The Ancient Flood Myth That Came Before Noah's Ark & Biblical Flood - Mythology & Religion
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00:00 - start01:16 - Mesopotamia05:39 - Egypt07:50 - Noah's Ark09:50 - Greek & Norse10:41 - Ancient Mesopotamian Flood MythsHey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video we're going to discuss the Great Flood, tracking down its origin and looking at several versions of it manifest in various mythologies and religions. We're going to begin with ancient Mesopotamia, at why the great flood myth originated from this region - at least, why the oldest extant version of the great flood myth originated from there - then moving on to ancient Egypt to showcase that ancient civilizations founded around rivers had a habit of incorporating flooding into their mythology. After this, we're going to cover the story of Noah's Ark, the biblical flood, then paying a cursory glance to the great floods that appear in both Greek and Norse mythology. Finally, we're going to wrap the video up by delving into two versions of the great flood myth that came out of Mesopotamia: one that centers on Ziusudra, who survived a world-destroying flood by building a boat - this version being the oldest in existence - and a second that centers on Atrahasis, who also survived a world-destroying flood by building a boat.I've include timestamps in the description so that you can skip ahead if you're only interested in certain segments.Let's get into it.Mesopotamia, which means something like 'between two rivers', is compounded from two Greek words: meso, the Greek word for 'between', and potamos, the Greek word for 'river'. It was an ancient region that spanned over what is today Iraq, as well as parts of Turkey, Kuwait, Syria, and Iran. The two rivers indicated by the word Mesopotamia are called the Tigris river and the Euphrates river. They originate in Turkey, enter Iraq via the Northwest, run the length of Iraq, and end in the Southeast, where they flow into the Persian gulf. Mesopotamia was the ancient region that existed between and around these two rivers.The phrase ''cradle of civilization' is used to describe Mesopotamia. The reason for this is that our oldest archeological evidence for many of the most seminal innovations that helped drive-forward human civilization were first conceived of and put into use there, including: cities, schools, laws, mathematics, writing, the wheel, mass-produced bricks and ceramics, the sail, and time-keeping.The Tigris and the Euphrates rivers are the reason our earliest record of the great flood myth is from Mesopotamia, both for developmental and narrative reasons.