Deluge (mythology)
Growing evidence is demonstrating that catastrophic flooding, on a scale unimaginable in modern times, punctuated the melting of the ice age glaciers, at several occasions until about 5500 BCE, and that the Deluge myth has a kernel of human experience. This article will address first the myth, then the geology.
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2 Historical deluges 3 External links 4 Reference |
A large percentage of the world's cultures have stories of a "great flood", though the story of Noah's Ark of Genesis is probably the best known. (See Noah for more details).
Another very similar version is given in the Babylonian account of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which apparently derives from a much earlier similar Sumerian account. In this the only male survivor, Utnapishtim, lived after the Deluge on the island of Dilmun and had achieved a great age when Gilgamesh sought him out for the secret of immortality. The Sumerians also referred to a great flood in other texts, such as the Sumerian king list, with accounts remarkably similar to the Biblical version. This suggests that the Genesis account has drawn influence from the older Sumerian depiction.
Noah and Utnapishtim have a counterpart in Greek mythology, Deucalion. The full details are at the entry for Deucalion, but in essence the wrath of Zeus has been ignited against the Pelasgians, the original inhabitants of Greece. But Deucalion has been forewarned by his father to build an ark and provision it. He and his wife Pyrrha are the surviving pair of humans when the waters recede and their ark touches Mount Parnassus, or Mount Etna, or Mount Athos, or perhaps Mount Othrys in Thessaly. Accounts differ. Though Deucalion is no longer allowed to be the inventor of wine as Noah still is, his name gives away his secret: deucos + halieus "new wine sailor." His wife, named "wine-red," just happens to be the sister of Ariadne who mothered with Dionysus, several winemaking progenitors of Aegean tribes.
After the flood has subsided, Deucalion and Pyrrha give thanks to Zeus. However, the repeopling of the world is the work of Thetis, who advises the new primal pair, "Cover your heads and throw the bones of your mother behind you," and the stones of Gaia thrown over their shoulders, take life and repeople the land. There is no mention of the plight of animals in this Flood myth.
In Hindu scriptures (specifically the Puranas), an avatar of Vishnu in the form of a fish, Matsya, warned Manu of a terrible flood that was to come and that it would wash away all living things. Manu cared for the fish and eventually released it in the sea. There the fish cautioned Manu to build a boat. He did so, and when the flood arrived, the fish towed the ship to safety by a cable attached to his horn.
Among the Inca, Viracocha destroyed the giants with a Great Flood, and two people repopulated the earth. Uniquely, they survived in sealed caves. In Maya mythology, Huracan ("one-legged") was a wind and storm god caused the Great Flood after the first humans angered the gods. He supposedly lived in the windy mists above the floodwaters and spoke "earth" until land came up again from the seas.
Ordinary deluges are dealt with elsewhere at Wikipedia, but certain catastrophes connected with the climatic emergence from the Ice age may well have sparked myths of a Universal Deluge. Some of these floods are listed at Deluge (prehistoric).
Mythology
Historical deluges
External links
Reference
Alan Dundes (editor), The Flood Myth University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988. ISBN 0-520-05973-5 / 0520059735