Part IV
Chapter 24
In some of the most powerful and enduring myths that we have inherited from ancient times, our species seems to have retained a confused but resonant memory of a terrifying global catastrophe.
Where do these myths come from?
Why, though they derive from unrelated cultures, are their storylines so similar? why are they laden with common symbolism? and why do they so often share the same stock characters and plots? If they are indeed memories, why are there no historical records of the planetary disaster they seem to refer to?
Could it be that the myths themselves are historical records? Could it be that these cunning and immortal stories, composed by anonymous geniuses, were the medium used to record such information and pass it on in the time before history began?
And the ark went upon the face of the waters
There was a king, in ancient Sumer, who sought eternal life. His name was Gilgamesh. We know of his exploits because the myths and traditions of Mesopotamia, inscribed in cuneiform script upon tablets of baked clay, have survived. Many thousands of these tablets, some dating back to the beginning of the third millennium BC, have been excavated from the sands of modern Iraq. They transmit a unique picture of a vanished culture and remind us that even in those days of lofty antiquity human beings preserved memories of times still more remote – times from which they were separated by the interval of a great and terrible deluge:
I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh. This was the man to whom all things were known; this was the king who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole story.1
The story that Gilgamesh brought back had been told to him by a certain Utnapishtim, a king who had ruled thousands of years earlier, who had survived the great flood, and who had been rewarded with the gift of immortality because he had preserved the seeds of humanity and of all living things.
It was long, long ago, said Utnapishtim, when the gods dwelt on earth: Anu, lord of the firmament, Enlil, the enforcer of divine decisions, Ishtar, goddess of war and sexual love and Ea, lord of the waters, man’s natural friend and protector.
In those days the world teemed, the people multiplied, the world bellowed like a wild bull, and the great god was aroused by the clamour. Enlil heard the clamour and he said to the gods in council, ‘The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel.’ So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind.’2
Ea, however, took pity on Utnapishtim. Speaking through the reed wall of the king’s house he told him of the imminent catastrophe and instructed him to build a boat in which he and his family could survive:
Tear down your house and build a boat, abandon possessions and look for life, despise wordly goods and save your soul … Tear down your house, I say, and build a boat with her dimensions in proportion – her width and length in harmony. Put aboard the seed of all living things, into the boat.3
In the nick of time Utnapishtim built the boat as ordered. ‘I loaded into her all that I had,’ he said, ‘loaded her with the seed of all living things’:
I put on board all my kith and kin, put on board cattle, wild beasts from open country, all kinds of craftsmen … The time was fulfilled. When the first light of dawn appeared a black cloud came up from the base of the sky; it thundered within where Adad, lord of the storm was riding … A stupor of despair went up to heaven when the god of the storm turned daylight to darkness, when he smashed the land like a cup …
On the first day the tempest blew swiftly and brought the flood … No man could see his fellow. Nor could the people be distinguished from the sky. Even the gods were afraid of the flood. They withdrew; they went up to the heaven of Anu and crouched in the outskirts. The gods cowered like curs while Ishtar cried, shrieking aloud, ‘Have I given birth unto these mine own people only to glut with their bodies the sea as though they were fish?’4
Meanwhile, continued Utnapishtim:
For six days and nights the wind blew, torrent and tempest and flood overwhelmed the world, tempest and flood raged together like warring hosts. When the seventh day dawned the storm from the south subsided, the sea grew calm, the flood was stilled. I looked at the face of the world and there was silence. The surface of the sea stretched as flat as a roof-top. All mankind had returned to clay … I opened a hatch and light fell on my face. Then I bowed low, I sat down and I wept, the tears streamed down my face, for on every side was the waste of water … Fourteen leagues distant there appeared a mountain, and there the boat grounded; on the mountain of Nisir the boat held fast, she held fast and did not budge … When the seventh day dawned I loosed a dove and let her go. She flew away, but finding no resting place she returned. Then I loosed a swallow, and she flew away but finding no resting place she returned. I loosed a raven, she saw that the waters had retreated, she ate, she flew around, she cawed, and she did not come back.’5
Utnapishtim knew that it was now safe to disembark:
I poured out a libation on the mountain top … I heaped up wood and cane and cedar and myrtle … When the gods smelled the sweet savour they gathered like flies over the sacrifice …’6
These texts are not by any means the only ones to come down to us from the ancient land of Sumer. In other tablets – some almost 5000 years old, others less than 3000 years old – the ‘Noah figure’ of Utnapishtim is known variously as Zisudra, Xisuthros or Atrahasis. Even so, he is always instantly recognizable as the same patriarchal character, forewarned by the same merciful god, who rides out the same universal flood in the same storm-tossed ark and whose descendants repopulate the world.
There are many obvious resemblances between the Mesopotamian flood myth and the famous biblical story of Noah and the deluge7 (see note). Scholars argue endlessly about the nature of these resemblances. What really matters, however, is that in each sphere of influence the same solemn tradition has been preserved for posterity – a tradition which tells, in graphic language, of a global catastrophe and of the near-total annihilation of mankind.
Central America
The identical message was preserved in the Valley of Mexico, far away across the world from Mounts Ararat and Nisir. There, culturally and geographically isolated from Judaeo-Christian influences, long ages before the arrival of the Spaniards, stories were told of a great deluge. As the reader will recall from Part III, it was believed that this deluge had swept over the entire earth at the end of the Fourth Sun: ‘Destruction came in the form of torrential rain and floods. The mountains disappeared and men were transformed into fish …’8
According to Aztec mythology only two human beings survived: a man, Coxcoxtli, and his wife, Xochiquetzal, who had been forewarned of the cataclysm by a god. They escaped in a huge boat they had been instructed to build and came to ground on the peak of a tall mountain. There they descended and afterwards had many children who were dumb until the time when a dove on top of a tree gave them the gift of languages. These languages differed so much that the children could not understand one another.9
A related Central American tradition, that of the Mechoacanesecs, is in even more striking conformity with the story as we have it in Genesis and in the Mesopotamian sources. According to this tradition, the god Tezcatilpoca determined to destroy all mankind with a flood, saving only a certain Tezpi who embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife, his children and large numbers of animals and birds, as well as supplies of grains and seeds, the preservation of which were essential to the future subsistence of the human race. The vessel came to rest on an exposed mountain top after Tezcatilpoca had decreed that the waters of the flood should retire. Wishing to find out whether it was now safe for him to disembark, Tezpi sent out a vulture which, feeding on the carcases with which the earth was now strewn, did not return. The man then sent out other birds, of which only the hummingbird came back, with a leafy branch in its beak. With this sign that the land had begun to renew itself, Tezpi and his family went forth from their ark, multiplied and repopulated the earth.10
Memories of a terrible flood resulting from divine displeasure are also preserved in the Popal Vuh. According to this archaic text, the Great God decided to create humanity soon after the beginning of time. It was an experiment and he began it with ‘figures made of wood that looked like men and talked like men’. These creatures fell out of favour because ‘they did not remember their Creator’:
And so a flood was brought about by the Heart of Heaven; a great flood was formed which fell on the heads of the wooden creatures … A heavy resin fell from the sky … the face of the earth was darkened and a black rain began to fall by day and by night … The wooden figures were annihilated, destroyed, broken up and killed.’11
Not everyone perished, however. Like the Aztecs and the Mechoacanesecs, the Maya of the Yucatan and Guatemala believed that a Noah figure and his wife, ‘the Great Father and the Great Mother’, had survived the flood to populate the land anew, thus becoming the ancestors of all subsequent generations of humanity.12
South America
Moving to South America, we encounter the Chibcas of central Colombia. According to their myths, they had originally lived as savages, without laws, agriculture or religion. Then one day there appeared among them an old man of a different race. He wore a thick long beard and his name was Bochica. He taught the Chibcas how to build huts and live together in society.
His wife, who was very beautiful and named Chia, appeared after him, but she was wicked and enjoyed thwarting her husband’s altruistic efforts. Since she could not overcome his power directly, she used magical means to cause a great flood in which the majority of the population died. Bochica was very angry and exiled Chia from the earth to the sky, where she became the moon given the task of lighting the nights. He also caused the waters of the flood to dissipate and brought down the few survivors from the mountains where they had taken refuge. Thereafter he gave them laws, taught them to cultivate the land and instituted the worship of the sun with periodic festivals, sacrifices and pilgrimages. He then divided the power to govern among two chiefs and spent the remainder of his days on earth living in quiet contemplation as an ascetic. When he ascended to heaven he became a god.13
Farther south still, the Canarians, an Indian tribe of Ecuador, relate an ancient story of a flood from which two brothers escaped by going to the top of a high mountain. As the water rose the mountain grew higher, so that the two brothers survived the disaster.14
When they were discovered, the Tupinamba Indians of Brazil venerated a series of civilizing or creator heroes. The first of these heroes was Monan (ancient, old) who was said to have been the creator of mankind but who then destroyed the world with flood and fire …15
Peru, as we saw in Part II, is particularly rich in flood legends. A typical story tells of an Indian who was warned by a llama of a deluge. Together man and llama fled to a high mountain called Vilca-Coto:
When they reached the top of the mountain they saw that all kinds of birds and animals had already taken refuge there. The sea began to rise, and covered all the plains and mountains except the top of Vilca-Coto; and even there the waves dashed up so high that the animals were forced to crowd into a narrow area … Five days later the water ebbed, and the sea returned to its bed. But all human beings except one were drowned, and from him are descended all the nations on earth.16
The Araucnaians of pre-Colombian Chile preserved a tradition that there was once a flood which very few Indians escaped. The survivors took refuge on a high mountain called Thegtheg (‘the thundering’ or ‘the glittering’) which had three peaks and the ability to float on water.17
In the far south of the continent a Yamana legend from Tierra del Fuego states: ‘The moon woman caused the flood. This was at the time of the great upheaval … Moon was filled with hatred towards human beings … At that time everybody drowned with the exception of those few who were able to escape to the five mountain peaks that the water did not cover.’18
Another Tierra del Fuegan tribe, the Pehuenche, associate the flood with a prolonged period of darkness: ‘The sun and the moon fell from the sky and the world stayed that way, without light, until finally two giant condors carried both the sun and the moon back up to the sky.’19
North America
Meanwhile, at the other end of the Americas, among the Inuit of Alaska, there existed the tradition of a terrible flood, accompanied by an earthquake, which swept so rapidly over the face of the earth that only a few people managed to escape in their canoes or take refuge on the tops of the highest mountains, petrified with terror.20
The Luiseno of lower California had a legend that a flood covered the mountains and destroyed most of mankind. Only a few were saved because they fled to the highest peaks which were spared when all the rest of the world was inundated. The survivors remained there until the flood ended.21 Farther north similar flood myths were recorded amongst the Hurons.22 And a legend of the Montagnais, belonging to the Algonquin family, related how Michabo, or the Great Hare, re-established the world after the flood with the help of a raven, an otter and a muskrat.23
Lynd’s History of the Dakotas, an authoritative work of the nineteenth century which preserved many indigenous traditions that would otherwise have been lost, reports an Iroquois myth that ‘the sea and waters had at one time infringed upon the land, so that all human life was destroyed’. The Chickasaws asserted that the world had been destroyed by water ‘but that one family was saved and two animals of every kind’. The Sioux also spoke of a time when there was no dry land and when all men disappeared from existence.24
Water water everywhere
How far and how widely across the myth memories of mankind do the ripples of the great flood spread?
Very widely indeed. More than 500 deluge legends are known around the world and, in a survey of 86 of these (20 Asiatic, 3 European, 7 African, 46 American and 10 from Australia and the Pacific), the specialist researcher Dr Richard Andree concluded that 62 were entirely independent of the Mesopotamian and Hebrew accounts.25
For example, early Jesuit scholars who were among the first Europeans to visit China had the opportunity in the Imperial Library to study a vast work, consisting of 4320 volumes, said to have been handed down from ancient times and to contain ‘all knowledge’. This great book included a number of traditions which told of the consequences that followed ‘when mankind rebelled against the high gods and the system of the universe fell into disorder’: ‘The planets altered their courses. The sky sank lower towards the north. The sun, moon and stars changed their motions. The earth fell to pieces and the waters in its bosom rushed upwards with violence and overflowed the earth.’26
In the Malaysian tropical forest the Chewong people believe that every so often their own world, which they call Earth Seven, turns upside down so that everything is flooded and destroyed. However, through the agency of the Creator God Tohan, the flat new surface of what had previously been the underside of Earth Seven is moulded into mountains, valleys and plains. New trees are planted, and new humans born.27
A flood myth of Laos and northern Thailand has it that beings called the Thens lived in the upper kingdom long ages ago, while the masters of the lower world were three great men, Pu Leng Seung, Khun K’an and Khun K’et. One day the Thens announced that before eating any meal people should give them a part of their food as a sign of respect. The people refused and in a rage the Thens created a flood which devastated the whole earth. The three great men built a raft, on top of which they made a small house, and embarked with a number of women and children. In this way they and their descendants survived the deluge.28
In similar fashion the Karens of Burma have traditions of a global deluge from which two brothers were saved on a raft.29 Such a deluge is also part of the mythology of Viet Nam, where a brother and a sister are said to have survived in a great wooden chest which also contained two of every kind of animal.30
Several aboriginal Australian peoples, especially those whose traditional homelands are along the tropical northern coast, ascribe their origins to a great flood which swept away the previous landscape and society. Meanwhile, in the origin myths of a number of other tribes, the cosmic serpent Yurlunggur (associated with the rainbow) is held responsible for the deluge.31
There are Japanese traditions according to which the Pacific islands of Oceania were formed after the waters of a great deluge had receded.32 In Oceania itself a myth of the native inhabitants of Hawaii tells how the world was destroyed by a flood and later recreated by a god named Tangaloa. The Samoans believe that there was once an inundation that wiped out almost all mankind. It was survived only by two human beings who put to sea in a boat which eventually came to rest in the Samoan archipelago.33
Greece, India and Egypt
On the other side of the world, Greek mythology too is haunted by memories of a deluge. Here, however (as in Central America) the inundation is not viewed as an isolated event but as one of a series of destructions and remakings of the world. The Aztecs and the Maya spoke in terms of successive ‘Suns’ or epochs (of which our own was thought to be the Fifth and last). In similar fashion the oral traditions of Ancient Greece, collected and set down in writing by Hesiod in the eighth century BC, related that prior to the present creation there had been four earlier races of men on earth. Each of these was thought more advanced than the one that followed it. And each, at the appointed hour, had been ‘swallowed up’ in a geological cataclysm.
The first and most ancient creation had been mankind’s ‘golden race’ who had ‘lived like the gods, free from care, without trouble or woe … With ageless limbs they revelled at their banquets … When they died it was as men overcome by sleep.’ With the passing of time, and at the command of Zeus, this golden race eventually ‘sank into the depths of the earth’. It was succeeded by the ‘silver race’ which was supplanted by the ‘bronze race’, which was replaced by the race of ‘heroes’, which was followed by the ‘iron’ race – our own – the fifth and most recent creation.34
It is the fate of the bronze race that is of particular interest to us here. Described in the myths as having ‘the strength of giants, and mighty hands on their mighty limbs’,35 these formidable men were exterminated by Zeus, king of the gods, as a punishment for the misdeeds of Prometheus, the rebellious Titan who had presented humanity with the gift of fire.36 The mechanism the vengeful deity used to sweep the earth clean was an overwhelming flood.
In the most widespread version of the story Prometheus impregnated a human female. She bore him a son named Deucalion, who ruled over the country of Phthia, in Thessaly, and took to wife Pyrrha, ‘the red-blonde’, daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora. When Zeus reached his fateful decision to destroy the bronze race, Deucalion, forewarned by Prometheus, made a wooden box, stored in it ‘all that was necessary’, and climbed into it with Pyrrha. The king of the gods caused mighty rains to pour from heaven, flooding the greater part of the earth. All mankind perished in this deluge, save a few who had fled to the highest mountains. ‘It also happened at this time that the mountains of Thessaly were split asunder, and the whole country as far as the Isthmus and the Peloponnese became a single sheet of water.’
Deucalion and Pyrrha floated over this sea in their box for nine days and nights, finally landing on Mount Parnassus. There, after the rains had ceased, they disembarked and sacrificed to the gods. In response Zeus sent Hermes to Deucalion with permission to ask for whatever he wished. He wished for human beings. Zeus then bade him take stones and throw them over his shoulder. The stones Deucalion threw became men, and those that Pyrrha threw became women.37
As the Hebrews looked back on Noah, so the Greeks of ancient historical times looked back upon Deucalion – as the ancestor of their nation and as the founder of numerous towns and temples.38
A similar figure was revered in Vedic India more than 3000 years ago. One day (the story goes)
when a certain wise man named Manu was making his ablutions, he found in the hollow of his hand a tiny little fish which begged him to allow it to live. Taking pity on it he put it in a jar. The next day, however, it had grown so much bigger that he had to carry it to a lake. Soon the lake was too small. ‘Throw me into the sea,’ said the fish [which was in reality a manifestation of the god Vishnu] ‘and I shall be more comfortable.’ Then he warned Manu of a coming deluge. He sent him a large ship, with orders to load it with two of every living species and the seeds of every plant, and then to go on board himself.’39
Manu had only just carried out these orders when the ocean rose and submerged everything, and nothing was to be seen but Vishnu in his fish form – now a huge, one-horned creature with golden scales. Manu moored his ark to the horn of the fish and Vishnu towed it across the brimming waters until it came to rest on the exposed peak of ‘the Mountain of the North’:40
The fish said, ‘I have saved thee; fasten the vessel to a tree, that the water may not sweep it away while thou art on the mountain; and in proportion as the waters decrease thou shalt descend.’ Manu descended with the waters. The Deluge had carried away all creatures and Manu remained alone.41
With him, and with the animals and plants he had saved from destruction, began a new age of the world. After a year there emerged from the waters a woman who announced herself as ‘the daughter of Manu’. The couple married and produced children, thus becoming the ancestors of the present race of mankind.42
Last but by no means least, Ancient Egyptian traditions also refer to a great flood. A funerary text discovered in the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I, for example, tells of the destruction of sinful humanity by a deluge.43 The reasons for this catastrophe are set out in Chapter CLXXV of the Book of the Dead, which attributes the following speech to the Moon God Thoth:
They have fought fights, they have upheld strifes, they have done evil, they have created hostilities, they have made slaughter, they have caused trouble and oppression … [Therefore] I am going to blot out everything which I have made. This earth shall enter into the watery abyss by means of a raging flood, and will become even as it was in primeval time.44
On the trail of a mystery
With the words of Thoth we have come full circle to the Sumerian and biblical floods. ‘The earth was filled with violence’, says Genesis:
And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, ‘The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold I will destroy them with the earth.’45
Like the flood of Deucalion, the flood of Manu, and the flood that destroyed the Aztecs’ ‘Fourth Sun’, the biblical deluge was the end of a world age. A new age succeeded it: our own, populated by the descendants of Noah. From the very beginning, however, it was understood that this age too would in due course come to a catastrophic end. As the old song puts it, ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign; no more water, the fire next time.’
The Scriptural source for this prophecy of world destruction is to be found in 2 Peter 3:
We must be careful to remember that during the last days there are bound to be people who will be scornful and [who will say], ‘Everything goes on as it has since it began at the creation’. They are choosing to forget that there were heavens at the beginning, and that the earth was formed by the word of God out of water and between the waters, so that the world of that time was destroyed by being flooded by water. But by the same word, the present sky and earth are destined for fire, and are only being reserved until Judgement Day so that all sinners may be destroyed … The Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, and then with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire and fall apart, and the earth and all that it contains will be burnt up.46
The Bible, therefore, envisages two ages of the world, our own being the second and last. Elsewhere, in other cultures, different numbers of creations and destructions are recorded. In China, for instance, the perished ages are called kis, ten of which are said to have elapsed from the beginning of time until Confucius. At the end of each kis, ‘in a general convulsion of nature, the sea is carried out of its bed, mountains spring up out of the ground, rivers change their course, human beings and everything are ruined, and the ancient traces effaced …’47
Buddhist scriptures speak of ‘Seven Suns’, each brought to an end by water, fire or wind.48 At the end of the Seventh Sun, the current ‘world cycle’, it is expected that the ‘earth will break into flames’.49 Aboriginal traditions of Sarawak and Sabah recall that the sky was once ‘low’ and tell us that ‘six Suns perished … at present the world is illuminated by the seventh Sun’.50 Similarly, the Sibylline Books speak of ‘nine Suns that are nine ages’ and prophesy two ages yet to come – those of the eighth and the ninth Sun.’51
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the Hopi Indians of Arizona (who are distant relatives of the Aztecs52) record three previous Suns, each culminating in a great annihilation followed by the gradual re-emergence of mankind. In Aztec cosmology, of course, there were four Suns prior to our own. Such minor differences concerning the precise number of destructions and creations envisaged in this or that mythology should not distract us from the remarkable convergence of ancient traditions evident here. All over the world these traditions appear to commemorate a widespread series of catastrophes. In many cases the character of each successive cataclysm is obscured by the use of poetic language and the piling up of metaphor and symbols. Quite frequently, also, at least two different kinds of disaster may be portrayed as having occurred simultaneously (most frequently floods and earthquakes, but sometimes fire and a terrifying darkness).
All this contributes to the creation of a confused and jumbled picture. The myths of the Hopi, however, stand out for their straightforwardness and simplicity. What they tell us is this:
The first world was destroyed, as a punishment for human misdemeanours, by an all-consuming fiire that came from above and below. The second world ended when the terrestrial globe toppled from its axis and everything was covered with ice. The third world ended in a universal fllood. The present world is the fourth. Its fate will depend on whether or not its inhabitants behave in accordance with the Creator’s plans.53
We are on the trail of a mystery here. And while we may never hope to fathom the plans of the Creator we should be able to reach a judgement concerning the riddle of our converging myths of global destruction.
Through these myths the voices of the ancients speak to us directly. What are they trying to say?