Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI (the Flood): tablet K.17343

Introduction

Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh (Standard Babylonian version, attributed to Sin-leqi-unninni) as it survives on one physical object: British Museum tablet K.17343 (K.17343 + K.21790 + Sm.1541, column iii), excavated at Nineveh from the library of Ashurbanipal (7th c. BCE). It is manuscript W₃ in A. R. George's 2003 edition. The photograph is the British Museum's, showing the inscribed face(s) and edges; column(s) iii are preserved (17 lines).

Three criteria are met for every section:

1. Manuscript scan: the British Museum photograph of K.17343 itself (served by the Electronic Babylonian Library, LMU Munich). Each section names the column and face (obverse = columns i-iii, reverse = columns iv-vi) and the tablet's own line numbers, so the reader can find the lines on the photograph.
2. Original text: the eBL manuscript-level ATF transliteration of the signs on this tablet (not the composite text). Brackets [ ] mark broken signs, x an illegible sign, # a damaged sign. Superscript numbers are the modern line numbers of George 2003 / eBL.
3. Public-domain English: R. Campbell Thompson, The Epic of Gilgamish (London, 1928), verbatim, with his marginal line numbers as ^{T n}.

On line numbers. Thompson's 1928 numbering is not George's. For this tablet the correspondence was established one anchor per Thompson marginal number by reading his verse against the Akkadian; sections are cut only at those anchors, so each section's English is the block of Thompson's lines that renders exactly these Akkadian lines. Where the tablet's text begins or ends inside a Thompson block, the whole block is given and the section says so. Thompson's readings reflect the state of knowledge in 1928: modern editions (George 2003; the eBL edition, updated continuously) supersede him and are not public domain, so they are not reproduced here beyond the transliteration of this tablet's signs.