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 was taken to dwell with the gods, because he was pious. The same
honour 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 treatises 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 whilst he was reposing, the whole race of men
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 everything.
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 colours—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 coloured
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 all
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 beast when the Llyn Llion burst forth.” This
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 is called Bergelmr. He got into a boat along
with his wife, and was thus saved.”[229]
The Lithuanian myth was this:—When Pramzimas, the most high God, looked
out of his heavenly house upon the world through a window, he saw that
it was filled with violence. Then he sent Wind and Water to devastate
the earth, and this they did for twenty days and nights. Pramzimas
looked on, and as he looked on, he ate nuts at his window, and threw the
shells down. One shell fell on the top of a mountain, and some men,
women, and beasts scrambled into it and were saved alive, while all the
rest of the inhabitants of the world were drowned. When the flood
drained away, the pairs in the nut-shell left it, and were scattered
over the earth. Only one aged couple remained, and they complained; then
God sent them the rainbow to console them, and bade them jump over the
bones of the earth. They jumped nine times, and nine pairs of living
human beings started to life, and founded the nine races of Lithuanian
blood.[230]
Among the negroes of Africa, traditions are faint, or have been little
sought after and collected. The Jumala negroes say that once when the
earth was full of cruelty and wickedness, the god Til destroyed it with
fire, and that one man alone was saved alive, named Musikdgen, _i.e._
the mountain chief, because he was found without blame.
In America the crop of traditions is abundant.
The Kolosches, living in Russian America, say that the first dweller on
the earth was Kitkhughia-si, and that he resolved to destroy all his
children who sinned against him. Thereupon he brought a flood over the
land, and all perished save a few who escaped in boats to the tops of
mountains, where, say they, the remains of the boats, and the ropes
which fastened them, remain to be seen.[231]
Among the Dog-rib Indians, Sir John Franklin found the story much more
complete; and as this tribe lives near the Polar Sea, far from any
mission stations, it is scarcely possible that the story can have been
derived from Christian teachers. They say that Tschäpiwih, their great
ancestor, lived on a track between two seas. He built a weir, and caught
fish in such abundance that they choked the watercourse, and the water
overflowed the earth. Tschäpiwih with his family entered his canoe, and
took with him all kinds of beasts and birds. The land was covered for
many days; at last Tschäpiwih could bear it no longer, so he sent out
the beaver to look for the earth. But the beaver was drowned. Then he
sent out the musk-rat, which had some difficulty in returning, but it
had mud on its paws. Tschäpiwih was glad to see the earth, and moulded
it between his fingers, till it became an island on the surface of the
water, on which he could land.[232]
The Pacullies, on the west coast of New Georgia, say that at the Deluge
one man and one woman were saved by escaping into a cave; and they add
that when the earth was drowned, a water rat dived for it and brought it
to the surface again.[233]
A Caddoque tradition is, that Sakechah was a great hunter. One night he
saw in vision the Master of Life, who spoke to the dreamer these words:—
“The world is getting very wicked, Sakechah.”
“I know it,” answered the hunter.
“I hear no longer the voices of men supplicating me for favours; they no
longer thank me for what I send them. I must sweep, wash, and purify the
earth; I must destroy all living creatures from off the face of it.”
Then Sakechah said, “What have I done, Master of Life, that I should be
involved in this general destruction?”
The Master answered, “No, Sakechah, thou hast been a good servant; I
will except thee from the general doom. Go now, cut thee a hemlock,
knock off the cones, and bring them, together with the trunk and leaves,
to the bottom of the hill Wecheganawan. Burn them in a fire made of the
dry branches of the oak, kindled with the straw of wild rice. When the
heap is reduced to ashes, take the ashes and strew them in a circle
round the hill. Nothing need be gathered within the circle, for the
living creatures will of themselves retreat to it for safety; but when
this is done, take the trunk of the hemlock, and strike it into the
earth at the spot where the large tuft of grass is growing on the barren
hill. There lies the great fountain of waters; and when the staff is
struck into the earth the fountain shall burst forth, and the earth be
swept and washed and purified by the great deluge that shall overwhelm
it. Sakechah and his family shall alone, of all the inhabitants of the
earth, be saved; and the creatures he assembles around him on the hill
Wecheganawan be alone those exempted from the all-sweeping destruction.”
The hunter obeyed. He took the staff and stuck it deep into the earth at
the place indicated, and the great fountain was broken up, and the
waters burst forth in a mighty volume. Slowly the element began to cover
the earth, while the hunter and his family looked on. Now the low
grounds appeared but as they appear in the season of showers; here a
little water, and there a little water; soon they became one vast sheet.
Now a little hill sank from view, then the tops of the trees
disappeared; again a tall hill hid its head. At length the waves rose so
high that Sakechah could see nothing more; he stood as it were in a
well. The waters were piled up on every side of him, restrained from
harming him, or his, or the beasts that had clustered around him, by the
magic belt of hemlock ashes.
“Sakechah!” said the Master of Life, “when the moon is exactly over thy
head, she will draw the waters on to the hill. She is angry with me
because I scourged a comet. I cannot prevent her revenge unless I
destroy her, and that I may not do, as she is my wife. Therefore bid
every living creature that is on the hill take off the nail from the
little finger of his right hand, if a man; if a bird, or beast, of the
right foot or claw. When each has done this, bid him blow in the hollow
of the nail with the right eye shut, saying these words, ‘Nail become a
canoe, and save me from the wrath of the moon.’ The nail will become a
large canoe, and in this canoe will its owner be safe.”
The Great Spirit was obeyed, and shortly every creature was floating in
a boat on the surface of the water. And, lest they should be dispersed,
Sakechah bound them together by thongs of buffalo-hide.
They continued floating for a long time, till at last Sakechah said,
“This will not do—we must have land. Go,” said he to a raven that sat in
his canoe near him, “fetch me a little earth from the bottom of the
abyss. I will send a female, because women are quicker and more
searching than men.”
The raven, proud of the praise bestowed on her sex, left her tail
feathers at home, and dived into the abyss. She was gone a long time,
but, notwithstanding her being a woman, she returned baffled of her
object. Whereupon Sakechah said to the otter, “My little man, I will
send you to the bottom, and see if your industry and perseverance will
enable you to accomplish what has been left undone by the wit and
cunning of the raven.” So the otter departed upon his dangerous
expedition. He accomplished his object. When he again appeared on the
earth, he held in his paw a lump of black mud. This he gave into the
hands of Sakechah; and the Great Master bade him divide the lump into
five portions; that which came out of the middle of the lump he was
commanded to mould into a cake and to cast into the water: he did so,
and it became dry land, on which he could disembark; and the earth thus
formed was repeopled from his time. No matter whether the men of the
earth be red or white, all are descended from Sakechah.[234]
The Iroquois tell a very similar story, differing from the above in
merely few trivial particulars. According to the tradition of the
Knistineaux on the Upper Missouri, all men perished in the Deluge except
one woman, who caught the leg of a bird which carried her to the top of
a rock, where she was confined of twins, of whom the earth was
peopled.[235]
The Appalachian tribe in Florida is a relic of a more ancient nation
than the North American Indian tribes. They relate that the lake Theomi
burst its bounds, and overflowed the earth, and stood above the top of
the highest mountains, saving only the peak Oldamy, on which stood a
temple to the sun. Those men who had succeeded in reaching this temple
were saved, but all the rest of mankind perished.[236]
According to the Cherokees, a dog foresaw the destruction that was
coming on the earth. It went every day to the bank of a river and
howled; and when its master rebuked it, it revealed to him what was
about to take place. The man therefore built a boat and entered it with
his family, and he alone of all mankind was saved.[237]
If we turn to Central America, we find that there also traditions of the
Flood abounded.
The ancient inhabitants of Mexico related the event as follows:—
There was a great deluge which destroyed all men and beasts, save Coxcox
and his wife Chichequetzal, who escaped in a cyprus trunk and landed on
Mount Colhuacan, where they became parents of many children, who,
however, were all dumb. Then appeared a dove, which seated itself on a
high tree, and taught them language. But as none of them understood the
speech of the other, they separated and dispersed over the world.
Fifteen heads of families, however, had the good fortune to speak the
same language. These lived together in the same place, but at last they
moved, and after 104 years of wanderings they settled in Aztlan. Thence
they journeyed to Chiapultepeque, and then returned to the Mount
Colhuacan and settled in Mexico.[238]
There was a story of similar description connected with the ancient city
of Cholula in the modern province of Puebla. “Before the great flood in
the year 4,008 after the creation of the world, the land Anaknac
(Mexico) was peopled with giants. All those who did not perish, with the
exception of seven, escaped into holes, and were transformed into fish.
When the deluge was over, one of these giants, Xelhuaz by name, the
builder, went to Cholula, and built a pyramid on Mount Tlalok, to
commemorate his having been saved thereon along with his six
brothers.”[239]
The inhabitants of Mechoacan related that, on account of the iniquity of
men, a flood was sent to sweep them all away; but a priest, named Tezbi,
along with his wife and children, were saved in a box of wood into which
they had entered along with all kinds of seeds and animals. After some
time Tezbi, wearying of his confinement, sent forth the vulture, which
however did not return to him; then he sent forth other birds, but they
did not come back; finally, he sent out the Colibri, which returned with
a branch in its beak.[240] And of this event they had paintings in their
temples which they showed to the white men who arrived amongst them.
The Indians in Cuba told a similar story, so did those at St. Domingo
and the Antilles.[241]
Nor is South America without a rich crop of similar legends. Humboldt
says, “This belief (in a deluge) is not found merely among the Tamanaks,
but is a portion of a whole system of historical traditions of which the
scattered accounts are to be gathered from the Maipures of the Great
Cataract, the Indians of Rio-Crevato, which pours into the Cauca, and
almost from all the races in the Upper Orinoko.”[242]
This is the tradition of the Tamanaks. “At the time of our ancestors the
whole earth was overflowed. Then two persons alone were saved, a man and
a woman, who remained on Mount Tamanaku, which is not far from the
Cucivero river, where our ancestors formerly dwelt. They lamented sore
over the loss of their friends and relations, and as they wandered sadly
about the mountain they heard a voice which told them to cast the
kernels of the nuts of the _Palma Mauritia_ backwards over their
shoulders. They did so, and out of the nuts cast by the woman rose
females, and out of those cast by the man sprang males.”[243]
The Peruvians related that their first king and founder of their nation,
Manco Capak, along with his wife Mama Ocllo, after the great deluge left
their land, and came from the holy island in the lake Titicaca, on which
the sun cast its first beam when the flood drained away.[244]
A Brazilian legend is that the Evil Spirit Arbomoku, and the spirits of
the air, made a compact together to destroy mankind. The former opened
all the fountains of the earth, the latter poured the clouds upon the
ground and inundated it, so that only one mountain-top appeared above
the water, and on that took refuge two persons, a brother and a sister,
from whom all the new generations sprang.[245]