In the Epic of Gilgamesh, how many days does the floodstorm last?

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the floodstorm lasts six days and seven nights.

The duration appears in the flood narrative on Tablet XI. Utnapishtim describes the storm as overwhelming the land and people, with the boat tossed by the violent weather. After the storm ends, the vessel comes to rest on Mount Nimush in the version commonly translated from the Standard Babylonian text.

This detail is often confused with the forty days and forty nights of rain in Genesis. The two accounts are separate works with different characters, divine settings, measurements, and chronologies, even though they share recognizable flood-story motifs.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was written in Akkadian and is known from clay-tablet copies from ancient Mesopotamia. Its flood episode incorporates material related to the older Atrahasis tradition, while the Genesis account belongs to the Hebrew Bible. Similarities do not make the names or numbers interchangeable.