Uta-napišti

Uta-napišti ( Uta-napischti , Utnapishtim ) is the chosen hero in the first and eleventh panels of the Sumerian - Babylonian tale of the flood in the Gilgamesh epic , the last time Sin-leqe-unninni around 1200 BC. Revised.

The name Uta-napišti is based on the Sumerian Ziusudra and means "I have found my life". He is also called "the most wise man, son of Ubar-tutu". After the Great Flood, Uta-napišti and his wife came to an island "in the distance" by decision of the council of gods, which is why he appears in the first panel of the Gilgamesh epic with the name "Uta-napišti, the distance". "'Utnapištim was previously a human child; Utnapištim and his wife are now like us gods!" They should live far from the mouth of the rivers.

Analogies

The Bible's narrative of Noah shows similarities with Utnapishtim and the Atraḫasis epic .

Although the people are not historically proven, the time of the Flood narratives is approximately given. For Noah, the traditional Jewish family sequence of Genesis points to the time before the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. BC , while Utnapishtim is a few generations before Gilgamesh (around 2700 BC).

See also

• Sumerian religion
• Ur-šanabi

literature

• Helmut Freydank among others: Lexicon Alter Orient. Egypt, India, China, the Middle East. VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-928127-40-3 .
• Brigitte Groneberg : The gods of the Mesopotamia. Cults, myths, epics. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf et al. 2004, ISBN 3-7608-2306-8 .
• Michael Jursa : The Babylonians. History, society, culture (= Beck'sche series - knowledge. 2349 knowledge ). CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-50849-9 , pp. 118-122.
• Stefan M. Maul : The Gilgamesh Epic. Newly translated and commented. 3rd revised edition. Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-52870-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stefan M. Maul: The Gilgamesh epic. 2006, p. 155.
2. ↑ Rykle Borger : The incantation series Bīt mēseri and the Ascension of Enoch. In: Journal of Near Eastern Studies . 33, 2, April 1974, ISSN  0022-2968 , pp. 183-196, here 186.
3. ↑ Stefan M. Maul: The Gilgamesh epic. 2006, p. 9.