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European Journal of Applied Sciences – Vol. 12, No. 4

Publication Date: August 25, 2024

DOI:10.14738/aivp.124.17466

Giannini, J. (2024). Perspective on Dating the Sumerian Great Flood and Hypothetical Reconstruction of Events. European

Journal of Applied Sciences, Vol - 12(4). 386-406.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Perspective on Dating the Sumerian Great Flood and Hypothetical

Reconstruction of Events

Judith Giannini

Independent Researcher/USA

ABSTRACT

The Sumerian kingship records are divided into two periods: The Mythical period

that ends with the Great Flood, and the Dynastic (semi-historical and historical)

period that follows. The dating of this Flood is not known in recognizable calendar

years. The purpose here is to attempt to identify a likely modern calendar date

and a cause precipitating the event. This is done by calibrating (to calendar years)

the length of years of reign during the Mythical period, and also during the semi- historical Dynastic period (counting backward from a known historical date) to

identify a range of years that most likely encompassed the Flood. That range of

dates is used to identify the geophysical event that can be associated with a

possible cause for the Flood, which is the basis of validating the Flood myth as

being the result of a real event, not merely an ancient story with religious or

political purpose. The relation between the Sumerians and Egyptian during this

time is discussed.

Keywords: Sumerian prehistory, Holocene catastrophe, Flood myths, Scorpion King,

Divine reign lengths, Geo-mythology, Egyptian prehistory.

INTRODUCTION

All ancient cultures have oral traditions about their origins and significant events in their past.

Those stories, it is assumed, were accepted at the time as historical truth, and after

generations, the oral traditions were recorded (sometimes with anthropomorphic attribution

of the events to the work of the gods). Eventually, to the modern mind, the myths and legends

lost much of their credibility as historically-based descriptions of real physical events, and

became just stories of cultural significance.

Although it can be risky to attempt to recover historical knowledge by viewing the myths

literally, the underlying factual base is still there and amenable to validation. Progress is being

made in this area by identifying likely scientifically-based candidates for the possible events

in the deep past that could be correlated with descriptions in the myths. The modern tools in

the validation process tend to take a multi-disciplinary approach combining the traditional

tools of archaeology and historical dating with newer approaches using simulations

predicting the expected astronomical and geophysical conditions described or alluded to in

the myths.

Such techniques have been useful in supporting the reality behind the myths. A familiar

example [1] used the astronomical references in Homer [2] to lend credibility to the

astonishing voyage of Odysseus. Another [3] supported the previously uncertain existence of

the legendary Xai dynasty in China, along with a possible explanation of the Great flood there

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Giannini, J. (2024). Perspective on Dating the Sumerian Great Flood and Hypothetical Reconstruction of Events. European Journal of Applied

Sciences, Vol - 12(4). 386-406.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/aivp.124.17466

[4] [5]. A slightly different approach [6] used Kinematic Relativity as a mapping tool to BCE

calibrate the biblical Days of Creation in Genesis [7] with the geophysical record, providing

support for the evolutionary reality of the spiritual text’s descriptions. Using historical dating

combined with climate and geophysical data [8], the Egyptian Anno Mundi (beginning of the

world) event was linked to the eruptions in 8.2±1.8 thousand years ago of the Mt. Erciyes

stratovolcano complex in Central Anatolia, identifying a likely origin homeland and identity of

the legendary Egyptian first king Menes.

This paper addresses the Great Flood, another body of myths that would benefit from further

scrutiny and validation efforts. It is often considered to have been a unique global event,

though that is a matter of debate [9]. Some advocate that the Flood refers to a collection of

regional floods, or that there was “one” Great Flood in the ancient past that has been

incorporated (and misplaced in time) into the more recognized myths. Two examples of these

myths come from the Near East Levant region: the biblical Flood of Noah [10], and the

Sumerian Flood of Ut-napishtim [11], also noted in their Kings List [12] (p. 533).

Studies [13] indicated that, regardless of the details, flood stories were known in the earliest

times, the Pan-Gaen period [14], well before the last Ice Age with a focus of origin in the

Gondwana (southern super-continent) mythologies, spreading to the Laurasian (northern

super-continent) myths, and only later being incorporating into the more recent myths after

Homo Sapiens migrated out of East Africa.

The Pan-Gaen origin thesis rejects the idea that a naturalistic explanation (like ice sheet

melting, sudden Black Sea flooding, or diffusion of local flood stories) could be the origin for

the more recent Near East myths suggesting they were solely a remembrance of the original

Great Flood.

We propose a slightly different view, that the Near Eastern Great Flood myths are based on

real physical events, local in time to the cultures. Though not necessarily simultaneously

global, they may have appeared global within the horizon of the story tellers. In Jungian

analytic psychology [15], ancient knowledge is stored in the “Collective Unconscious” as

deeply encoded images in the psyche. Accepting this, the trauma of the earliest event allowed

the Pan-Gaen Great Flood to become entangled with the more recent Great Flood stories, and,

with time, they merged into a single event.

The wisdom of the ancient Egyptians was that they did not have a specific flood legend

paralleling the biblical or Sumerian stories. In his Histories [16], Herodotus (c. 430 BC)

recounted the words of the Egyptian priest who told of repeated great floods where only

those in the right place at the time survived. The priest did not allude to timing of the events,

but, he implied they were different from the familiar annual flooding of the Nile.

Recent measurements support this vision. Stratigraphic measurements show repeated

tsunamis in the Indian Ocean (11 in the past 5,000 years) [17], and investigations in the

eastern Mediterranean area indicated tsunamis were a common phenomenon with the

earliest documented Holocene tsunami event between 9,910 – 9,290 years ago. [18].

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European Journal of Applied Sciences (EJAS) Vol. 12, Issue 4, August-2024

The focus here is to provide a BCE date for the Sumerian Flood (though the biblical Flood is

not necessarily to be considered totally distinct) and identify a likely cause (or several

reinforcing causes).

The modern dates for the Sumerian kings surrounding the Flood are speculative at best

because of the abnormally long kingship reigns indicating divine/semi-divine status of the

kings in the culture. Section 2 briefly summarizes the main Flood myths from the region.

Section 3 calibrates the reign-lengths to identifiable “man years” with a BCE date. Tying this to

validated dates of later identified historical kings provides a range of dates when an event

could have occurred. Section 4 considers geophysical events within the candidate date-range

to identify the most likely physical event that caused the Sumerian Flood.

For clarity, BC (Before Christ) is the time ending a 1 AD. The term BCE (Before the Common

Era) has been used interchangeably with BC as an effort to decouple time-keeping from

religion, but often, it is referenced to a more modern date 1950 AD (BC + 1950 = BCE). It is

this reference that is used here for all dates. BP refers to Before the Present and is defined as

BP – 1950 = BCE.

THE GREAT FLOOD MYTHS

Mesopotamia is that area of the Levant that lies between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Archaeologically, it is known to have been inhabited with pre-urban settlements as early as

~7500 BC [19]. In the earliest times, the entire region was governed as a collection of

independent city-states. The two major competing political divisions were Sumer to the south

(the politically dominant urban culture from ~4500 BC) and Akkad to the north (gaining

dominance under Sargon from 2334 BC). The city-state of Babylon (in the Akkad sphere)

became the dominant power in 2004 BC with the first Babylonian dynasty under Khammu- Rabi, and the united region then became known as Babylon.

The Sumerians were a mixture of Semitic and non-Semitic peoples [20-22]. They possessed

the earliest advanced civilizations in the broader region, and had the earliest writing. Their

cuneiform writing is recorded on stone tablets, some of which date to before ~5300 BC. They

detail financial dealings, record oral (mythic) traditions, and document lists of their kings.

The language that came to be known as Sumerian [21] was discovered in the region in 1914

on tablets containing strange unknown characters. It was neither Semitic (like Hebrew) nor

Indo- European (from which English developed), but was classified as agglutinative (like

Turkish but not closely related to it). The uncertainty in the meanings of words, and the

fragmented tablets leave uncertainty in the meaning of the myths. (Akkadian is the name

applied to the Semitic language used in ancient Assyria and Babylonia.)

The oldest written copy of the Sumerian Flood Myth dates to 2150 BC (4100 BCE), but it is

believed to be based on oral tradition several centuries older [23]. The Akkadian myths

containing the Epics of Creation and Gilgamesh (with a Flood account) were written around a

couple of centuries after the original Sumerian myths, and show clear signs of being borrowed

from the earlier Sumerian literature [11], though some feel that any possible connection of

the Sumerian stories with other stories in the region based on similar phraseology and