For years, many scholars have felt that the flood described in Genesis and other literary sources was a mythological event. Now, opinion seems to be changing and a number of scholars have gone on record stating that the archaeological evidence points to a literal flood.
Dr. William W. Hallo, curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection at Yale University, recently wrote an interesting article on “Antediluvian Cities” in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies. In this article Dr. Hallo has written the following:
“There is, it is true, considerable vagueness and contradiction in cuneiform literature about the antediluvian [pre-flood] traditions. This is not unexpected, even in the light of the latest discoveries. These now make it seem possible that a specific historic flood provided the original inspiration for the mesopotamian version of the deluge, and that this particular flood occurred about 2900 B.C. At the same time, the beginnings of Sumerian literature (and thus of all literature) can now be traced back as far as the finds from Fara and Abu Salabikh, which I am inclined to date no later than 2600 or 2500 B.C.. .. Thus the gap between the antediluvian period and its first reflexes
BSP 1:1 (Winter 1972) p. 20
in cuneiform literature has been narrowed down to three or four hundred years. This is no small achievement if we recall the three or four millennia that separated earlier estimates of the date of the Flood from the first intimations – Hellenistic and Neo-Assyrian – of native traditions about it.”
Dr. Hallo also sees a linguistic connection between two of the five antediluvian cities mentioned in Sumerian literature and two persons named in the Bible as having lived before the Flood. The antediluvian city Eridu corresponds to Irad (Genesis 4:17) and the antediluvian city of Larak can be compared to Lamech (Genesis 4:18).
(Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. XXIII, No. 3, October, 1970. See also M.E.L. Mallowan, “Noah’s Flood Reconsidered,” Iraq 26 (1964) 62-82; R.L. Raikes, ibid. 28 (1966) 52-63; S.N. Kramer, Expedition 9/4 (1967) 12-18.)