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Tablet Clay material 1699โ1600 BCE Penn Museum (Museum) University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology ยท Philadelphia, United States of America
With every belief, it reaches a point where something came before it, and if you ask a question about the before, it then becomes a vicious cycle of questions.
The "Deluge" in the context of the Holy Bible refers to the story of Noah's Ark and the great flood. According to the Bible, God sent a worldwide flood to cleanse the earth of wickedness. Noah and his family were chosen to build an ark and save pairs of all the animals. The story is primarily found in the Book of Genesis, chapters 6-9.
But before the Holy Bible, there was a similar story possibly originating from the Sumerians recorded on cuneiform tablets.
There are actually three other versions of the flood story that predate the biblical version. I suspect there were probably even earlier versions, but that would venture back to before written language, and so we will probably never know for sure.