In the Mesopotamian Atrahasis epic, Atrahasis is the human warned about the flood.
The Old Babylonian Atrahasis poem presents a flood tradition in which the god Enki, also known as Ea, warns Atrahasis and helps him survive a divinely planned catastrophe. The surviving text is one of the earliest substantial written flood narratives and is generally dated to the second millennium BCE.
Atrahasis means something like “exceedingly wise” in Akkadian. The story includes themes that also appear in later flood traditions: divine decisions about humanity, a chosen survivor, a boat, preservation of life, and a changed relationship between gods and humans after the disaster.
Atrahasis and Utnapishtim are not interchangeable names in their original works. Utnapishtim belongs to the Epic of Gilgamesh, while Atrahasis is the central human figure of the separate Atrahasis epic.