tablishes the covenant with Noah. In the Noahic covenant God "laid down the principals for the continuation of life on earth" and the importance of the flood, rather than being a mere capricious action as in the Babylonian legends, is firmly established by this covenant (Free and Vos 40). It is apparent in Genesis 6-8 that the flood had meaning, but this is reconfirmed by the form of the divine commands that precede the repopulation of the earth.
Although the Gilgamesh epic contains the most extensive and most famous of the Babylonian versions of the flood myth it is a later recension of the story. The first known Babylonian version is the Sumerian-language tablet found at Nippur. This tablet is not dated but "on paleographical grounds" it has been assigned to the latter half of the first Babylonian dynasty, no later than c. 2000 B. C. (Handcock 7). This makes it the earliest known example of a flood story. The Sumerian version is the only account that connects the flood to a creation myth, which tends to make it appear to be a re-creation sto
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