Who is the survivor of the great flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh?

Utnapishtim is the flood survivor in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In the Mesopotamian epic, the god Ea warns Utnapishtim to build a large boat and preserve life from a coming flood. Utnapishtim follows the warning, survives the disaster, and later tells Gilgamesh what happened. His account is one of the best-known ancient flood narratives outside the Hebrew Bible.

Utnapishtim is often compared with Noah because both figures build a vessel, save living creatures, and survive a divinely sent flood. The stories are not identical, however. Their gods, motivations, boat descriptions, aftermaths, and theological meanings differ. Utnapishtim is also granted immortality after the flood, a distinctive feature of the Gilgamesh narrative.

The flood episode appears most fully in Tablet XI of the standard Babylonian version of the epic. The name is sometimes rendered with variant spellings, but Utnapishtim is the standard English form used in many reference works.