When both Noah and Utnapishtem discovered dry land, they both made sacrifices to their gods. Finally, in the end of each story, the particular gods apologized for their actions.
There are just as many differences with these two myths as there are likenesses. Firstly, in Genesis, "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Gene. 6:5). This is why God decided to destroy man with a flood. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enlil the warrior god stated, "The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel" (pg. 108). This is suggesting that the gods decided to eradicate mankind based on the reason that men had become too loud, and the gods were sleep deprived. The measurements that were given by the gods in both stories also differed greatly. In addition, the god in Genesis simply told Noah to make his ark of gopher wood (6:14), while Utnapishtem was told to make his boat from the reed of his house, which also suggests that Utnapishtem had a very large house, to make such a large boat simply from the reed of his house. It took Utnapishtem seven days to build his boat; while the only time given as to how long it took Noah to build was that it was finished when he was six hundred years old. Another significant difference was that in the Epic of Gilgamesh, all of the gods took place in destroying the land, not just the flood (pg, 110). In the story of Noah, The only destruction caused upon the world was from the rain. Also, the rain in the Epic of Gilgamesh only lasted "six days and six nights" (pg. 111), while the rain in Genesis lasted "forty days and forty nights" (7:12). In the Epic of Gilgamesh, three different birds were sent out to search for dry land: the sparrow, the dove, and finally the raven. In this story, it was the raven that found dry land, opposing the bible, which had the dove find the land.
