More than three thousand years before our time, Babylonian poets told how the gods made humanity to carry their heavy labor — and how, when our noise disturbed the divine rest, they tried to erase us from the earth. At the center of this story stands Atrahasis, 'exceedingly wise,' a king who hears a warning through a reed wall and builds a boat to outlive the waters of the great flood. This is the oldest complete flood story ever discovered, the powerful ancestor of Gilgamesh's adventure and the flood of Noah, now retold in clear, flowing modern English that keeps the beauty and strangeness of the ancient original. With its vivid gods, its laments, and its timely questions about overpopulation and mercy, The Atrahasis speaks across the centuries with startling freshness. Faithful to the meaning and spirit of the clay tablets on which it was preserved for millennia, this edition invites every reader into the heart of the world's first great scripture of survival. Part of The World Scriptures Library.