In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim survives a great flood by building a boat.
Utnapishtim appears in the epic’s flood story when the god Ea secretly warns him that the gods intend to destroy humanity with a flood. He builds a large boat, takes aboard his family, craftsmen, and animals, and survives while the waters overwhelm the land. Afterward, the god Enlil grants Utnapishtim and his wife immortality.
The episode resembles the Genesis account of Noah in several broad elements: divine warning, a commanded vessel, preservation of living creatures, a flood, and the release of birds to test the waters. Utnapishtim is not Noah, however; he is a character in Mesopotamian literature, and his story belongs to a different religious and literary tradition.
The flood narrative is found in Tablet XI of the Standard Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Utnapishtim is also closely related to Atrahasis, the flood survivor in an earlier Mesopotamian poem.