Flood Ark

While the story of Noah's Ark is one of the most famous flood stories, it is hardly the only one. Practically all regions of the world have some form of flood story, or other primeval destruction myth (as from heat or cold). 

The Babylonian flood story (a sub-chapter within "The Epic of Gilgamesh") was first translated by George Smith in 1862.

The story of Utnapishtim, the "Babylonian Noah", is not so different from the Hebrew account.  As in the Hebrew story, the deity grows displeased with the ways of men and decides to wash them from the world. Despite the different moral content, the Babylonian and Hebrew arks are similar for one important reason: both arks are divinely inspired vessels since their design comes from the deity.  This is a pure example of the previously mentioned "ideal type".  Here, the arks of Noah and Utnapishtim are built according to celestial blueprints.  The vessels have different sizes and specifications.  But they are similar in that both derive from a divine plan.

Like Noah, Utnapishtim is instructed to build a vessel equal in measure and proportion. We learn the vessel's exact measures in the record of its construction: it is a perfect cube 120 x 120 x 120 Babylonian cubits.  In terms of the larger unit, the ark is a cubic iku or unity itself (1 x 1 x 1).

We are told the ark had six decks.  So, including the floor level, the Babylonian ark has seven levels total (unlike the Biblical three).  The same number of stages or "steps" was found on the Tower of Babel.  Additionally, each deck of the ark was divided into nine chambers.  The only way to do this proportionately is by a three-by-three grid.  The Smith Tablet lists the very same pattern for the kigal.  And if it is uncertain whether the kigal was an "ideal type" for the Tower of Babel, it is abundantly clear that the ark is such a divine plan.  That it is exactly the same shape and size as the kigal (not to mention the Tower of Babel) reinforces the likelihood that the kigal was also a celestial model.  That all three cubes should share so many features is a remarkable feature of Babylonian religion, to say the least. The conclusion is clear: the cube was an important cosmological model in Babylonian thought.

In the final analysis, the Epic of Gilgamesh infallibly dates the earliest appearance of the cube in religious contexts. The Babylonian ark of the flood is a "heavenly plan" of the Ezekiel type:  a divine pattern or celestial blueprint is given to a mortal by a deity.  The clay tablets bearing the story of the ark (the Gilgamesh Epic) date from the Old Babylonian period, c. 1800 B.C.  The ark is a cube.  Here we have positive proof of a cube in a charged religious context, one sent by a deity to destroy the world.  What is more, we have it in writing.