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The Flood according to Berossos

← Ancient texts · Mesopotamian

Greek (from a lost Babylonian source) · Berossos, a Babylonian priest, wrote c. 280 BC; this summary survives only as a quotation in later Greek and Byzantine writers.

Translation: I. P. Cory, 1832 — I. P. Cory, Ancient Fragments (London, 1832), via E. A. Wallis Budge (1920). Public domain.

The Babylonian priest Berossos wrote a history of his country in Greek for the Hellenistic world. His flood account — the hero is Xisuthros — was still being copied a thousand years later. It is the version an ancient Greek or Roman reader would have known, and it lines up point for point with Genesis: a divine warning, an order to bury the sacred writings, a great vessel, the family and animals aboard, birds sent out three times, a landing in Armenia (the region of Ararat), an altar and sacrifice on leaving the ship.

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