Myths of the Great Flood before the beginning of written history have captivated and drawn people in for centuries, whether they were trying to find out what actually happened through historical retellings or trying to locate artefacts of historical significance, such as Noah’s Ark in Christian and Jewish literature. It is said that all myths have some basis in reality, so it is logical to assume that at some point in human history, a flood of catastrophic proportions did actually occur. Scientific evidence uncovered also supports the theory that the flood actually occurred:
And then came the clean, water-laid mud, eleven feet of it, mud which on analysis proved to be the silt brought down by the river Euphrates from its upper reaches hundreds of miles away; and under the silt based on what was really virgin soil, the ruins of houses that had been overwhelmed by the flood and buried deep beneath the mud carried by its waters. (Woolley 53)
There is some evidence (Rosenthal 369) that may lead to the idea that the flood was not as widespread as we are lead to believe, that it did not cover the entire planet, but rather the flood covered only a portion of our known globe in an area where a significant portion of the population happened to reside at that time. While evidence exists of this flood not being as far-reaching as the myths seem to portray, the flood within the myths is definitely used as a lynch-pin for the various deities to essentially re-start the human race due to humans having become too corrupted. In this paper, the viewpoint of the gods wiping out humanity by using a flood as means of genocide in order to start over is examined through Ovid’s Metamorphoses Bk. 1, the Bible and The Atrahasis and supporting evidence that the flood did actually occur and the context in which it occurred both in the natural world and myth.
The beginnings of the tale of the flood are described from the Bible’s point of view: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways” (TNIV Gen. 6:11). Modern Christianity believes that their God was displeased with how people were acting on the earth: “The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (TNIV Gen. 6:5). The Christian God believed that humans had become evil and there was no redemption available to them other than the death, which he said he was going to bring. He planned to wipe out humanity with a flood:
So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth . . . I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.” (TNIV Gen. 6:13, 17)
The Bible reveals how long the flood lasted according to Christian mythology: “The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days” (TNIV Gen. 7:24). According to Christian mythology, this flood lasted for 150 days, but when the flood waters receded “on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat” (TNIV Gen. 8:4). In The Bible in the book of Genesis 8:15–19, Noah and his family exit the ark, along with “his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives” (TNIV Gen. 8:18) and all the animals in existence today. In chapter 9 of the book of Genesis, Noah is commanded by his God to fill the earth with his offspring (TNIV Gen. 9:1), without the need to fear his God flooding the earth again. Since the occurrence of this flood in mythology, no other flood (that we know of) has ever reached such epic proportions or done as much damage.
There was evidence that may lead to the idea that the flood was not as widespread as we are lead to believe, that it did not in fact, cover the entire planet; rather the flood covered only a portion of our known globe in an area where a significant portion of the population happened to reside at that time: “The Magians have no knowledge of the flood. They say: Our rule continued uninterrupted since the age of Jayumart — who they say is identical with Adam” (Rosenthal 369). The previous passage in itself leads one to believe that the flood was contained in one area. An entire culture who did not know anything about the flood, have never seen the flood and claim that their lines of succession were not interrupted due to the massive death toll on the people at the time. Even if this is not enough, the text continues on: “Some of them acknowledge the flood and assume it took place in the clime of Babil and nearby region, whereas descendants of Jayumart had their dwellings in the east and the flood did not reach them” (Rosenthal 369). One can assume that while they did not know of the flood personally, they had heard about it and accepted it as fact. It also tells the location of the flood: the area of Babil.
Author Dora Earthy has a rather captivating tale of flood events in A Probable Creation- and Flood-Myth in Portuguese East Africa. To sum this story up, a woman made a clay doll and hung it to dry. When the doll was dried it came to life, and the woman took it off her drying rack. The clay doll made friends with girls who convinced her to go to the Harvest Dancing Contests and convinced the clay girl to go despite fears that she might dissolve back into clay. It rained and the girl started to dissolve. On the way back to her mother, one of her legs fell off. The clay girl hopped home on the other leg while calling for her mother. She made it back to her mother who fixed her and hung her to dry. When the clay girl was let back down, the girls once again convinced her to go to the dances and offered to give her their umbrella. Unfortunately, the rains come to be too heavy for the girls, and they snatched the umbrella back leaving the clay girl to dissolve in the rain again. This time, all of her limbs fell off until just her head was left and her mother scolded her telling her that this time she was going to leave her to dissolve completely (232–234).
Earthy likens the story of the clay girl directly to certain verses of the Bible:
The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created — and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground — for I regret that I have made them.” (TNIV Gen 6:11)
Earthy points out, “It was disobedience which caused Dipumbane’s catastrophe” (234). In this respect, we are tied right back into flood myth and the point that the god/gods had decided that mankind had become evil and was not worthy of being saved. The god/gods had decided that the only solution to this problem was to wipe humanity from the earth in a flood.
The Atrahasis is the story of how man is created to do the work of the gods. The gods were complaining their workload was too heavy: “I have relieved you of your hard work, I have imposed your load upon man, but only as a co-worker, not a slave” (Atrahasis). Therefore, man is created, but not created as a slave. Instead, man is created more as a co-worker to the gods. This means that while mankind was created to be equal with the gods, they were created mortal and without divine powers. As the story continues, everything was great for “60 times 3600 years”. When these numbers are added up, they equal 216,000 years that have passed during which mankind multiplied and filled the lands: “The noise of mankind has become too much, I am losing sleep over their racket. Give the order that the suruppu-disease shall break out . . .”(Atra-Hasis) The gods could not stand the racket that mankind was making, so first they tried to wipe out humanity with a plague. Likewise, Mallowan corroborates this account when it comes to the Mesopotamian stories: “. . .it is true that in the Atrahasis story of the Sumerian Noah man had irritated the gods on high by his infernal noise. . .” (63). Mallowan goes even further with this thought: “. . .but the disaster was really due to the caprice of Enlil, and the long-suffering Babylonian was temper-mentally resigned to his impending fate, which, like our own atom bomb today, threatened him with extinction” (63). The gods tried cutting off the supply of food. People starved to death after a few years: “The Anunnaki listened to the decree of Enlil, they cut off food for the people and did all that was ordered of them. That first year the land produced no vegetation, the land produced no grain. The people sought in vain for food”(Atra-Hasis). Eventually the gods decided that a flood was the only way to wipe humanity from the earth and diminish numbers. It is interesting to note that according to the Atrahasis and Mellowan, humans were not solely responsible for the floods themselves, but rather a change in the mood of Enlil was also partially to blame.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses provides a clearer picture of what happened during the flood as far as natural occurrences: “Neptune himself now struck the earth with his trident. It trembled under the blow, and a raging torrent gushed from the chasm. Bursting their confines, the rivers engulfed the plains and the valleys” (line 283). This passage describes what appears to be a natural dam bursting, and feeding the rivers, the banks of which were unable to contain the sudden increase in water volume. It also suggests that the bursting of the aforementioned dam is directly responsible for the flood overtaking the lands and destroying everything in its path. Looking a little further back is the passage: “He squeezed the bank of menacing clouds like a sponge, and a thunderclap followed. Instantly rain poured down from the sky in torrents” (Ovid line 68). At this point, it is logical to assume that another reason the natural dam overflowed was an unheard of torrential rainstorm. Taking these two previous passages into account reveals a clear picture of what happened. A torrential rainstorm manifested in the plains and overwhelmed the dam. The embankment holding the dam back gave way and unleashed a torrent of flood waters onto the population in the area, drowning everything and everyone in its path.
Given the level of understating of people at the time, such an even would have been blamed on the gods, as happens most often in mythology, and the humans at the time would have taken it as a sign that they had angered the gods. Passing down stories through word of mouth would have, over time, naturally changed the stories into something a little more mystical and magical until only remnants of the original event was understandable in the story. It is a lot like playing a game of telephone. One person is told something and told to pass it on by whispering in the ear of the person next to him or her, and he or she only gets one chance to speak the message. By the time the message gets to the end of the line of people, it is usually completely different from the message that the players started out with.
While mythology explains the floods as caused by the gods due to the evilness in the heart of humanity, if we take the Bible, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Atrahasis and put them side by side, we are left with the inescapable conclusion that it was primitive humans simply trying to explain a rather devastating natural disaster in ways that they could understand at the time, it was a time when the gods were thought to be responsible for everything that happened, and thus must have been angry with man for some reason.
References:
Atrahasis
Earthy, E. Dora. “A Probable Creation- and Flood-Myth in Portuguese East Africa.” Numen, vol. 4, no. 3, 1957, pp. 232–234. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3269347.
Mallowan, M. E. L. “Noah’s Flood Reconsidered.” Iraq, vol. 26, no. 2, 1964, pp. 62–82. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4199766.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses. “Greek and Roman Mythology”. Pearson Custom Publishing. Canada. 2009 pp. 409
Rosenthal, Franz; translator. History of al-Tabari. State University of New York Press. Albany, NY. 1989 pp. 369
The Bible, Todays New International Version
Woolley, Leonard. “The Flood.” The South African Archaeological Bulletin, vol. 8, no. 30, 1953, pp. 52–54. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3887471.
P.S.: I found a link slightly relevant to the topics of flood myths. I’m sure when the gods flooded the lands, they may have had this on their minds. Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC_mV1IpjWA
