cataclysm can be rhetorically shaped with cosmic proportions. Being aware of that, we propose that a portrait of natural cataclysm could theoretically also be rhetorically shaped with cosmic proportions, and in fact we find flood terminology being used for both sorts of cataclysms in the literature of the ancient Near East (ANE). Yi Samuel Chen even presents evidence that the Sumerian flood account (natural cataclysm) borrows its language from the “Lament over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur” (sociopolitical