In the eighth and ninth tablets the death of Eabani is recorded, and the grief of Gilgamesh.  The latter then wanders forth in search of Hasisadra, the hero of the Flood-story.  After various adventures he reaches the abode of the divinized man, and from him learns the story of the Flood, which is given in the eleventh tablet.

This story is almost identical with that of the Book of Genesis.  The God Bel is determined to destroy mankind, and Hasisadra receives directions from Ea to build a ship, and take into it provisions and goods and slaves and beasts of the field.  The ship is covered with bitumen.  The flood is sent by Shamash (the sun-god).  Hasisadra enters the ship and shuts the door.  So dreadful is the tempest that the gods in affright ascend for protection to the heaven of Anu.  Six days the storm lasts.  On the seventh conies calm.  Hasisadra opens a window and sees the mountain of Nizir, sends forth a dove, which returns; then a swallow, which returns; then a raven, which does not return; then, knowing that the flood has passed, sends out the animals, builds an altar, and offers sacrifice, over which the gods gather like flies.  Ea remonstrates with Bel, and urges that hereafter, when he is angry with men, instead of sending a deluge, he shall send wild beasts, who shall destroy them.  Thereupon Bel makes a compact with Hasisadra, and the gods take him and his wife and people and place them in a remote spot at the mouth of the rivers.  It is now generally agreed that the Hebrew story of the Flood is taken from the Babylonian, either mediately through the Canaanites (for the Babylonians had occupied Canaan before the sixteenth century B.C.), or immediately during the exile in the sixth century.  The Babylonian account is more picturesque, the Hebrew more restrained and solemn.  The early polytheistic features have been excluded by the Jewish editors.

In addition to these longer stories there are a number of legends of no little poetical and mythical interest.  In the cycle devoted to the eagle there is a story of the struggle between the eagle and the serpent.  The latter complains to the sun-god that the eagle has eaten his young.  The god suggests a plan whereby the hostile bird may be caught:  the body of a wild ox is to be set as a snare.  Out of this plot, however, the eagle extricates himself by his sagacity.  In the second story the eagle comes to the help of a woman who is struggling to bring a man-child (apparently Etana) into the world.  In the third is portrayed the ambition of the hero Etana to ascend to heaven.  The eagle promises to aid him in accomplishing his design.  Clinging to the bird, he rises with him higher and higher toward the heavenly space, reaching the abode of Anu, and then the abode of Ishtar.  As they rise to height after height the eagle describes the appearance of the world lying stretched out beneath:  at first it rises like a huge mountain out of the sea; then the ocean appears as a girdle encircling the land, and finally but as a ditch a gardener digs to irrigate his land.  When they have risen so high that the earth is scarcely visible, Etana cries to the eagle to stop; so he does, but his strength is exhausted, and bird and man fall to the earth.