Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story

<p>This volume opens up new perspectives on Babylonian and Assyrian literature through the lens of a pivotal passage in the <i>Gilgamesh </i>Flood story. It shows how using a nine-line message where not all was as it seemed the god Ea inveigled humans into building the Ark. </p><p>The volume argues that Ea used a ‘bitextual’ message: one which can be understood in different ways that sound the same. His message thus emerges as an ambivalent oracle in the tradition of ‘folktale prophecy’. The argument is supported by interlocking investigations of lexicography divination diet figurines social history and religion. There are also extended discussions of Babylonian word play and ancient literary interpretation. Besides arguing for Ea’s duplicity the book explores its implications – for narrative sophistication in <i>Gilgamesh</i> for audiences and performance of the poem and for the relation of the <i>Gilgamesh </i>Flood story to the versions in <i>Atra-has?s</i> the Hellenistic historian Berossos and the Biblical Book of <i>Genesis</i>.</p><p><em>Ea’s Duplicity in the </em>Gilgamesh<em> Flood Story </em>will interest Assyriologists Hebrew Bible scholars and Classicists but also students and researchers in all areas concerned with <i>Gilgamesh</i> word-play oracles and traditions about the Flood.</p>