What if the story of Noah’s flood wasn’t the first version of the story?

In the final deep dive of our ancient pantheon series, we’re going all the way back to Mesopotamia — Sumer, Akkad and Babylon — and some of the oldest surviving written stories we have.

We break down the Sumerian flood of Ziusudra, the Epic of Atrahasis, the Babylonian Enuma Elish, and the flood account told by Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh — then put them beside the biblical story of Noah and the Flood.

And the similarities get WILD.

We get into Enki and Enlil, the creation of humanity from clay and divine blood, the gods’ attempts at population control, the mysterious warnings delivered through a wall, enormous ancient lifespans, sacrifices after the flood, immortality, and the serpent that steals Gilgamesh’s chance at eternal life.

Then we descend into the Mesopotamian underworld with Inanna — through seven gates, death, three days and three nights in the realm of the dead, and her resurrection through Enki’s life-giving plant and water.

From there, we follow the rabbit hole into the Anunnaki, ancient astronaut theory, Zecharia Sitchin, Sumerian King Lists, Atlantis, Lemuria, the Yugas, ancient cycles of humanity, and the possibility that the stories we’ve explored across Egypt, Greece, India, Mesoamerica and the Bible may preserve echoes of something much older.

As always, we’re not here to tell you what to believe.

We’re putting the stories next to one another, following the overlaps, and asking the question we’ve been asking this entire series:

WTF happened here?