Comparing and Contrasting the accounts of the great flood in Gilgamesh and the Bible

The two accounts of the great flood as they appear in Gilgamesh and later in the Bible show two different versions of what appear to be the same story, and at the same time speak very differently about each culture's respective values. The first difference mentioned is the reason each story's God or gods decided to flood the earth. In Gilgamesh, the god Enlil was "aroused by the clamour" of the people of Earth, and …

…God. In Gilgamesh "all mankind was turned to clay" (43). In the Bible, however, a far more gruesome and graphic description of the death of mankind is provided, stating "every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the foul of the heaven" (56).