Atra-Hasis
| Part of a series on |
| Religion in Mesopotamia |
|---|
Atra-Hasis (Akkadian: 𒀜𒊏𒄩𒋀, romanized: Atra-ḫasīs) is an 18th-century BC Akkadian epic, recorded in various versions on clay tablets and named for one of its protagonists, the priest Atra-Hasis ('exceedingly wise'). The narrative has four focal points: An organisation of allied upper and lower gods shaping Mesopotamia agriculturally; a political conflict between them, pacified by creating the first human couples; the mass reproduction of these; and a great deluge linked to the intention of the upper gods to destroy their imperfect artificial creatures, as handed down in a remarkably similar manner in various other flood myths of mankind.
Many modern scientists assume that these stories are based on real catastrophic events triggered by the relatively sudden rise in sea levels at the end of the last ice age. Large areas were flooded (cf. today's Mediterranean and Black Sea), the climate became warmer. This epoch also marks the beginning of agriculture and the associated increase in population density – two additional themes pertaining not just to the epic itself but also to the Neolithic Revolution more broadly.
The name "Atra-Hasis" first appears on the Sumerian King List as a ruler of Shuruppak in the times before that flood. The oldest known copy of the epic tradition concerning Atrahasis can be dated by colophon to the reign of Hammurabi’s great-grandson, Ammi-Saduqa (1646–1626 BC). However, various Old Babylonian dialect fragments exist, one more was recovered in Ugarit, and the epic continued to be copied into the first millennium BC.
The story of Atrahasis also exists in Assyrian dialect versions, 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 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.