indication of the amalgamation of a foreign element with local Deluge
traditions.—A Syrian tradition, with some surprising resemblances to P
in Gen., has been preserved by the Pseudo-Lucian (De dea Syra, 12, 13).
The wickedness of men had become so great that they had to be
destroyed. The fountains of the earth and the flood-gates of heaven
were opened simultaneously; the whole world was submerged, and all
men perished. Only the pious Deukalion-Sisuthros[1] was saved with
his family in a great chest, into which as he entered all sorts of animals
crowded. When the water had disappeared, Deukalion opened the ark,
erected altars, and founded the sanctuary of Derketo at Hierapolis.
The hole in the earth which swallowed up the Flood was shown under
the temple, and was seen by the writer, who thought it not quite big
enough for the purpose. In Usener's opinion we have here the Chaldean
legend localised at a Syrian sanctuary, there being nothing Greek about
it except the name Deukalion.—A Phrygian localisation of the Semitic
tradition is attested by the epithet (
Greek characters) applied to the Phrygian
Apameia (Kelainai) from the time of Augustus (Strabo, xii. 8. 13, etc.);
and still more remarkably by bronze coins of that city dating from the
reign of Septimius Severus. On these an open chest is represented,
bearing the inscription (Greek characters), in which are seen the figures of the hero and
his wife; a dove is perched on the lid of the ark, and another is flying
with a twig in its claws. To the left the same two human figures are
seen standing in the attitude of prayer.[2] The late date of these coins
makes the hypothesis of direct Jewish, or even Christian, influence
extremely probable.—The existence of a Phœnician tradition is inferred
by Usener (248 ff.) from the discovery in Etruria and Sardinia of bronze
models of ships with various kinds of animals standing in them: one
of them is said to date from the 7th cent. B.C. There is no extant
written record of the Phœnician legend: on Gruppe's reconstruction
from the statements of Greek mythographers see above, p. 141.
5. There remains the question of the origin of this widespread and evidently very popular conception of a universal Deluge. That it embodies a common primitive tradition of an historic event we have already seen to be improbable. If we suppose the original story to have been elaborated in Babylonia, and to have spread thence to other peoples, it may still be doubtful whether we have to do "with a legend based upon facts" or "with a myth which has assumed the form of a history." The mythical theory has been most fully worked out by Usener, who finds the germ of the story in the favourite mythological image of "the god in the chest," representing the voyage of the sun-god across the heavenly ocean: similar explanations were independently propounded by Cheyne (EB, 1063 f.) and Zimmern (ib. 1058 f.; KAT3, 555). Of a somewhat different order is the astrological theory advocated by Jeremias (249 ff.). The Babylonian astronomers were aware that
