pig and the cat. These animals did not exist before the Deluge, and
God created them in the ark because it was full of filth and human
excrements, which caused a great stench. The persons in the ark, not
being able to endure any longer the smell, complained to Noah. Then
Noah passed his hand down the back of the elephant, and it evacuated
the pig. The pig ate all the dung which was in the ark, and the stench
was no more.
“Some time after the rats gave great annoyance. They ate the food, and
befouled what they did not eat. Then the voyagers went to Noah, and
said to him, You delivered us in our former difficulty, but now we are
plagued with rats, which gnaw our garments, eat our victuals, and cover
every thing with their filth. Then Noah passed his hand down the back
of the lion, who sneezed, and the cat leaped out of its nose. And the
cat ate the rats.
“When Noah had left the ark, he passed forty days on the mountain, till
all the water had subsided into the sea. All the briny water that is
there is what remains from the Flood.
“Noah said to the raven, Go and place your foot on the earth and
see what is the depth of the water. The raven departed; but, having
found a carcase, it remained to devour it, and did not return. Noah
was provoked, and he cursed the raven, saying, May God make thee
contemptible among men and let carrion be thy food!
“After that Noah sent forth the dove. The dove departed, and, without
tarrying, put her feet in the water. The water of the Flood scalded and
pickled the legs of the dove. It was hot and briny, and feathers would
not grow on her legs any more, and the skin scaled off. Now, doves
which have red and featherless legs are of the sort that Noah sent
forth. The dove returning showed her legs to Noah, who said, May God
render thee well-pleasing to men! For that reason the dove is dear to
men’s hearts.”[196]
Another version of the story is this. Noah blessed the dove, and since
then she has borne a neck-ring of green feathers; but the raven, on the
other hand, he cursed, that its flight should be crooked, and never
direct like that of other birds.[197] This is also a Jewish legend.[198]
After that, Noah descended the mountain along with the eighty persons
who had been saved with him, and he found that not a house was left
standing on the face of the earth. Noah built a town consisting of
eighty houses,--a house apiece for all who had been saved with him.[199]
Fabricius, in his collection of apocrypha of the Old Testament, has
published the prayer that Noah offered daily in the ark, beside the
body of Adam, which he bore with him, to bury it on Golgotha.
“O Lord, Thou art excellent in truth, and nothing is great beside
Thee; look upon us in mercy; deliver us from this deluge of water for
the sake of the pangs of Adam, the first man whom Thou didst make;
for the sake of the blood of Abel, the holy one; for the sake of just
Seth, in whom Thou didst delight; number us not amongst those who have
broken Thy commandments, but cover us with Thy protection, for Thou art
our deliverer, and to Thee alone are due the praises uttered by the
works of Thy hands from all eternity.” And all the children of Noah
responded, “Amen, O Lord.”[200]
Noah is said to have left the ark on the tenth day of the first month
of the Mussulman year, and to have instituted the fast which the
Mahommedans observe on that day, to thank God for his deliverance.
According to the Book of Enoch, the water of the Flood was transformed
by God into fire, which will consume the world and the ungodly, at the
consummation of all things.[201]
The Targum of Palestine says that the dove plucked the leaf she brought
to Noah from off a tree on the Mount of Olives.[202]
The Book Jasher supplies an omission in Genesis. In Genesis it is
said of Lamech, on the birth of Noah, “_He called his name Noah;
saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our
hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed_;”[203] but
Noah signifies _rest_, not _comfort_. The Book Jasher says that the
Methuselah called the child Noah, _rest_, because the land rested from
the curse; but Lamech called him Menahem, _comfort_, for the reason
given in the text of Genesis. The sacred writer has given one name with
the signification of the other.[204]
XV.
HEATHEN LEGENDS OF THE DELUGE.
Ararat has borne this name for three thousand years. We read in the
Book of Genesis that “_the ark rested, in the seventh month, on the
seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat_.” In
passages of the Old Testament, as in Isaiah xxxvii. 38 and 2 Kings
xix. 37, mention is made of a land, in Jeremiah li. 27 of a kingdom,
of Ararat; and we are likewise informed by Moses of Chorene, the first
authority among Armenian writers, that an entire country bore this name
after an ancient Armenian king, Arai the Fair, who lived about 1750
years before Christ. He fell in a bloody battle with the Babylonians on
a plain in Armenia, called after him Arai-Arat, the Fall of Arai.
Before this event the country bore the name of Amasia, from its
sovereign, Amassis, the sixth in descent from Japheth, who gave the
name of Massis to the mountain. This is still the only name by which
it is known to the Armenians; for, though it is called Ararat in the
Armenian edition of the Old Testament, yet the people call it Massis,
and know no other name for it. The Mussulmans call it Agridagh, the
strong mountain. The name by which it is known to the Persians is
Kuhi-Nuh, the mountain of Noah, or Saad-dagh, the Blessed Mountain.[205]
But tradition is not at one as to the peak on which the ark rested,
or from which Noah descended, as we shall presently see. Ararat is
17,210 feet in altitude above the sea, and 14,320 feet above the plain
of the Araxes. On the northeastern slope of the mountain, even from a
distance, may be seen a deep, gloomy chasm, which gives the appearance
as if the mountain had been rent asunder at the top: this was probably
at some remote period the volcanic vent, for the mountain is composed
of tufa, scoria, and erupted matter. It shoots up in one rigid crest,
and then sweeps down towards Little Ararat, the second summit, which
stands 13,000 feet above the sea.[206]
The people of the neighborhood point to a step on the mountain side,
covered with perpetual snow and glacier, and where, say they, the ark
rested; and to a town near Ararat named Naktschiwan, or “the first
outgoing” of Noah from the ark. This etymological interpretation is
probably as questionable as that of Ararat given by Moses of Chorene;
it is true the city is ancient, for it was severely injured by an
earthquake in the reign of Astyages the Median, in the sixth century
before Christ. It is called Naxuana by Josephus,[207] and he says it
was so called because there Noah first descended from the ark, and
that remains of the ark were there to be seen carefully preserved. And
there, says the Armenian historian Vartan, is also the tomb of Noah.
Nicolas of Damascus, in his History of Syria, Berosus the ancient
Babylonian writer and other heathen historians, tell a similar tale;
and we learn that relics of the ark were distributed thence, and were
regarded with the utmost reverence, as amulets.
Nicolas of Damascus, who wrote in the reign of Augustus, says, “There
is beyond the Minyadian land a great mountain in Armenia, Baris by name
(perhaps for Masis), on which, as the tradition says, some one sailing
over it in an ark, lodged on the topmost peak. The remains of the wood
continued to exist long. Perhaps this may be the same as he of whom
Moses, the Jewish historian, has written.”[208]
The story quoted by Eusebius from an ancient writer named Molo, gives
a form of the Syrian tradition. “After the Deluge, the man who with
his sons escaped the flood, went out of Armenia, after he had been
driven out of his inheritance by the violence of the natives. He came
thence into the mountains of Syria, which were then uninhabited.”[209]
And with this agrees a curious allusion in Lucian, who was himself a
Syrian. He says that there was in Syria, in the city Hierapolis, a
religious festival, and a very ancient temple, connected “with the
popular story of Deucalion the Scythian, who lived at the time of the
great Deluge.” It is curious that he should give to the Syrian Noah
the Greek name, and that he should speak of him as not a native, but
as coming from the East, from Scythia. He says: “Of this Deucalion
have I heard in Greece, what the Greeks relate. The story is this:
The present race of men is not the first, for that perished. This is
the second race which sprang from Deucalion, and was very numerous.
The earlier generation was very evil, and violated the Divine law.
They neither kept oaths nor showed hospitality; they took not the
stranger in, nor protected him when he sought protection; therefore
a terrible destruction fell upon them. Much water gushed out of the
earth, great rains poured down, and the sea rose and overwhelmed the
earth. Deucalion alone of all men was preserved to another generation
on account of his wisdom and piety. He was thus saved. He went into a
great ark which he had built, along with his wife and children. Then
came to him, pair by pair, cows, horses, lions, serpents, and all kinds
of animals which are nourished on earth, and he took them all in. They
did not hurt him, for Zeus ordained a great friendship amongst them.
So they all sailed in the ark as long as the flood lasted. This is the
Greek story of Deucalion.
“But very wonderful is the confirmation of the history as it is related
in Hierapolis. In the neighborhood of that city a great chasm opened
which engulphed all the waters of the Flood. Thereupon Deucalion
erected altars, and dedicated a temple to Here (Atergatis) over the
chasm. I have seen this; it is very small: whether it was once large
but has since become smaller, I cannot say; but I saw that it was
small. For the confirmation of the history the following takes place:
twice in the year the sea-water is brought into the temple. Not only
do the priests bear it, but all Syria and Arabia, and many from beyond
Euphrates, come and carry water. They pour it out in the temple; then
it runs down into the chasm, and, though it may be very small, it
takes in all the water poured into it. This they do, say they, because
Deucalion instituted this rite as a memorial of his deliverance, and of
the mercy of God.”[210]
Equally fully has the Babylonian tradition reached us from the Chaldee
history of the old priest of Bel, Berosus (B. C. 260). The Chaldees
had placed ten kings at the head of this mystic history, which answer
to the ten generations in Genesis before the Flood. The last of these
patriarchs was called Xisuthrus, who is the same as the Biblical Noah.
Berosus relates the story of the Deluge thus: “Under the reign of
Xisuthrus there was a great flood. Kronos (_i. e._, Bel) appeared to
Xisuthrus in a dream, and warned him that all men would be destroyed
by a deluge on the 15th of the month Dæsios, and he commanded him to
write down all the learning and science of men, and to hide it in the
sun-city Siparis, and then to build a ship and to enter it along with
his family and relatives and nearest friends, and to take into it with
him food and drink, and beasts and winged fowl. When he was asked
whither he was about to sail, he was bidden reply: To the gods, to pray
them that men may prosper. He obeyed; and made an ark five stadia long
and two wide, laid in what was commanded, and sailed with his wife
and child and relatives. When the flood abated, Xisuthrus sent out a
bird which, as it found no food nor ground on which to perch, returned
to the ship. After a day, he sent out another bird; this came back
with mud on its feet. The third bird he sent out did not return. So
Xisuthrus knew that the land appeared, and he broke a hole in the ship
and saw that the ship was stranded on a mountain; so he disembarked
with his wife and daughter and steersman; and when he had adored the
earth, raised an altar, and offered to the gods, he vanished. Those
who remained in the ship also went out, when they saw that Xisuthrus
did not return, to seek Xisuthrus, and they called him by name. But
Xisuthrus appeared again no more, only his voice was heard bidding
them fear God, and telling them that he had taken to dwell with the
gods, because he was pious. The same honor was accorded to his wife and
daughter and to the steersman.” This refers to their being set in the
sky as constellations: Xisuthrus as the water-bearer, the virgin, and
steersman still occupy their places there. “He bade them,” continues
Berosus, “return to Babylon, and, as Fate decreed, take his writings
out of Siparis, and from them instruct men. The place where they found
themselves was Armenia. Some fragments of the ship remain on the
mountains of the Kordyæans in Armenia, and some take away particles and
use them as amulets.”[211]
Eusebius has preserved a fragment of another Babylonian writer,
Abydenos, which gives the same story precisely.[212]
Another Chaldee tradition preserved by Cassian is that, before the
Flood. Ham concealed in the ground treaties of witchcraft and alchemy,
and that, when the water abated, he recovered them.[213] According
to Berosus also, Xisuthrus had three sons,--Zerovanos, Titan, and
Japetosthes. Zerovanos is the same as Zoroaster.
From Phrygia also come to us traces of a Diluvian tradition. A number
of coins of Apamea, a city of Phrygia, between the rivers Mæander and
Marsyas, of the period of Septimius Severus and the following emperors,
possibly bear reference to this event.[214] One, a coin of Philip,
bears on the reverse something like a box, containing a man and woman;
on the panel of the box, under the man, is written “Noe,” the dove is
bringing the olive branch, and the raven is seated on the edge of the
box above the head of the female figure. The same two persons are also
represented on dry land, with the right hand uplifted in the attitude
of prayer. Another coin with the same subject, on the reverse has,
inscribed on the ark, ΝΗΤΩΝ.
To elucidate these coins, reference is made to a passage in the
Sibylline Oracles to this effect: “In Phrygia lies steep, to be seen
from afar, a mountain, named Ararat.... Therefrom streams the river
Marsyas; but on its crest rested the ark (κιβωτός) when the rain
abated.”[215] As the ancient name of Apamea seems to have been Kibotos,
it is not unlikely that the Sibylline writer mixed together in those
lines the Mosaic and the Phrygian traditions.
It must, however, be admitted that it is quite as probable that the box
represents a temple, and the two figures tutelary deities, and that the
“Noe” is a contraction for “Neocoros,” the most important title assumed
by Greek cities, and often recorded on their coins.
The ancient Persian account in the Bundehesch is this:--“Taschter (the
spirit ruling the waters) found water for thirty days and thirty nights
upon the earth. Every water-drop was as big as a bowl. The earth was
covered with water the height of a man. All idolaters on earth died
through the rain; it penetrated all openings. Afterwards a wind from
heaven divided the water and carried it away in clouds, as souls bear
bodies; then Ormuzd collected all the water together and placed it as a
boundary to the earth, and thus was the great ocean formed.”[216]
The ancient Indian tradition is, “that in the reign of the sun-born
monarch Satyavrata, the whole earth was drowned, and the whole human
race destroyed by a flood, except the pious prince himself, the
seven Rishis and their several wives.” This general _pralaya_, or
destruction, is the subject of the first Purana, or sacred poem; and
the story is concisely told in the eighth book of the Bhagavata, from
which the following is an abridged extract:--“The demon Hayagriva
having purloined the Vedas from Brahma while he was reposing, the whole
race of man became corrupt, except the seven Rishis and Satyavrata.
This prince was performing his ablutions in the river Critamala, when
Vishnu appeared to him in the shape of a small fish, and after several
augmentations of bulk in different waters, was placed by Satyavrata in
the ocean, when he thus addressed his amazed votary:--‘In seven days
all creatures who have offended me shall be destroyed by a deluge;
but thou shalt be secured in a capacious vessel miraculously formed.
Take, therefore, all kinds of medicinal herbs and esculent grain for
food, and together with the seven holy men, your respective wives,
and pairs of all animals, enter the ark without fear; then shalt thou
know God face to face, and all thy questions shall be answered.’
Saying this, he disappeared; and, after seven days, the ocean began to
overflow the coasts, and the earth to be flooded by constant showers,
when Satyavrata, meditating on the Deity, saw a large vessel moving
on the waters: he entered it, having in all respects conformed to the
instructions of Vishnu, who, in the form of a large fish, suffered
the vessel to be tied with a great sea-serpent, as with a cable, to
his measureless horn. When the deluge had ceased, Vishnu slew the
demon and recovered the Vedas, and instructed Satyavrata in divine
knowledge.”[217]
The Mahabharata says that the boat containing Manu and his seven
companions rested on Mount Naubhandanam, the highest peak of the
Himalayas; and the name Naubhandanam signifies “ships stranding.”[218]
The Greek traditions are not early, and were probably borrowed from
Semitic sources. We have seen the story told by Lucian in his book
“De Dea Syra,” but in his “Timon” he follows the more authentic Greek
legend, and makes Deucalion escape in a little skiff (consequently
without the animals), and land on Mount Lycoris.
We have also the same catastrophe somewhat differently related by
Ovid. The world he represents “as confederate in crime,” and doomed
therefore to just punishment. Jupiter sends down rain from heaven, and
rivers and seas gushing forth from their caves gather over the earth’s
surface, and sweep mankind away. Deucalion and his wife alone, borne in
a little skiff, are stranded on the top of Parnassus. By degrees, the
waters subside: the only surviving pair inquire of the gods how they
may again people the desert earth. They are ordered, with veiled heads,
to throw behind them the bones of their great mother. Half doubtful as
to the meaning of the oracle, they throw behind them stones, which are
immediately changed into men and women, and the earth spontaneously
produces the rest of the animal creation.[219]
Apollodorus relates the matter thus:--“When Zeus determined to destroy
the brazen race, Deucalion, by the advice of Prometheus, made a great
ark, λάρναξ, and put into it all necessary things, and entered it with
Pyrrha. Zeus then, pouring down heavy rains from heaven, overwhelmed
the greater part of Greece, so that all men perished except a few who
fled to the highest mountains. He floated nine days and nights in the
sea of waters, and at last stopped on Mount Parnassus. Then Zeus sent
Hermes to ask him what he wished, and he solicited that mankind might
be made again. Zeus bade him throw stones over his head, from which men
should come, and said that those cast by Pyrrha should be turned into
women.”
Stephanus of Byzantium says that the tradition was that after the
surface of the earth became dry, Zeus ordered Prometheus and Athene
to make images of clay in the form of men; and when they were dry, he
called the winds and made them breathe into each, and rendered them
vital: and thus the earth after the Flood was repeopled.[220] Diodorus
says, “In the Deluge, which happened in the time of Deucalion, almost
all flesh died.”[221]
The Chinese begin their dynasties with Jao, the last of the old race,
whose words are thus recorded in the Schu-Kiug:--“The mighty waters
of the flood spread themselves out, and overflowed, and drowned every
thing. The mountains disappeared in the deep, and the hills were buried
beneath them. The foaming billows seemed to threaten heaven. All people
were drowned.”[222] An ancient inscription, which the Chinese attribute
to Yu, the third patriarch after the Flood, and which at least dates
from before Christ, refers to this event:--“The illustrious Emperor
Jao said, sighing, ‘Companions and counsellors! The great and little
territories up to the mountain’s peak, the homes of birds, and wild
beasts, were overflowed far and wide. Long had I forgotten my home; now
I rest upon the mountain top of Jo-lu.... The trouble is over, and the
misfortune is at an end; the streams of the south flow, clothes and
food are before us. The world is at rest, and the flying rain cannot
again destroy us.’”[223]
In one of the writings of the disciples of Tao-tse, the tradition
takes a fuller form. Kung-Kung, a bad spirit, enraged at having been
overcome in war, gave such a blow against one of the pillars of the sky
with his head that he broke it; and the vault of heaven fell in, and a
tremendous flood overwhelmed the earth. But Niu-Noa overcame the water
with wood, and made a boat to save himself, which could go far; and he
polished a stone of five colors--the rainbow--and therewith he fastened
the heavens, and lifted them up on a tortoise shell. Then he killed the
black dragon Kong-Kong, and choked the holes in heaven with the ashes
of a pumpkin.[224] In the story of Jao there is also a faint trace
of his connection with the rainbow, for he is said to have eyebrows
colored and shaped like rainbows.[225]
The Kamskadales say, “that in the remote ages when their great ancestor
and God, Kutka, lived in Kamschatka, there was a mighty deluge. Many
men were drowned therein, but some tried to save themselves in boats,
but the waves overwhelmed them. Those who were saved were rescued on
great rafts made of trees bound together, to which they retreated,
taking food and their property with them. And that they might not
drift out to sea, they anchored themselves with great stones, which
they tied to the edges and let down into the water. And when the flood
abated, they rested on the top of a high mountain.”[226]
A Lapp tradition is that God once submerged the world, saving only one
brother and sister alive, whom He placed on Mount Passeware. When the
water disappeared, the children separated to wander over the earth,
and see whether they alone remained alive. They met after three years,
and then separated again, for they recognized one another as brother
and sister. After three years they met, but turned their backs on one
another once more for the same reason. Again they met after the lapse
of three years, and again they parted; but when they met again, after
three years’ further absence, they no longer recognized each other, and
so they took one another in marriage; and of them all generations of
men are come.[227]
Among the Kelts, the Deluge formed a prominent feature, and the ark was
connected with their most sacred religious rites.
A Welsh legend is this:--“One of the most dreadful of events was the
outbreak of Llyn Llion, the sea of seas, which overwhelmed the world
and drowned all men except Dwyan and Dwyvach, who escaped in a bare
boat and colonized Britain. This ship was one of the three masterpieces
of Hu, and was built by the heavenly lord, Reivion; and it received
into it a pair of every kind of beasts when the Llyn Llion burst
forth.” Reivion is the same as Hu Cadarn, the discoverer of the vine;
and it is said of him that “he built the ark laden with fruit, and it
was stayed up in the water, and carried forward by serpents;” and of
the rainbow it was said, that the Woman of the silver wheel, Arianrhod,
to control the wizards of night and evil spirits of tempest, and out of
love to the Britons, “wove the stream of the rainbow,--a stream which
drives the storm from the earth, and makes its former destruction stay
far from it, throughout the world’s circle.”[228]
The Norse legend in the younger Edda is, “Bör’s sons (Odin, Vilj, and
Ve) slew the giant Ymir; and when he fell, so much blood (in poetic
phraseology Ymir’s blood signified water) ran out of the wounds, that
the whole race of the giants was drowned in it, except one, who with
his family escaped; this one was called Bergelmr. He got into a boat
along with his wife, and was thus saved.”[229]