Exodus Reworks the Atrahasis Flood Epic

Just before Moses’ birth, Pharaoh decrees that all Israelite male infants are to be thrown into the Nile. Moses’ mother initially attempts to thwart Pharaoh’s plan by concealing her son:

^{שׁמות ב:ב} וַתַּהַר הָאִשָּׁה וַתֵּלֶד בֵּן וַתֵּרֶא אֹתוֹ כִּי טוֹב הוּא וַתִּצְפְּנֵהוּ שְׁלֹשָׁה יְרָחִים.

^{Exod 2:2} The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months.^[1]

When hiding him is no longer possible, she builds an “ark” for her infant son so that he will not drown in the Nile:

^{שמות ב:ג} וְלֹא יָכְלָה עוֹד הַצְּפִינוֹ וַתִּקַּח לוֹ תֵּבַת גֹּמֶא וַתַּחְמְרָה בַחֵמָר וּבַזָּפֶת וַתָּשֶׂם בָּהּ אֶת הַיֶּלֶד וַתָּשֶׂם בַּסּוּף עַל שְׂפַת הַיְאֹר.

^{Exod 2:3} When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker chest [ark] for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile.

Tevah, the Hebrew term used for Moses’ vessel, is the same term used for Noah’s ark (Gen 6:14).^[2] Moses is rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter, who spots the ark among the reeds, and he becomes the only (known) Israelite infant to survive Pharaoh’s plan. The episode calls to mind not just biblical Noah (Gen 6–9), but also the Mesopotamian flood story of Atrahasis. Indeed, the Exodus narrative draws on a number of motifs that are also present in Atrahasis.

1. Enslavement

At the end of Genesis, the Egyptian people enslave themselves to Pharaoh to survive a famine:

^{בראשׁית מז:יט} לָמָּה נָמוּת לְעֵינֶיךָ גַּם אֲנַחְנוּ גַּם אַדְמָתֵנוּ קְנֵה אֹתָנוּ וְאֶת אַדְמָתֵנוּ בַּלָּחֶם וְנִהְיֶה אֲנַחְנוּ וְאַדְמָתֵנוּ עֲבָדִים לְפַרְעֹה וְתֶן זֶרַע וְנִחְיֶה וְלֹא נָמוּת וְהָאֲדָמָה לֹא תֵשָׁם.

^{Gen 47:19} Let us not perish before your eyes, both we and our land. Take us and our land in exchange for bread, and we with our land will be serfs to Pharaoh; provide the seed, that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become a waste.”

The Israelites settle in Egypt to escape the same famine, and as the book of Exodus opens, we learn that they have prospered during their sojourn. Their numbers disturb Pharaoh greatly, and he enlists the support of the Egyptian people to enslave the Israelites in an effort to limit their growth:

^{שמות א:ח} וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל עַמּוֹ הִנֵּה עַם בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל רַב וְעָצוּם מִמֶּנּוּ. ^א:י הָבָה נִתְחַכְּמָה לוֹ פֶּן יִרְבֶּה וְהָיָה כִּי תִקְרֶאנָה מִלְחָמָה וְנוֹסַף גַּם הוּא עַל שֹׂנְאֵינוּ וְנִלְחַם בָּנוּ וְעָלָה מִן הָאָרֶץ.

^{Exod 1:9} And he said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. ^1:10 Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.”

The Israelites thus effectively succeed the Egyptians as Pharaoh’s slaves. The sequence echoes opening scenes in the Atrahasis epic, in which the lesser gods are initially enslaved to the more powerful gods:

^{Atrahasis I.1–6} When gods were [like] man,
They did forced labor, they bore drudgery.
Great indeed was the drudgery of the gods,
The forced labor was heavy, the misery too much:
The great Anunna-gods, the seven, were burdening
The Igigi-gods with forced labor.^[3]

When the lesser gods rebel, however, the goddess Mami creates humans to labor in their stead:

^{Atrahasis I.192–197} They summoned and asked the birth-goddess,
The midwife of the gods, wise Mami,
“Will you be the birth-goddess, creatress of humankind?
Create a human being, let him bear the yoke,
The yoke let him bear, the task of Enlil,
Let man assume the drudgery of god.”

2. Overpopulation

In Atrahasis, humans eventually become so numerous that their noise disturbs the gods, leading the chief god, Enlil, to send a plague to thin the human population:

^{Atrahasis I.356–360} [Enlil heard] their clamor.
[He said to] the great gods,
“The clamor of humankind [has become burdensome to me],
I am losing sleep [to their uproar].
[ ] let there be ague....”

Another god, Enki, then intervenes, instructing the human hero of the story, Atrahasis, about how humans can end the plague.^[4] Enki also thwarts Enlil’s attempts to limit human numbers through drought and famine.

In Exodus, the Israelites are described as swarming the land:

^{שמות א:ז} וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל פָּרוּ וַיִּשְׁרְצוּ וַיִּרְבּוּ וַיַּעַצְמוּ בִּמְאֹד מְאֹד וַתִּמָּלֵא הָאָרֶץ אֹתָם.

^{Exod 1:7} The Israelites were fertile and prolific; they swarmed and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them.

Like Enlil, Pharaoh also hatches several failed plots to cut down the Israelites’ numbers.^[5] Whereas enslavement precedes overpopulation in Atrahasis, in Exodus, enslavement becomes the first potential solution to the problem:

^{שמות א:יא} וַיָּשִׂימוּ עָלָיו שָׂרֵי מִסִּים לְמַעַן עַנֹּתוֹ בְּסִבְלֹתָם וַיִּבֶן עָרֵי מִסְכְּנוֹת לְפַרְעֹה אֶת פִּתֹם וְאֶת רַעַמְסֵס.

^{Exod 1:11} So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor; and they built garrison cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses.

As in Atrahasis, this initial plan fails:

^{שמות א:יב} וְכַאֲשֶׁר יְעַנּוּ אֹתוֹ כֵּן יִרְבֶּה וְכֵן יִפְרֹץ וַיָּקֻצוּ מִפְּנֵי בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל.

^{Exod 1:12} But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out, so that the [Egyptians] came to dread the Israelites.

Pharaoh thus ratchets up the oppression, making the Israelites work even harder:

^{שמות א:יג} ‏וַיַּעֲבִדוּ מִצְרַיִם אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּפָרֶךְ. ^א:יד וַיְמָרְרוּ אֶת חַיֵּיהֶם בַּעֲבֹדָה קָשָׁה בְּחֹמֶר וּבִלְבֵנִים וּבְכָל עֲבֹדָה בַּשָּׂדֶה אֵת כָּל עֲבֹדָתָם אֲשֶׁר עָבְדוּ בָהֶם בְּפָרֶךְ.

^{Exod 1:13} The Egyptians ruthlessly imposed upon the Israelites ^1:14 the various labors that they made them perform. Ruthlessly they made life bitter for them with harsh labor at mortar and bricks and with all sorts of tasks in the field.

3. Killing Infants

Further, he tries to reduce the Israelites’ numbers by having the Hebrew midwives murder the Israelites’ boy babies:

‏^{שׁמות א:טו} וַיֹּאמֶר מֶלֶךְ מִצְרַיִם לַמְיַלְּדֹת הָעִבְרִיֹּת אֲשֶׁר שֵׁם הָאַחַת שִׁפְרָה וְשֵׁם הַשֵּׁנִית פּוּעָה. ^א:טז וַיֹּאמֶר בְּיַלֶּדְכֶן אֶת הָעִבְרִיּוֹת וּרְאִיתֶן עַל הָאָבְנָיִם אִם בֵּן הוּא וַהֲמִתֶּן אֹתוֹ וְאִם בַּת הִיא וָחָיָה.

^{Exod 1:15} The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives,^[6] one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ^1:16 saying, “When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birthstool: if it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.”

It is unlikely that Pharaoh means for the midwives to murder the infants in an obvious way; once word of that got around, the midwives would be out of business and Israelite women more likely to take their chances without such professional “help.” Rather, Pharaoh probably intends for the midwives to make the deaths seem natural, as in a miscarriage or stillbirth.^[7] Pharaoh’s orders thus echo the end of Atrahasis, when the god Enki finally uses miscarriage and infant mortality as part of a permanent solution to human overpopulation:

^{Atrahasis VII.1–9} “Now then, let there be a third (woman) among the people,
Among the people are the woman who has borne
and the woman who has not borne.
Let there be (also) among the people the (she-)demon,
Let her snatch the baby from the lap of her who bore it,
Establish high priestesses and priestesses,
Let them be taboo, and so cut down childbirth.
 [ ] the cloistered woman,
 [ ] the sacrosanct woman.”

Pharaoh’s use of this strategy fails, however. Not only do the Hebrew midwives thwart his plan by ignoring his edict, but the Israelite population actually continues to increase (Exod 1:20). Moreover, for their defiance, the midwives are rewarded by the Israelites’ God with children of their own!

^{שמות א:כא} וַיְהִי כִּי יָרְאוּ הַמְיַלְּדֹת אֶת הָאֱלֹהִים וַיַּעַשׂ לָהֶם בָּתִּים.

^{Exod 1:21} And because the midwives feared God, He established houses for them.^[8]

4. Drowning

Finally, Pharaoh hits upon the idea of drowning the male infants in the Nile:

^{שמות א:כב} וַיְצַו פַּרְעֹה לְכָל עַמּוֹ לֵאמֹר כָּל הַבֵּן הַיִּלּוֹד הַיְאֹרָה תַּשְׁלִיכֻהוּ וְכָל הַבַּת תְּחַיּוּן.

^{Exod 1:22} Then Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, “Every boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

The plan recalls Enlil’s final attempt to wipe out all humans through a vast flood in Atrahasis. The gods try to force Enki, “who manages all” (VII.39), to go along this time, and he responds:

^{Atrahasis VII.43–47} “Am I to bring my hands against [my own peoples]?
The flood that you are speaking of [to me],
Who is (to do it) ? I [do not know]
Am I to produce [a flood] ?
The task of that is [Enlil’s].”

Just as Moses survives Pharaoh’s plan in an ark, however, so Atrahasis survives the flood, after Enki warns him in a dream to build a boat:

^{Atrahasis II.23–24} “Flee house, build boat,
Forsake possessions, and save life.”^[9]

The similarities between the Exodus narrative and Atrahasis—not just the common motifs but also the fact that many of the parallel elements appear in the same order in both narratives^[10]—raise the question: Did the biblical authors draw on Atrahasis?

Atrahasis and Noah

The discovery of multiple editions of the Atrahasis epic, in manuscripts dating from the second and first millennia B.C.E., suggests that the story was well-known and allows us to posit that it was known to the biblical authors. Indeed, they borrowed motifs from Atrahasis in crafting their own flood story—including a determination to end humanity via a flood, a warning to a single human to build a vessel in which humans and animals may survive, and eventually a decision never again to flood the whole earth (Gen 6–9).^[11]

The biblical account, however, omits the notion that people were created as slaves for the gods^[12] and concludes not with population restrictions, but with God blessing humans and commanding them to procreate:

^{בראשׁית ט:א} וַיְבָרֶךְ אֱלֹהִים אֶת נֹחַ וְאֶת בָּנָיו וַיֹּאמֶר לָהֶם פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ וּמִלְאוּ אֶת הָאָרֶץ.

^{Gen 9:1} God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fertile and increase, and fill the earth.”

Tikva Frymer-Kensky (1943–2006; University of Chicago Divinity School) argues that God’s instruction should be understand as a polemic against the Atrahasis epic:

The repetition of this commandment in emphatic terms in Gen 9:7, “and you be fruitful and multiply, swarm over the earth and multiply in it,” makes it probable that the Bible consciously rejected the underlying theme of the Atrahasis Epic, that the fertility of man before the flood was the reason for his near destruction.^[13]

She notes a structural similarity between Enki’s solutions to overpopulation and the laws that God gives Noah:

In Atrahasis the problem in man’s creation was overpopulation, and the solutions proposed by Enki are designed to rectify this problem by controlling and limiting the population. In the Bible the problem is not overpopulation, but “since the devisings of man’s heart are evil from his youth” (Gen 8:21), God must do something if he does not want to destroy the earth repeatedly. This something is to create laws for mankind, laws to ensure that matters do not again reach such a state that the world must be destroyed.”^[14]

Thus, God distinguishes between the value of human and animal lives: permitting consumption of meat but prohibiting killing of humans (Gen 9:3–5). Similarly, the exodus ends with the lawgiving at Sinai (Exod 19–24), setting up the new system that will govern Israel outside Egypt.

The Exodus as a Counterpoint to Atrahasis

While the Exodus narrative is not a retelling of Atrahasis’ flood story, the common motifs and structural parallels should be read as a counterpoint to Atrahasis, offering a different view of the role of humankind in the world. Frymer-Kensky explains why Atrahasis’s flood concludes with a focus on preventing women from bearing or raising healthy children:

The myth tells us that such social phenomena as non-marrying women, and such personal tragedies as barrenness and stillbirth (and perhaps miscarriage and infant mortality) are in fact essential to the very continuation of man’s existence, for humanity was almost destroyed once when the population got out of control.[15]

By contrast, in Exodus, women are not doomed to suffer maternal labor fruitlessly. Instead, they spearhead efforts to frustrate Pharaoh’s decrees.^[16] Not only do the midwives defy Pharaoh’s orders, but Moses’ mother and sister and Pharaoh’s own daughter shield Moses from death as an infant.^[17] More broadly, here, as in the story of Noah, the biblical authors view the population growth of the Israelites as a blessing from God:

^{שמות א:כ} וַיֵּיטֶב אֱלֹהִים לַמְיַלְּדֹת וַיִּרֶב הָעָם וַיַּעַצְמוּ מְאֹד.

^{Exod 1:20} And God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and increased greatly.