Flood-Myth Concordance

A comparative CC0 dataset of the ancient flood traditions — survivor, decreeing power, warner, cause, vessel, birds, landing place, aftermath — with links to the digitized source texts. CSV and JSON.

CC0-1.0 · public domain · updated 2026-07

Traditions
8
Fields
13
Formats
CSV · JSON
License
CC0-1.0
CSV One row per tradition — opens in any spreadsheet. JSON Self-describing: columns + rows.

A single table lining up the ancient flood traditions field by field — the survivor, the power that decrees the flood, the one who warns the hero, the stated cause, the vessel, the birds released, the landing place, and the aftermath — each row linked to the digitized source text where the Wheel of Heaven library holds one.

Traditions covered

Sumerian (Ziusudra), Babylonian Atra-ḫasīs and Gilgamesh XI (Utnapishtim), Hebrew Genesis (Noah), Islamic Qurʾān (Nūḥ), Greek Deucalion, the Greco-Babylonian Berossus (Xisuthros), and the Vedic Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (Manu).

What it's for

Comparative-mythology work usually reconstructs this table by hand from a dozen scattered editions. Here it is once, in the open, as CSV and JSON — free to sort, filter, merge, and cite. The JSON is self-describing (columns + rows); the CSV opens in any spreadsheet.

How Wheel of Heaven reads it

The rows are laid out as neutral comparative data — but read down the columns and a shared procedure appears rather than a shared mood: a destruction decided in assembly and sworn as irrevocable, a single survivor given precise instructions and told to preserve the seed of all living things, and a warning delivered by one member of the planning body against the will of another. The Wheel of Heaven corpus reads that convergence not as a borrowed folk-motif but as the administrative record of a managed reset — treated at length in The Flood Was a Reset, Not a Punishment and the Great Flood entry.

Also available on

This dataset is also published, CC0, on two open-data platforms — the same files, mirrored for reach and preservation:

Cite this dataset

Zinsfuss, Zara. Wheel of Heaven Flood-Myth Concordance. Wheel of Heaven, 2026. CC0-1.0. https://www.wheelofheaven.world/datasets/flood-myths/

@misc{woh-flood-myths,
  title  = {Wheel of Heaven Flood-Myth Concordance},
  author = {Zinsfuss, Zara},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {CC0-1.0 public domain},
  url    = {https://www.wheelofheaven.world/datasets/flood-myths/}
}