What ancient Mesopotamian text is the oldest surviving flood narrative with a boat-building hero?

The Eridu Genesis is the oldest surviving Mesopotamian flood narrative with a boat-building hero.

The Eridu Genesis is a Sumerian composition preserved on a fragmentary clay tablet. It tells of a king named Ziusudra, who is warned by the god Enki about a devastating flood and instructed to build a large boat. The surviving text breaks off after the flood and Ziusudra’s salvation, so its ending is incomplete.

Scholars generally date the composition to the late third millennium BCE, although the surviving manuscript is later than the original composition. The work is an important predecessor to later Mesopotamian flood accounts, including the Atrahasis tradition and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

It is not a version of Genesis and does not use Noah’s name. Ziusudra is the hero in this Sumerian account, while Utnapishtim and Atrahasis belong to later or differently framed Mesopotamian traditions.