All societies owe their existence, in some form or another, to the stories created by a myth or a religion. Whether these stories are used as a strict guideline for an orthodox government or relegated to churches and temples of worship, civilization has been formed around ideas laid down thousands of years ago. What is striking, however, is how similar many of these mythical and religious tales are to one another. Nearly all religions give the idea of an omnipotent being creating the world and all of its inhabitants through His/Her/Its divine will. Another main focus of spiritual myths is the idea of a conflict between the supernatural and mortal beings. Typically mankind seeks to be more powerful or more superior than is "humanly" possible, and the deities rebuke them for their pride and arrogance, using some form of judgment or a calamity to put man back in his place. In western society, we are familiar with the biblical story of Noah and the flood God used to cleanse the Earth of the wicked. What many are unaware of is the striking similarity that this tale has with a much older story, the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Both stories use a flood as a symbol of cleansing in an interestin

While both stories are practical mirror images of each other (though not coincidentally), the differences between the portrayal of supernatural beings is a reflection of the values of the society in which they were written. The gods of Gilgamesh are strong and boastful yet retain a semblance of humanness to them, while the ambiguous nature of the Hebrew God and the subservience of his mortal followers stress the faith and values of early Jewish society. Even though the writers of the Bible would be facing charges of copyright infringement in today's society, we can still get an idea of what ancient society was like from these two versions of the same story.

Interestingly enough, there are striking similarities between both the flood of Gilgamesh and the flood of Noah that give us the impression that the Bible, as the historically younger text, was adapted or perhaps outright copied from the older epic (as they both originated from the Middle East). For example, in both stories birds are used to scout the world while the Flood is receding. In Gilgamesh: "When the seventh day dawned I loosed a dove and let her go...but finding no resting place she returned...I loosed a raven, she saw that the waters had retreated, she ate, she flew around, she cawed, and she did not come back" (Gilgamesh 111). In the Bible nearly the exact same scenario is told with Noah: "Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth. / He also sent out from himself a dove, to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground. / But the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned into the ark to [Noah]" (Genesis 8:7-9). Why would these stories be identical? Perhaps the idea of a great flood in Gilgamesh appealed to Hebrew scholars as a metaphor for the cleansing of

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Approximate Word count = 1235
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)