Other Cultures

Compilations | Mesopotamian flood myths | Deucalion and Pyrrha

Compilations

Web Archive: Ark quotations and summaries from Berossus to 20c people. Some errors.

Omnium-gatherum with a long set of flood myths from various cultures at bottom and on a second and third and fourth page.

The Historical Evidence for Noah's Ark, quotes from Josephus, Isidore of Seville, Aztec sources, etc. compiled by Richard M. Riss.

Mesopotamian flood myths

British Museum: The Flood Tablet, relating part of the Epic of Gilgamesh. 7c. BC Neo-Assyrian tablet from Nineveh, aptly described as "The most famous cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia." Includes brief discussion of its significance.

The Atrahasis Epic and its Significance for Our Understanding of Genesis 1–9 by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, originally published in Biblical Archeologist (December 1977). Summarizes and concludes the Atrahasis Epic "enables us to appreciate the major themes of this cycle from a new perspective." Online for students of Gerald H. Wilson, Azusa Pacific University.

Amazon. Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated : Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt by Gerald P. Verbrugghe, John M. Wickersham. Also available in hardcover.

Reviewed by Christopher T.H.R. Ehrhardt, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 1997.

"V/W have provided an excellent translation of the 'fragments', but it is essential that their readers first read the introductions to each of the two authors, where the editors explain with exemplary clarity the complicated routes by which the surviving scraps of the works have reached us. These introductions should be required reading for everyone who has to handle fragments of lost authors, and particularly authors whose works were often read not for their own sake but to supply material for historical, philosophical or religious controversy."

Flood Legends from Around the World has summaries and links to the many flood legends. The website author is clearly a creationist, but not all the links are.

Flood Myths from N. S. Gill, About.com's Ancient History guru. A mixed bag.

The Story of Atrahasis from prof. Michael Webster's Grand Valley State University course World Mythology.

Amazon. Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic: Sumerian Origins of the Flood Myth by Robert M. Best. Self-published autodidacticism epresented as "The first book about Noah's flood that makes sense." Amazon reviewers either heap praise on its scholarship or rail against its departures from the Bible.

Book homepage, with summaries of many of the arguments, "responses" to creationists, etc. As much as I admire the "idea" of scholarship given here, the author presents no evidence he has any of the necessary academic skills. To do competent work in these fields one needs rigorous academic trainining, not the least of which would be competence in Sumerian, Akkadian andHebrew—not to mention French and German. As with classics, you just can't do serious work without serious training. But few on the web understand this. In fact, the debate here is not between believing and sceptical "scholars" (let alone "scientists"), but between two competing camps of under-qualified autodidacts. A thousand such books and web pages will not move a pencil-stroke within the halls of Chicago, Harvard or the half-dozen other places that nurture real work in these fields.

Deucalion and Pyrrha

Deucalion from Charles Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1867). Starts at lower right and continues to next page.

Wikipedia: Deucalion and Pyrrha. (So-so.)

Perseus Project:

• Perseus Encyclopedia: Deucalion(list of references in Greek literature)
• Apollodorus, Bibliotheka 1.7.2. Footnote 3 has a handy list of refs. in other, including Latin, literature.

Ovid Metamorphoses. Amazingly, there is no complete modern translation on the web:

• Anonymous 1717 translation (Sir Samuel Garth, ed.)
• Translated by "Arthur Golding," 1567 in rhyming verse.
• Translated by David Drake in modern prose; only lines 1:244-312
• Latin text.

Suda On-Line on Deucalion, Nannacus and Noah[1] (with much overlap). The Suda is a Medieval Byzantine encyclopedia incoporating much earlier material (see here).

Greek Mythology Link: Flood and Deucalion (1) by Carlos Parada. Summaries and source references.