Atra-Hasis is an 18th-century BC Akkadian epic, recorded in various versions on clay tablets, named for its protagonist, Atrahasis. The Atra-Hasis tablets include both a cosmological creation myth and one of three surviving Babylonian flood myths. The name "Atra-Hasis" also appears, as a king of Shuruppak in the times before a flood, on one of the Sumerian King Lists.
Cuneiform tablet with the Atra-Hasis epic in the British Museum
Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC.
Akkadian language inscription on the obelisk of Manishtushu
A Neo-Babylonian inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II
Georg Friedrich Grotefend
Edward Hincks