Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh contains the flood story featuring Utnapishtim.
In this tablet, Gilgamesh meets Utnapishtim, who has been granted immortality, and asks how he escaped death. Utnapishtim recounts how the god Ea instructed him to build a large boat and save living creatures from a divinely sent flood.
The narrative includes a storm, the boat’s landing, birds used to test whether the waters have fallen, and a sacrifice afterward. These features invite comparison with Noah’s Ark, although the Mesopotamian and biblical accounts differ in names, divine motivations, chronology, boat descriptions, and the meaning of survival.
Tablet XI belongs to the Standard Babylonian version of the epic, which was written in Akkadian cuneiform. The epic’s surviving tablets were recovered from ancient Mesopotamian sites, including the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. Tablet XII is a separate, later-attached episode involving the underworld.