Flood myth

One example of a flood myth is the Epic of Gilgamesh. Many scholars believe that this account was copied from the Akkadian Atra-Hasis,[lower-alpha 1] which dates to the 18th century BCE.[3][lower-alpha 2] In the Gilgamesh flood myth, the highest god, Enlil, decides to destroy the world with a flood because humans have become too noisy. The god Ea, who had created humans out of clay and divine blood, secretly warns the hero Utnapishtim of the impending flood and gives him detailed instructions for building a boat so that life may survive.[5][6] Both the Epic of Gilgamesh and Atra-Hasis are preceded by the similar Sumerian creation myth (c. 1600 BCE)[7]—the oldest surviving example of such a flood-myth narrative, known from tablets found in the ruins of Nippur in the late 1890s and translated by assyriologist Arno Poebel.[8]

George Smith, who discovered and translated the Epic of Gilgamesh

Academic Yi Samuel Chen[9] analyzed various texts from the Early Dynastic III Period through to the Old Babylonian Period, and argues that the flood narrative was only added in texts written during the Old Babylonian Period. With regard to the Sumerian King List, observations by experts have always indicated that the portion of the Sumerian King List talking about before the flood differs stylistically from the King List Proper. Essentially Old Babylonian copies tend to represent a tradition of before the flood apart from the actual King List, whereas the Ur III copy of the King List and the duplicate from the Brockmon collection indicate that the King List Proper once existed independent of mention of the flood and the tradition of before the flood. Essentially, Chen gives evidence to prove that the section of before the flood and references to the flood in the Sumerian King List were all later additions added in during the Old Babylonian Period, as the Sumerian King List went through updates and edits. The flood as a watershed in early history of the world was probably a new historiographical concept emerging in the Mesopotamian literary traditions during the Old Babylonian Period, as evident by the fact that the flood motif did not show up in the Ur III copy and that earliest chronographical sources related to the flood show up in the Old Babylonian Period. Chen also concludes that the name of "Ziusudra" as a flood hero and the idea of the flood hinted at by that name in the Old Babylonian Version of "Instructions of Shuruppak" are only developments during that Old Babylonian Period, when also the didactic text was updated with information from the burgeoning Antediluvian Tradition.[10]

In the Hebrew Genesis, the god Yahweh, who had created man out of the dust of the ground,[11] decides to flood the earth because of the corrupted state of mankind. Yahweh then gives the protagonist, Noah, instructions to build an ark in order to preserve human and animal life. When the ark is completed, Noah, his family, and representatives of all the animals of the earth are called upon to enter the ark. When the destructive flood begins, all life outside of the ark perishes. After the waters recede, all those aboard the ark disembark and have Yahweh's promise that he will never judge the earth with a flood again. Yahweh causes a rainbow to form as the sign of this promise.[12]

In Hindu mythology, texts such as the Satapatha Brahmana[13] (c. 6th century BCE)[14] and the Puranas contain the story of a great flood, "manvantara-sandhya",[15][16] wherein the Matsya Avatar of the Vishnu warns the first man, Manu, of the impending flood, and also advises him to build a giant boat.[17][18][19] In Zoroastrian Mazdaism, Ahriman tries to destroy the world with a drought, which Mithra ends by shooting an arrow into a rock, from which a flood springs; one man survives in an ark with his cattle.[20] Norbert Oettinger argues that the story of Yima and the Vara was originally a flood myth, and the harsh winter was added in due to the dry nature of Eastern Iran, as flood myths did not have as much of an effect as harsh winters. He has argued that the mention of melted water flowing in Videvdad 2.24 is a remnant of the flood myth, and mentions that the Indian flood myths originally had their protagonist as Yama, but it was changed to Manu later.[21]

In Plato's Timaeus, written c. 360 BCE, Timaeus describes a flood myth similar to the earlier versions. In it, the Bronze race of humans angers the high god Zeus with their constant warring. Zeus decides to punish humanity with a flood. The Titan Prometheus, who had created humans from clay, tells the secret plan to Deucalion, advising him to build an ark in order to be saved. After nine nights and days, the water starts receding and the ark lands on a mountain.[22]

The Cheyenne, a North American Great Plains tribe, believe in a flood which altered the course of their history, perhaps occurring in the Missouri River Valley.[23]

Floods in the wake of the Last Glacial Period (c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago) are speculated to have inspired myths that survive to this day.[24] Plato's allegory of Atlantis is set over 9,000 years before his time, leading some scholars to suggest that a Stone Age society which lived close to the Mediterranean Sea could have been wiped out by the rising sea level, an event which could have served as the basis for the story.[25]

Archaeologist Bruce Masse stated that some of the narratives of a great flood discovered in many cultures around the world may be linked to an oceanic asteroid impact that occurred between Africa and Antarctica, around the time of a solar eclipse, that caused a tsunami.[26] Among the 175 myths he analyzed were a Hindu myth speaking of an alignment of the five planets at the time, and a Chinese story linking the flood to the end of the reign of Empress Nu Wa. Fourteen flood myths refer to a full solar eclipse.[27] According to Masse these indications point to the date May 10, 2807 BC.[28] His hypothesis suggests that a meteor or comet crashed into the Indian Ocean around 3000–2800 BCE, which created the 30-kilometre (19 mi) undersea Burckle Crater and Fenambosy Chevron, and generated a giant tsunami that flooded coastal lands.[29]

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia, like other early sites of riverine civilisation, was flood-prone; and for those experiencing valley-wide inundations, flooding could destroy the whole of their known world.[30] According to the excavation report of the 1930s excavation at Shuruppak (modern Tell Fara, Iraq), the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic layers at the site were separated by a 60-cm yellow layer of alluvial sand and clay, indicating a flood,[31] like that created by river avulsion, a process common in the Tigris–Euphrates river system. Similar layers have been recorded at other sites as well, all dating to different periods, which would be consistent with the nature of river avulsions.[32] Shuruppak in Mesopotamian legend was the city of Uta-napishtim, the king who built a boat to survive the coming flood. The alluvial layer dates from around 2900 BC.[33]

Earth's sea level rose dramatically in the millennia after the Last Glacial Maximum

The geography of the Mesopotamian area changed considerably with the filling of the Persian Gulf after sea waters rose following the last glacial period. Global sea levels were about 120 m (390 ft) lower around 18,000 BP and rose until 8,000 BP when they reached current levels, which are now an average 40 m (130 ft) above the floor of the Gulf, which was a huge (800 km × 200 km, 500 mi × 120 mi) low-lying and fertile region in Mesopotamia, in which human habitation is thought to have been strong around the Gulf Oasis for 100,000 years. A sudden increase in settlements above the present-day water level is recorded at around 7,500 BP.[34][35]

Comets

The Eve of the Deluge, by John Martin, 1840. Depicts a comet causing the Great Flood.[41]

The earliest known hypothesis about a comet that had a widespread effect on human populations can be attributed to Edmond Halley, who in 1694 suggested that a worldwide flood had been the result of a near-miss by a comet.[42][43] The issue was taken up in more detail by William Whiston, a protégé of and popularizer of the theories of Isaac Newton, who argued in his book A New Theory of the Earth (1696) that a comet encounter was the probable cause of the Biblical Flood of Noah in 2342 BCE.[44] Whiston also attributed the origins of the atmosphere and other significant changes in the Earth to the effects of comets.[45]

In Pierre-Simon Laplace's book Exposition Du Systême Du Monde (The System of the World), first published in 1796, he stated:[46]

[T]he greater part of men and animals drowned in a universal deluge, or destroyed by the violence of the shock given to the terrestrial globe; whole species destroyed; all the monuments of human industry reversed: such are the disasters which a shock of a comet would produce.[47][48]

A similar hypothesis was popularized by Minnesota congressman and pseudoarchaeology writer Ignatius L. Donnelly in his book Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel (1883), which followed his better-known book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882). In Ragnarok, Donnelly argued that an enormous comet struck the Earth around 6,000 BCE to 9,000 BCE,[lower-alpha 3] destroying an advanced civilization on the "lost continent" of Atlantis. Donnelly, following others before him, attributed the Biblical Flood to this event, which he hypothesized had also resulted in catastrophic fires and climate change. Shortly after the publication of Ragnarok, one commenter noted, "Whiston ascertained that the deluge of Noah came from a comet's tail; but Donnelly has outdone Whiston, for he has shown that our planet has suffered not only from a cometary flood, but from cometary fire, and a cometary rain of stones."[51]

• 
  Matsya-avatara of Lord Vishnu pulls Manu's boat after having defeated the demon
• 
  Nanabozho in Ojibwe flood story from an illustration by R. C. Armour, in his book North American Indian Fairy Tales, Folklore and Legends (1905)
• 
  The Great Flood, by anonymous painter, The vom Rath bequest, Rijksmuseum
• 
  The Deluge, by Francis Danby, 1840. Oil on canvas. Tate Gallery
• 
  Noah's Ark from the Zubdat al-Tawarikh in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul, dedicated to Sultan Murad III in 1583.

• List of flood myths

Footnotes

Citations

Sources

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Deluge (mythology).

• The Epic of Gilgamesh. Translated by Andrew R. George (reprinted ed.). London: Penguin Books. 2003 [1999]. ISBN 0-14-044919-1.

• Bailey, Lloyd R. Noah, the Person and the Story, University of South Carolina Press, 1989. ISBN 0-87249-637-6
• Best, Robert M. Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic, Sumerian Origins of the Flood Myth, 1999, ISBN 0-9667840-1-4
• Cheyne, Thomas Kelly (1878). "Deluge" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. VII (9th ed.). pp. 54–57.
• Dundes, Alan (ed.) The Flood Myth, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988. ISBN 0-520-05973-5
• Faulkes, Anthony (trans.) Edda (Snorri Sturluson). Everyman's Library, 1987. ISBN 0-460-87616-3
• Greenway, John (ed.), The Primitive Reader, Folkways, 1965.
• Grey, G. Polynesian Mythology. Whitcombe and Tombs, Christchurch, 1956.
• Lambert, W. G. and Millard, A. R., Atra-hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood, Eisenbrauns, 1999. ISBN 1-57506-039-6
• Masse, W. B. "The Archaeology and Anthropology of Quaternary Period Cosmic Impact", in Bobrowsky, P., and Rickman, H. (eds.) Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society: An Interdisciplinary Approach Berlin, Springer Press, 2007. pp. 25–70.
• Reed, A. W. Treasury of Maori Folklore A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, 1963.
• Reedy, Anaru (trans.), Nga Korero a Pita Kapiti: The Teachings of Pita Kapiti. Canterbury University Press, Christchurch, 1997.
• Like many other folk-tale elements from around the world, the story of flood survival and human restart (motif A 1021.0.2 and associated elements) appears in Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature.[1]