Flood Legends (16 page)

Gilgamesh, entranced, leaned forward as Utnapishtim continued. "For nearly a week, the flood swept us on. On the seventh day, however, the raging and battling wind exhausted itself, died down, and, as suddenly as it had begun, the storm ceased. I looked out the window of the ship, to see what I could observe. There was no sound. Everything — including all life — had turned to mud and muck. Nothing could be seen but cloudy, murky water. With the daylight on my face and my heavy, sorrowful heart still beating in my breast, I wept. I wept for those lost. I wept for those of us who remained. Mostly, I wept because the earth was gone. All was water.

"On the twelfth day, I finally saw several small patches of land emerging from the waters. The ship eventually grounded on the slopes of Mount Nişir, where we remained another six days.

"On the seventh day, I let a dove out of the window, to see if it would land. But it found nowhere to rest, and so returned to me. Next, I sent a swallow, but it too returned. Lastly, I sent out a raven. The raven, finding land, never returned.

"At this point, I began to unload my cargo. The first thing I did, upon stepping on dry land was to give an offering to the gods. They smelled the pleasing aroma, and began to swarm around it like flies on honey. Eventually, Ishtar stepped forward and held up her necklace, a multi-colored present from the sky-god.

" 'Behold these jewels!' she called out. 'Just as I will never forget these, so will I never forget what we have seen these last days! I say we all enjoy this feast …all of us except Enlil, for it was his idea!'

"Now," continued the old man, "when Enlil saw that I had survived his flood, he was
livid
, and demanded the name of the traitor. Ninurta, I believe it was, commented that since Ea had the gift of foresight, it could only have been him. Besides, Ninurta had argued, Ea was both shrewd and cunning. Ea interrupted at this point, reprehending Enlil for his monstrous brutality and callousness.

" 'Only the guilty should have been destroyed,' he declared, 'and not all of humanity.'

" 'And how,' Enlil asked, 'would this have been accomplished?'

" 'By sending vicious animals, or a plague,' Ea suggested. 'You needn't have killed
everyone
. Besides,' he narrowed his eyes as he spoke these next words, 'I merely gave a hint, like a dream. It's not my fault Utnapishtim is so intelligent, and figured out a plan to survive.'

"Enlil nodded in agreement, for Ea was quite shrewd and persuasive. Then, having assented to Ea's point, he led both my wife and I back on board. Enlil blessed us both, and, as a reward, granted us eternal life. However, it would not do for the immortal to live among the mortal. So he gave us this island, away from all other humanity, where we could spend our days in peace and tranquility."

Something I find interesting is that, similar to the Genesis version, this vessel is also a giant floating box. The difference, of course, is that the Gilgamesh version is a perfect cube, about 40 feet on each side (assuming the height was equal to the sides, which is likely). That gives Utnapishtim's vessel about 64,000 cubic feet of space. Compared to Noah's 500-railway-car volume, Utnapishtim's 200-car volume seems extremely small.

The Flood According to the Kaska Indians of British Columbia

There was once a flood, which covered the whole earth. The sky grew very dark, and the winds kicked up fiercely. Some people quickly took canoes, and others quickly made rafts, and when the wind came, it separated the people, blowing them every which way. When the waters finally receded, the people all found that they had landed far from each other, so that not one family could see another. When the earth became dry enough to build upon, they settled where they had landed. Most people probably thought they were the only ones who had survived. Many years later, when they finally did begin to meet other people, everyone discovered that no one spoke the same language! This is the reason that there are so many tribes and languages. Before the flood, you see, there was but one tribe, and everyone lived together and spoke the same language.

I like this version because of the blending of the Flood story and the dispersion story. In most mythology, the stories are completely separated. In others — as is the case with the Genesis version — the stories are separated but are chained together through other events. It is an interesting perspective to find the two of them combined into one story.

The Story of the Flood According to the Chingpaws, Upper Burma

Once upon a time, a man named Nan-chaung and his sister Chang-hko built a large boat to save themselves from the Deluge. They had with them nine roosters, and nine bone needles. After the storm had raged for many days, they threw over one rooster and one needle, to see if the waters had subsided. The rooster did not crow, however, and, though they listened, the needle was not heard to hit the bottom. Each day, they did the same thing. Finally, on the ninth day, the rooster crowed, and they heard the needle strike the bottom of the water. Shortly thereafter, they were able to leave their boat.

The two of them wandered about until they came upon a cave. Inside the cave lived a male and female elf. The elves asked them to stay, and the couple joined the elves in their work, hauling wood, clearing fields, and so forth. Some time later, the sister gave birth to a child. One day, while the parents were out doing their chores, the old she-elf, who was a witch, was watching the baby. The child began to scream and cry, and the wretched woman threatened to turn it into mince meat pie. But the child did not stop screaming, and the old elf snatched the child, took it to the crossroads, and hacked it to pieces, dripping blood all over the road.

She carried pieces of the child back to the cave, and made them into an enticing curry dish. To hide what she had done, she placed a block of wood in the cradle, and covered it with a blanket. When the parents came in from working, the she-elf told the mother to be quiet, because the baby was sleeping. The mother did as suggested, and the four of them ate their meal of rice and curry. After dinner, however, the mother could stand it no longer, and went to the cradle to hold her baby. But inside, she found the block of wood!

"Where is my baby!" she demanded of the witch.

"You have eaten him!" the witch cackled.

The woman, horrified, fled from the house. As she came to the crossroads, not knowing what had happened there just a few hours earlier, she dropped to her knees and wailed to the Great Spirit, "Please give me my baby back!" The Great Spirit, saddened by all that had taken place, came to her. "I cannot put your baby back together," he explained, "but instead I will make you mother of all men. " And as he said this, people sprang up from the road, a different group of people wherever the blood had touched the ground. And so, because each group came from her baby, she was, indeed, the mother of all men.

Though this version is gruesome, it offers something none of the other versions offer: post-diluvian survivors. I, personally, am not comfortable with the accuracy of this version, simply because the point of the global Flood was to wipe out all other life. However, the whimsical idea of a couple of elves surviving the Flood is rather comical, sort of Tolkien meets the Brothers Grimm.

The Flood According to the Bahnars, China

Once, a crab and a kite had an argument. The kite pecked the crab so hard that he pierced the crab's shell. To avenge this great insult, the crab caused the waters of the sea to swell. They swelled so much that everything on earth was destroyed, except for two people: a brother and a sister. The brother and sister managed to survive by locking themselves in a huge chest. Because they were afraid that everything would perish forever, they brought on board two of every animal. After seven days and seven nights of listening to the raging waters, the brother and sister heard a cock crowing outside, and knew that it was safe to leave the chest (they knew that the ancestors had sent the cock, to tell them when it was safe to come out). So they opened the lid and let all the birds fly out. Then they let all the other animals out. Finally, they left the chest, as well. They were dismayed, however, because they had eaten all the rice that was on board, and would have starved to death if an ant had not brought them two grains of rice. They planted the rice, and in the morning, it had grown until it filled the entire field.

I must admit that I can't quite figure out the inclusion of the battle between the crab and the kite. Did this detail emerge over time, or was it one of those spontaneous changes that happens when one is retelling a story? Perhaps the Bahnars used to start with the swelling of the sea, but some inquisitive child asked why the seas swelled, forcing the storyteller to improvise a reason. And maybe that reason simply stuck. Though I laugh at the idea of an angry crab causing the Flood …it's very Aesop.

The Story of Deucalion, Greece

Deucalion was the son of Prometheus, and he ruled in Phthia. His wife, Pyrrah, was the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora (it was Pandora who was the first woman to be created by the gods). One day, Prometheus came to Deucalion and told him, "Zeus is going to destroy all the men of this Bronze Age. Build yourself a chest of wood, so that you and your wife may survive."

Deucalion did just that, and after he had provisioned it, took his wife aboard with him. At this time, Zeus opened the floodgates of the sky, and poured a terrible rain down upon the earth. All the men of Greece were killed, save a few, which made Zeus even angrier. So he parted the great mountains of Thessaly, flooding the entire world beyond both the Isthmus and the Peloponnesian realm. Deucalion, however, in his chest of wood, lived comfortably on the sea for nine days and nine nights. Eventually, the chest came to rest on Parnassus, and, when the rains stopped, Deucalion sacrificed to Zeus. Zeus, pleased by the sacrifice, granted Deucalion one choice — to name anything that he may desire. Deucalion chose men, because he did not want to remain alone on earth. So, at the command of Zeus, he picked up stones and threw them over his head. The stones he threw became men, and the stones Pyrrah threw became women. This is why people are called
laoi
, from
laas
, "a stone."

I specifically left in the detail that Zeus wanted to destroy all the men of the "Bronze Age." This detail makes the events of this version — along with the Genesis version — easy to date, within a reasonable window. In Hebrew chronology, the Flood would have occurred roughly 3000 B.C. The Greek version, which we're told ended the Bronze Age, would have happened around 4000 B.C.
¹

The Montagnais People, Hudson Bay

A race of giants was destroying the earth, and God, angry with them for it, commanded a man to build a very large canoe. The man did as he was told, and as soon as he entered it, the water rose on all sides, until no land could be seen in any direction. Bored with the scenery, the man told an otter to dive down into the waters and see what he could find. The otter returned with a piece of earth. The man took the earth in his hand and breathed on it, and it began to grow. So he laid it on the water, kept it from sinking, and watched as it continued to grow. As it grew and grew, the man saw that it was becoming an island. So he placed a reindeer on it, and the reindeer ran around in a circle, making a quick circuit about the island. The man decided that the earth was not yet large enough, so he continued to blow on it. In time, all of the lakes, mountains, and rivers were formed, and the man knew it was time to leave the canoe.

What is interesting here is that in Genesis, in an earlier chapter, we find that a race of giants has been born on the earth, and it is hinted that these giants are part of the corrupting force that warrants the Deluge. Since first preparing this manuscript, I have come across several South American versions of the Flood, many of which also include this pre-diluvian race of giants.

The Flood According to the Valmans, Berlin Harbour, New Guinea

Once upon a time, the wife of a noble man saw a fish. She called to her husband, but by the time he got there, the fish had gone. So she had him hide behind a banana tree, in case the fish came back. At last, peering through the leaves of the tree, the man caught sight of the fish. He was immediately afraid and commanded everyone in the village to stay away from the fish.

A certain wicked man, however, would not listen, and so shot at the fish with an arrow. The good man, when he saw this, drove a pair of every animal into the tree and climbed into it with his family. Meanwhile, the wicked man had prepared the fish and was eating it. No sooner had he finished eating than water sprang out of the ground, reaching to the top of the tree. It flooded the entire land, killing everyone. Then the waters subsided, and the man, his family, and the animals he had saved came out of the tree.

Though this version appears to be a local flood legend, the parallels to other versions were too strong to resist inclusion. I particularly like the appearance of the fish in this version. I also like the animals being forced into the tree, mostly because it's plain silly.

The Flood According to the Hareskin Indians, North America

A Wise Man, long ago, decided to build a large raft. His wife watched him build it for several days. Finally, she asked him, "Why do you build a great raft?"

"Because," he answered, "I foresee a terrible catastrophe. The earth will flood, and we shall all take refuge on my raft." But when he told his plan to his neighbors, they all laughed at him. The Wise Man, nonetheless, continued to build his raft. He placed large logs side by side. Then he twisted roots together to make a sturdy rope, and used the rope to lash the trees together.