Floods

One of my favorite aspects of history is when stories coincide, and probably one of the most famous legends that share astonishingly similar characteristics ubiquitously (u-b-i-q-u-i-t-o-u-s-l-y) among religions and mythologies is a flood story.  Yep, there are so many occurrences of flood stories that scientists and archaeologists actually began searching for some cataclysmic deluge.  Two scientists theorized that’s sometime around 5600 BC, there was a major inundation of the Black Sea – then a freshwater lake – by water rushing in from the Mediterranean through the present-day Bosporus Strait.  In 2000, using underwater equipment, they discovered the remains of wooden houses beneath the Black Sea near the Turkish shore.  Their theory, simply stated, is that this calamitous event destroyed everything for some sixty thousand square miles, killing tens of thousands of people.  This discovery provided the historical memory for all of the flood narratives that later emerged.

 

I would like to share with you a few abridged versions of these stories, but have left out the Christian one, because I believe most of my readers are familiar enough with it already.  Do not think that ones mentioned here are the only ones either.  Others include floods from the Aztec (the gods decide to repopulate the Earth after a great flood), Incan (the god Viracocha is disappointed in his first creation of man and destroys the race with a flood), etc… the list goes on…

 

Chinese Flood - A thunder god who is a fishlike deity with a green face, scales, and fins is angry with Nu Gua's family.  Fearing the god, Nu Gua's father builds an iron cage outside his house and waits with a pitchfork in case of an attack by the fish god.  In the midst of a great storm, the thunder god arrives and threatens Nu Gua'sfather.  But the clever man is able to trap the god in the cage and plans to cook the fish god.  With the thunder deity contained, father goes off to buy spices, so that the thunder god will taste delicious once stewed up, but first warns his children not to give the god anything to drink.  When the thunder god whimpers that he is thirsty, Nu Gua takes pity on him and gives him a drink.  Swallowing the water helps the thunder god regain all of his power, enabling him to break out of the cage.  Before he escapes, he gives one of his teeth to the children.  They plant it, and a tree soon grows, bearing an enormous gourd.

 

When the father returns, he sees the god is gone and a tree is growing.  Fearing that the thunder god will take revenge on him, he builds an iron boat and gets into it while the children climb inside the great gourd.  When the incessant rains come, both the boat and the gourd float up toward heaven.  The father bangs on the door of the king of heaven who is so surprised by his unexpected visitors that he stops the rain.  Instantly, the boat and the gourd fall one thousand miles back to earth.  While the father dies, his two children in the gourd are spared and Nu Gua and her brother Fu Hsi then repopulate the world.

 

Greek Flood - It was in the age of iron that Zeus finally created the present generation of humans.  But, according to the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, when Zeus (Jupiter to Ovid) walked among these humans, he was disgusted, especially by a king who practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice.  Zeus decided to destroy them.  With the help of Poseidon, Zeus unleashed a tremendous flood and nearly all of humanity was killed.  Two good souls, however, were saved.  Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, and his wife, Pyrrha, who was the daughter of Pandora, had been warned by the prescient Prometheus of the imminent flood.  Deucalion built a boat, sent out a bird - a dove, in his case - and, after the floodwaters subsided, the boat came to rest on a mountaintop.

 

Like Noah, Deucalion and Pyrrha were allowed to live.  But they were sad and lonely inan empty world.  The voice of a goddess from a nearby cave told them to throw their "mighty mother's bones" over their shoulders.

 

Puzzled at first, Deucalion realized that the command referred not to his own mother, but to Mother Earth - whose bones are rocks.  Picking up stones, Deucalion and Pyrrha threw them over their shoulders, and they were turned into people, and Deucalion and Pyrrha were responsible for repopulating the Earth.

 

Indian Flood - When a flood threatens the world, Brahma takes the form of a fish and tells Manu to build a large boat and store on it all the seeds of living things on earth.  As floodwaters rise, everything is submerged, but Manu's boat lands on the highest peak in the Himalayas.  Eventually the floodwaters recede and Manu makes an offering to the gods which produces a beautiful woman named Parsu.  She and Manu become parents of the human race.

 

Mayan Flood - Central to this Creation narrative are two groups of gods, one from the sea and one from the sky, who decide to create the earth, plants, and people.  The role of the peoople, interestingly, is to praise the gods and provide them with offerings.  The first people the gods make have no arms and can only chatter and howl - so they become the first animals.  A second try produces a being mad e of mud, which cannot walk or reproduce and which dissolves into nothing.  After consulting a wise old divine couple, the gods make a third attempt and create people out of wood.  But the results are only slightly improved.  The wooden people can speak and reproduce, but they prove to be very poor at praying and providing the requisite offerings.  The god Huracan (origin of hurricane) decides to do away with the wooden people with a flood, and he sends a gigantic rainstorm along with terrible monsters to attack them.  Thepeople are destroyed, but some manage to survive in the jungles and become the ancestors of monkeys.

 

Sumerian Flood - During the adventures of Gilgamesh, he goes to visit his ancestor Utnapishtim, who possesses the secret of immortality, given to him by the gods.  The gods are annoyed by the humans and their growing numbers and all the noise they make, so they decide to send a flood to destroy humanity.  The water god Enki is forbidden to reveal this plan to humans but he realizes that if there are no humans, there will be no sacrifices to the gods and no people to do all the work.  Enki cleverly reveals the plan of the coming flood to Utnapishtim, and instructs him to build a boat and fill it with the seeds of all living things.  After a storm that lasts six days and seven nights, the boat comes to rest on a mountaintop, and releases birds to see whether there is any dry land.  When the birds do not return, Utnapishtim knows the floodwaters have receded.

 

Babylonian Flood – Enlil was in charge of the minor gods who were digging the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.  When they complained about the work and revolted, the gods decided to create mankind to do the work instead, and Nintur, the goddess of birth, mixed some clay with blood and created man.  But when the population of men grew too large, the noise they made kept Enlil awake at night, and he asked the gods to send a plague to thin out mankind.  A wise man, Atrahasis – whose name literally means “exceedingly wise” – got wind of the divine plan and consulted Enki, the Sumerian water god, who was a bit of a trickster and a friend of mankind.

 

Enki told the people to keep quiet and make offerings to the plague god to avert disaster.  But as time went by, Enlil again wanted to destroy noisy mankind, this time with a drought.  Again, disaster was averted by Enki’s intervention.  When the people’s noise disturbed him a third time, Enlil ordered an embargo on land bounty, but Enki saved mankind from starvation by filling the canals and rivers he controlled with fish.

 

Finally, Enlil decided to send a great flood, and this time Enki advised Atrahasis to build a boat and take his family and animals on board.  All mankind was destroyed except Atrahasis and his family who survived and repopulated the Earth.

 

Norse Flood – In a story that echoes Greek Creation accounts, Odin grows to manhood, joins with his brothers, and kills Ymir, the primordial frost giant.  The incredible flow of the primal giant’s blood creates a great flood that kills all of the frost giants except for Bergelmir and his unnamed wife, who escape the deluge in a boat and re-create the race of ice giants.

 

 

Four of the stories note that the boat lands of a mountain top, and according to the Indian Flood, it lands on the Everest.  All the stories concluding the boat stopped on the summit were in the Mediterranean and Near East area, and all around the world elsewhere there was flood, but no boat landing on a mountaintop.  The flood still affected them but the boat would probably be somewhere in Nepal.  I think it would be so cool to find that boat.  That's my life's mission: finding the location of the primordial boat that allowed Noah/Deucalion/Manu/etc to repopulate the Earth.

 

Pretty cool?  I think it's nifty anyways.  =]

 

 

If you wanted to know my source - Don't Know Much About Mythology by Kenneth C. Davis, which I highly recommend.  It's probably one of my top reference books for things ancient and mythological.  =)

 

I didn't spell check, because it counts all the mythological names wrong, and I'm not going to sift through it so... =P

Tags: Life, History, Religion, Mythology