The Akkadian Vocabulary of Noah’s Ark and its Allegorical and Ritual Significance

The Genesis account of Noah’s Ark has long engendered a debate over the relationship between the Hebrew story and the older cuneiform flood myths. In English, this famed craft is called “the ark”. However, the phrase used in the Hebrew text is “התבה” (htbh, Masoretic ha-tebah), for which no Hebrew etymology exists. Here I present evidence that “תבה” transcribes Akkadian “Tabû”, represented by the logograms “ZI” and “I.ZI.A”—which have the constituent Sumerian meanings of “Life”, “To Lead out Life (from) Water” and “To Overcome Annihilation”. It is part of a cuneiform semantic field that identifies the Great Flood as a repurposed metaphor for the destruction of Israel. The language details signal that the Hebraic version was originally conceptualized in cuneiform during the 6th century BC as part of a ritual invoking the rescue of the nation from exile in Babylon.