotamia, of Babylon and beyond. Always a pleasure having him on the show to talk through them. And I really do hope you enjoyed this latest episode with him. If you want more episodes about these stories that we've done in the past with Sophos, well, we'll put a link to them in the show notes. We've done a two-parter with him, all about the Epic of Gilgamesh, the most well-known epic of ancient Mesopotamia. And we've also done the story of Babylon's Epic of Creation II. And I'm sure there'll be other great stories we can cover with Sophos in the

• 58:43Tristan Hughes?

  future. Really do hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Now, if you're enjoying the ancients, please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us. You'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.