The Great Flood¶

The Great Flood is a pivotal event in Zecharia Sitchin's Earth Chronicles and appears in nearly all ancient traditions — Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Hebrew, Greek, Indian, and Mesoamerican. For Sitchin, the flood was not a myth but a historical catastrophe caused by the approach of Nibiru.

The Sumerian Accounts¶

Atra-Hasis¶

The Atra Hasis epic provides the most detailed account of the flood: - Enlil decides to destroy humanity because they are too numerous and noisy - Enki warns Atra Hasis (Ziusudra/Noah) - Atra-Hasis builds a boat and survives the seven-day deluge - After the flood, the gods create a new system to control the human population

The Epic of Gilgamesh¶

The Epic of Gilgamesh (Tablet XI) recounts: - Utnapishtim (the Akkadian Noah) was warned by Enki - He built a cube-shaped ark - The flood lasted seven days - The ark landed on Mount Nisir - Utnapishtim was granted immortality

Sitchin's Interpretation¶

"The Great Flood was not a global deluge in the modern sense of covering the entire planet. It was a regional cataclysm of enormous proportions, triggered by the gravitational effects of Nibiru's close approach."

The Cause¶

Sitchin proposed that the flood was caused by: 1. The approach of Nibiru, whose gravity destabilized Earth's rotation 2. The melting of the Antarctic ice cap (the "waters above the firmament") 3. Massive tidal waves overwhelming the Mesopotamian plain 4. The breaking of the "fountains of the great deep" — underground water reservoirs

The Date¶

Sitchin dated the Great Flood to approximately 13,000 BCE (about 11,000 BCE by his later calculations), based on: - The Sumerian King List chronology - The precessional alignment of the Sphinx (10,500 BCE) - Geological evidence of catastrophic flooding in the Black Sea region - The end of the last Ice Age

The Survivors¶

Sitchin argued that: - The flood was a planned event — Enlil intended to destroy humanity - Enki preserved human and animal genetic material - Ziusudra/Noah was a real person who preserved knowledge - After the flood, the Anunnaki regranted civilization to humanity

Cuneiform Evidence¶

The Great Flood narrative is preserved in multiple Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian cuneiform texts, making it one of the most extensively documented events in ancient Mesopotamian literature.

CDLI Corpus: flood myth — Browse tablets containing flood narratives
Key tablet: The Atra-Hasis epic (CDLI P346270) — The most complete account of the flood from a Mesopotamian source. The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI (CDLI P354853), also recounts the flood story through Utnapishtim. The Sumerian Flood Story (CDLI P346271) from Nippur provides the earliest known version.
Old Babylonian tablet of the Atra-Hasis epic, containing the earliest complete version of the flood narrative. (CDLI P346270)

Sources¶

Sitchin, Z. (1976). The 12^th Planet. Chapter 11.
Sitchin, Z. (1985). The Wars of Gods and Men.
Sitchin, Z. (2007). The End of Days.
Lambert, W. G. & Millard, A. R. (1969). Atra-Ḫasīs.