Eden–rivers–potop–Ghilgames
In the land between rivers—where agriculture depends on water, and water can be both blessing and catastrophe—people learned early that life has two faces: the order you build, and the chaos that comes without asking. That is where the idea of the garden emerges: a bounded, watered, protected space with steady nourishment. On the same horizon, the idea of the flood also appears: water that, instead of feeding, overwhelms.
Genesis presents Eden not as a vague legend but as a scene with landmarks. A river flows out of Eden, waters the garden, and then divides into four (Genesis 2:10–14). Two names remain firmly recognisable because they belong to great rivers that sustained civilisations: the Tigris and the Euphrates (Genesis 2:14). The other names are harder to match to modern geography, and this creates a tension: the text seems to belong to the Mesopotamian river-world, yet it does not allow itself to be pinned to a single coordinate. Sometimes that tension is read as a blend of geography and symbol: Eden as “place” and as a “model” of a state, and the rivers as an image of life spreading outward. Other times it is read as an incomplete ancient memory, or as a “theological map” that orders the world around a sacred centre.
In the same cultural space of rivers, writing did something decisive: it fixed stories so they could be copied and transmitted, not only told. That does not mean a story remained unchanged; rather, it means change became visible in layers. Older texts were rewritten, compressed, expanded, and combined. The same hero could appear in separate episodes, and later those episodes could be gathered into a longer line.
Thus, the Epic of Gilgamesh takes shape over time. In its classical form, it functions as a succession of tablets, each marking a step of transformation. It is not only an adventure; it is a psychological and metaphysical journey—from unmeasured force to the understanding of limits.
At the beginning, the king is portrayed as extraordinary: powerful, partly divine, capable of great deeds, yet also capable of abuse. His excess is not only moral; it is structural. When a person is convinced that nothing can stop him, the community's order breaks down. The story answers this excess by introducing a “counterweight”: a man of nature, the king’s double, coming from outside the city. This double is not merely a rival; he is a mirror—the pattern by which raw energy is channelled and becomes relationship rather than domination.
The double’s transformation is described in culturally specific terms: the passage from wildness to human life through closeness, food, language, and entry into community. It is an idea found in many cultures, but here it is tied to the tension between field and city: the city as the space of law and walls, the field as the space of freedom and chaos. When the double enters the city, the story does not merely say “he became civilised,” but “he entered an order.”
The friendship between the two becomes the engine of action. Instead of consuming power inside the city, it is thrown outward—into confrontations with what is perceived as a threat or cosmic obstacle: sacred forests, monstrous guardians, figures that symbolise the boundaries imposed by the world. These are not only fights; they are crossings into the forbidden—attempts to push past thresholds.
A crucial pattern appears: the hero believes he can conquer what does not belong to humanity. Once thresholds are crossed, a response follows. In polytheistic frames, that response comes as a divine reaction—often contradictory: some support, others punish; some regret, others insist. The result is tragedy: the friend dies.
That death changes the story at its foundations. Until then, death was a general fact, distant in the background. Now death has a face, a name, a smell, a time. It is described as decay, as irreversible loss, as a rupture between what was “alive” and what becomes “matter.” From here, the second major part begins: not the pursuit of glory, but the pursuit of escape.
The search for immortality is not presented as a simple desire. It is a reaction to grief, a refusal to accept that everything you love disappears. Heroism becomes restlessness. Roads grow longer, spaces stranger, encounters heavier with questions. Figures appear who are not enemies but thresholds of knowledge: the innkeeper at the edge, the boatman, the gatekeepers. Each says, in a different way, the same thing: humanity has a limit, and the attempt to surpass it has a price.
At the climax appears the survivor of the flood—the one who passed through the waters and remained. The flood enters as a memorial of absolute catastrophe. It is not only an inundation; it is a reset of the world. There is a decision, a warning, the building of the vessel, the boarding of living creatures, the sealing in, the roar of water, darkness, and then the emergence into light. Then comes the technical, almost ritual detail: birds are sent out. The birds measure the world. If the bird returns, water still dominates. If it does not return, dry ground exists again. In this gesture, the logic of survival is visible: hope is not enough; a verifiable sign is needed.
Here, a crucial distinction appears: immortality is not a “human right,” but a one-time exception—a scar in history. The flood survivor does not say “it can be done,” but “it happened once, and it is not your path.” The message is harsh: unique events do not become universal rules, and confusing exceptions with norms is an illusion.
The hero still asks for proof, a trial, to test whether the limit can be suspended. A simple and cruel test is proposed: sleep. Sleep is the “little daily death,” and whoever cannot defeat sleep cannot defeat death. The test fails—not through battle, but through natural weakness. The epic becomes almost clinical: it shows that humans do not lose only to external force, but to their own constitution.
Before departure, a remnant of hope appears: the existence of a plant associated with renewal. It is not called the “tree of life” in Eden’s sense, but it functions as an idea: something exists in the world that promises a return of youth. The plant is obtained with effort, suggesting that hope is not free. But then the serpent intervenes, and the plant disappears. The serpent leaves and sheds its skin—as if renewal passes into another kingdom—while the human remains with loss. The motifs are clear: the human sees possibility, touches it, but cannot keep it. Life does not settle in the palm.
The hero returns home. The return is not presented as victory but as acceptance. Before the city walls, a shift of meaning occurs: if you cannot make the body immortal, you can make something that outlasts the body—walls, order, construction, memory. One of the epic’s strongest lessons appears: biological immortality is denied, but cultural substitutes remain—work, community, the story itself.
In parallel, the Eden narrative functions as another form of the same pain: humanity reaches a threshold and is then cut off from access to life without end. In Eden, there is the tree of life (Genesis 2:9), and after the rupture, access is blocked (Genesis 3:22–24). In the epic, there is a plant of renewal, and access is lost. In both cases, the result is the same: the human remains mortal, and this awareness becomes the background of cultures.
At this point, it becomes clear what “connections” between traditions mean: not perfect identity, but convergence of themes in the same historical space. People living between rivers faced real floods. They built canals and cities; they saw how a single catastrophe could erase everything. The flood is not “only a myth”; it is memory magnified into cosmic language. At the same time, they lived with death as an unavoidable limit, and the desire for “long life” is as concrete as hunger.
When these themes appear in different texts, they are coloured differently. In a monotheistic frame, the emphasis falls on obedience, relationship, prohibition, moral consequence, and the reality of ethical order (Genesis 2:15–17; Genesis 3:1–19). In a polytheistic frame, the emphasis falls on instability among divine decisions, conflict among deities, fate, and the human drama of being caught between powers greater than oneself. But the basic question remains: how does a human live knowing he will die?
And above all, one common element remains in every written tradition: the story itself becomes a response to death. To write is to place something of life into a vessel that can pass through generations. To copy is to confirm that the content deserves to remain. To reread is to reconnect with those who came before.
From here the biblical thread can be followed clearly, so everything remains verifiable within the text: Eden is order and limit (Genesis 2:15–17); the rupture comes through distortion of the word and the promise of autonomy (Genesis 3:1–5); shame, fear, and consequences follow (Genesis 3:7–19); and access to the tree of life is closed (Genesis 3:22–24). Evil grows in history toward the flood (Genesis 6:11–12; Genesis 7:11), then the retreat of the waters is measured by birds (Genesis 8:6–12), stability of seasons is promised (Genesis 8:22), and the covenant is signalled by the rainbow (Genesis 9:12–17). Human transience remains openly confessed: the human is “like grass” (Psalm 103:15–16), years pass “like a sigh” (Psalm 90:9–10), all return to dust (Ecclesiastes 3:20). And the circle closes at the end with the restoration of the tree of life (Revelation 22:1–2, 14).
From here, the two directions unfold like two roads that meet at the end.
1) The serpent – struggle – healing
It begins with the fracture in the garden, and in its core is placed a promise of conflict and victory: the “seed of the woman” will crush the serpent’s head, though it will be wounded (Genesis 3:15). Later the wound becomes concrete in the wilderness through the bite of serpents (Numbers 21:6), and healing comes through a raised sign: whoever looks lives (Numbers 21:8–9). Then temptation returns as a test of obedience (Matthew 4:1–11), and victory over death is described as the destruction of its power (Hebrews 2:14). The end names the enemy plainly: “the ancient serpent” (Revelation 12:9), shows judgment (Revelation 20:2, 10), and leaves open the restoration of life: the tree of life offered, not guarded (Revelation 22:14).
2) Water – judgment – life
Water feeds the garden at the beginning (Genesis 2:10), then becomes judgment in the flood (Genesis 7:11), and the exit from catastrophe is verified by birds (Genesis 8:6–12). Then comes the covenant of stability (Genesis 8:22; Genesis 9:12–17). Later, water becomes the threshold of liberation (Exodus 14:21–22), a source of support in the wilderness (Exodus 17:1–6), and the language of cleansing the heart (Ezekiel 36:25–27). In the New Testament, water becomes a sign of new birth (John 3:5), then the promise of an inner spring to eternal life (John 4:14), the call to the thirsty (John 7:37), and at the end, the “river of the water of life” (Revelation 22:1) offered without price (Revelation 22:17).
So everything flows as one story: between rivers and gardens, between flood and covenant, between wound and healing, between mortality and the longing for life—until the final image where the river of life flows again, and the tree of life is within reach.