Talk:Ziusudra/Archive 1

message: I've heard both names given for this character.  Are they both correct; i.e. is one the Sumerian name and the other the Akkadian name?  Or is Ziusudra simply a mistransliteration that is no longer used?
And on a side note, the Noah's Ark dimensions are not much more realistic than the Gilgamesh ones.  A wooden vessel of the size given in Genesis would be virtually impossible to survive in a flood; the largest wooden ships ever built in reality are about 3/4 its size, and required constant bailing, as well as heavy steel reinforcements.  Steel did not exist in ancient times (it was developed about 400 years ago by a purification process of iron, see Steel), so it could obviously not be used to build Noah's Ark.
Next time, think twice about trusting "Answers in Genesis" as a reliable source of shipbuilding knowledge, let alone ancient history.
And while it is correct that we do not know if the Genesis flood account was derived from the Mesopotamian one, it is a definite possibility.  The more likely possibility is that both versions of the flood story derive from an older oral tradition.
We do know, however, that the Gilgamesh Epic was written down earlier than the Genesis account.  The version of Gilgamesh we have today was written down in Akkadian sometime between 1300 and 1000 BC by the Babylonian priest Sin-liqe-unninni, who "canonized" the text- that is, he edited it, wrote an introduction (in which he gives us his name), and established the version used in modern translations.  He himself, however, was definitely reworking an older text from Sumerian, possibly dated to as early as 2100 BC.
The earliest stratum of the Genesis flood account, the Jahwist text, probably dates to around 800-750 BC.  The part that describes the dimensions of the ark, the Priestly source, probably dates to around 705-701 BC (in the reign of King Hezekiah).
Just some information so we can stop bickering about which myth is less ridiculous.
--Rob117 02:39, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Added a paragraph on the Ziusudra legend. While they obviously belong together, the Utnapishtim and Ziusudra stories are not one and the same. Incidentally, the article as a whole needs a bit more detail - such as when/where the Gilgamesh and Ziusudra texts were discovered, how many versions they come in (only one for Ziusudra), differences between the various versions, ages of the texts, and significant details. PiCo 04:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Utnapishtim or Ziusudra? 

message: I don't know where this comment belongs, but I'll put it here and maybe someone can move it to the right place: Anyway, calling this myth Asian and using Japanese or Chinese characters as the identifying icon seems rather a stretch. Surely this is a Middle Eastern myth, not simply an Asian one? PiCo 23:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Asian mythology 

message: I deleted the entire para that says, basically that (a) the Noah and Utna stories are 'amost' identical', and (b) that a certain Mr Laurence Gardner has written a book claiming that Noah and Utna are "the same person."
The problem with the Utna/Noah nexus is that attracts cranks, of whom LG is one. A best-selling crank perhaps, or at least so he claims, but a crank nevertheless. LG has no academic qualifications to help him read, let alone evaluate, Mesopotamian and Hebrew myth (I can find no evidence that he can read Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew, or any other relevant language), has never studied comparative religion in an academic environment (or if he has he's keeping uncharacteristically quiet about it), and has published no scholarly papers in peer-reviewed journals. What he has done is write some pot-boiling popular pseudo-history. In short, he's a crank. As such, he has no part to play in Wiki as a source, although he should of course have an appropriate entry devoted to himself alone, along with others of his ilk (Graham Hancock, Dan Brown, etc). If the individual who keeps trying to put Mr Gardner and his thoughts into this article persists, I fear we'll have a dispute on our hands. PiCo 10:20, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why? They are "almost identical", and it's widely known that Hebrew myths took their cue from Babylo-Sumerian myths, such as the Enuma Elish creation story. Perhaps Gardner is a 'crank' in your estimation, but the fact is that both Untapishtim and Noah are mythical characters, and they have been associated with each other by a number of authors - not all of them "cranks" by any stretch of the imagination. So if people have equated them as the same person, what does it matter since neither existed in reality? We're not dealing with historical fact here, we're dealing with mythological events and characters. --Stevefarrell 16:20, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I will look it up, but I'm half sure that Joseph Campbell was one person who equated the two myths, and I don't think he's a potboiling folk-etymology using crank (Gardner's explanation for the origin of the word 'human' is quite amusing, yes, I've gone off him). Of course, there's also arguably links to the Deucalion myth from Greece, but then there are so many flood myths from all over the world. It's a universal mythical theme, which is probably what the likes of LG and others grabbed onto to form their theories. --Stevefarrell 14:21, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I would say that a better place than this for an encyclopedic discussion on the links between the Near Eastern flood myths is in the Deluge (mythology) article, rather than in articles on individual mythical characters. An interesting note is that the etymological root of the word 'ark' is 'a box or chest', and ultimately denotes something that is enclosed or hidden (whence 'archaeology'), which probably explains why the mythical ark of Utnapishtim was a 'square', since that's the general shape of a box or chest. Enoch is a very interesting character since he is the only person in the Bible other than Jesus who never actually died, but I'd never seen the link between he and Noah before. My personal basis for the theory that the Noah myth was lifted from the Utna myth is that the Pentateuch was written during or after the time of the Jewish exile in Babylon, where the Utna flood myth originated and had already been written down. As far as Mesopotamian myth in general goes, I'm very surprised that the likes of Enki, Enlil, Ninkharsag and Dumu-zi haven't captured peoples' imagination in the way that the Olympian deities or the Aesir did. --Stevefarrell 13:49, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What you write about 'ark' and 'archaeology' immediately makes me suspicious. For me, this supposed etymological connection was perfectly new and, as far as I can tell, is not supported by any reliable dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, traces 'ark' back to the Latin arca 'box'. The first morpheme in 'archaeology' comes from archæo 'old'. If you have other citations about this proposed connection between 'ark' and 'archaeology', I'd very much like to see them. Given my doubts about the accuracy of this proposed etymology, I find I want to take other things you've written cum grano salis. Interlingua  talk email 14:02, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

text: The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 
The result of the debate was Move.  —Wknight94 (talk) 17:56, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Laurence Gardner, Noah, and ancient Mesopotamian myth 

message: :Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~
Support retitling as "Ziusudra".. Greensburger 02:52, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: For now, most people are reading Wikipedia online with a web browser and a mouse, and they will be able to "click here", but there are many reasons why we shouldn't say that. What if someone's reading it on a touch screen? What if a blind person is listening to a recorded version or using text-to-speech software? What if someone is reading a paper version of Wikipedia? —Keenan Pepper 22:29, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: BTW, great work on the article! —Keenan Pepper 22:59, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please don't say "click here" 

message: User:Sumerophile has repeatedly edit warred with me, adding at least 4 or 5 times today alone, the parent categories category:Sumer, category:Mesopotamia category:Ancient history.  The article is already in the subcategories of these and no compelling reason or explanation has been offered for repeatedly re-adding these categories in exception to the normal guidelines. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 22:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redundant parent categories