Utnapishtim is the ancient Mesopotamian hero who built a boat to survive a great flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
In the flood story within the Epic of Gilgamesh, the god Ea warns Utnapishtim to build a boat and preserve life from the coming catastrophe. Utnapishtim later releases birds to test whether the waters have receded, a sequence that invites comparison with the raven and dove in Genesis.
The Mesopotamian story is not the same text as the Genesis account. It belongs to a different literary tradition and uses different names, divine relationships, and narrative details. Utnapishtim’s story is especially important because it preserves one of the best-known ancient flood narratives outside the Hebrew Bible.
The flood episode is found on Tablet XI of the standard version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Comparisons between the stories are common in the study of ancient Near Eastern literature, but similarities do not make the characters interchangeable.