Tablet XI of the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh contains the famous flood story.
In this tablet, Gilgamesh meets Utnapishtim, the survivor of a devastating flood. Utnapishtim recounts how the god Ea warned him to build a large boat, preserve living creatures, and survive the destruction sent by the gods.
The episode is closely related to the flood account in the Akkadian Atrahasis Epic. It also has broader connections with the Sumerian Ziusudra tradition. These similarities reflect the long transmission of flood narratives within Mesopotamian literature.
Tablet XI is not the end of the epic. Tablet XII contains a separate, partly appended tale involving Gilgamesh and the underworld. This difference is why references to “the twelfth tablet” can be misleading when readers mean the flood episode.