anewperson wrote:
: Alan I will look into it but believe the Atlantis legend and the Flood of Deukalion were separate legends. And the way this goes is that Plato recounts that Solon mentioned the Deukalion flood to an Egyptian priest who said that even Deukalion's flood was predated by huge floods and then proceded to give the story of Atlantis. From Egypt via Solon the story of Atlantis came to Greece. So it indeed is Egyptian in origin.
I see that having only skimmed the material from Vitaliano's book and from your post, I missed a couple of details. You're right that the two legends are separate, but I didn't say that they were one and the same.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the Atlantis story cannot be talking about a global "Noah's Flood" because it describes a set of local catastrophes centered on Atlantis, whereas the Deluge of Deukalion stories certainly invoke a global flood. Therefore the best that anyone can say is that Egypt might have had several local flood stories, but certainly not one that was parallel to the Flood, i.e., Noah's Flood. This is because Deukalion's Deluge is clearly a Greek story and has parallels to the Bible story, but the origins of the Atlantis story are quite unclear. Therefore it is perfectly correct for Vitaliano to state with respect to The Deluge that "an Egyptian flood legend" is "conspicuous by its absence". Below we will consider what Vitaliano wrote with respect to our topics of interest, along with a few of my comments.
From Dorothy Vitaliano's Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins (Indiana University Press, 1973):
[Chapter 7: "The Deluge"; pp. 164-165; on lack of Egyptian Flood legends]Very conspicuous by its absence is an Egyptian flood legend; but likewise conspicuous by their absence in Egypt are disastrous floods. Every year the Nile overflowed its banks gently and predictably, leaving behind a life-giving deposit of fine silt to replenish the soil. Lean years might have ensued when the waters fell short of the average, and extra-high waters might conceivably have caused some inconvenience, but the annual flood could never have been anything but benign on the whole. Its failure to materialize would have been the disaster to commemorate in legend. The other main rivers of Africa also have an annual rise which, being predictable, is not calamitous...
The lack of flood traditions in Egypt and the rest of Africa has been a definite stumbling block to theories requiring tremendous volumes of water sloshing over the whole face of the globe as a result of cosmic collisions. One little-known work which postulates impact with a giant meteorite about 11,500 years ago states, rather feebly, that "Egypt happened to be fortunately located with regard to the geological and tidal effects of the collision which produced the deluge" [127:249]. I find it hard to understand how Egypt could have been "fortunately located," while just across the Mediterranean the meteor-impact-generated flood was supposed to be causing the deluge of Deukalion, which is cited as evidence in favor of the same catastrophe! The interior of Africa is said to have been "even more fortunately located than Egypt, with higher elevations and closer to the point of no distortion of the geosphere" [127:249]; but then in the very next sentence the authors cite a different version of the Lake Dilolo legend which tells that a great wave did cross the coutnry, leaving the lake in a depression. Again it is hard to follow the reasoning which on the one hand attributes the lack of African flood traditions to the lack of the floodwave there, yet offers folklore "evidence" that a gigantic wave washed over a sizable area in the interior of southern Africa. In his well known Worlds in Collision, Immanuel Velikovsky gets around the lack of African flood traditions with an ingenuity that must be admired: he invokes a "collective amnesia" [253:302] which very conveniently blotted the disaster out of the memory of certain whole societies, just as completely as terrible events may be erased from the memory of an individual.
Vitaliano is perfectly well aware of the Atlantis story (see below). It is obvious that she does not classify the Atlantis legend as having anything to do with Noah's Flood.
As a side note, reference "[127]" above is to an odd and goofy book called Target: Earth which the Watchtower Society referenced in a few of its publications as giving evidence for Noah's Flood.
Next consider Vitaliano's comments on "Deukalion's Deluge":
[Chapter 7: "The Deluge"; pp. 156-158; on Deukalion's Deluge].Best known to most of us after the Babylonian-Hebrew flood tradition is that of classical mythology, Deukalion's deluge. Of the several Greek flood traditions, it is the only one in which the flood is said to have been worldwide. Deukalion, son of Prometheus, was a king of Thessaly. When mankind fell into evil ways, Zeus decided to destroy the world. Prometheus warned Deukalion, who was a good and pious man, and advised him to build a large wooden chest and stock it with provisions. Nine days and nights it rained, and the waters rose so high that only the top of Mount Parnassus (see Fig. 28) stood above the flood. Deukalion and his wife, Pyrrha, floated safely in their chest, which came to rest on Parnassus as the waters subsided. As soon as they disembarked they gave thanks for their deliverance and prayed to Zeus for help in their loneliness. Zeus commanded them to cast behind them the "bones of their mother." Interpreting this to mean rocks, the bones of mother Earth, Deukalion and Pyrrha cast behind them stones, which turned into men and women. Deukalion and Pyrrha had a son whom they name Hellen, and through him they became the ancestors of the Greeks (Hellenes).
Deukalion's flood was accepted as historical fact by the Greeks, including Aristotle. There apparently was at least one king by that name. A marble pillar found on the island of Paros gives a list of the kings of Greece and the dates of their reigns, and according to this chronicle, Deukalion's deluge occurred in about 1539 B.C. [63:149]. However, the Parian marble's dates for early events are somewhat higher than those reckoned from extant genealogies, according to which Deukalion lived about two generations later and his flood occurred in about 1430 B.C. [166:326]. The Egyption historian Manetho stated that Deukalion's deluge occurred in the reign of Tuthmosis III (1490-1439 B.C.). About the middle of the fifteenth century B.C., or possibly earlier, there was a Krakatau-like eruption of the volcano Santorin in the Aegean Sea (about which we will have much more to say in the next chapter). At the end of that eruption the volcano collapsed to form a caldera, and that collapse could have generated one or more tsunamis, possibly far bigger than any ever generated in the Mediterranean area in the more normal way by earthquakes. The possible dates for Deukalion and for the eruption are sufficiently close, in our present state of knowledge, that the proposal (first offered by A. G. Galanopoulos [68, 73]) that the legend or myth of Deukalion's deluge was a consequence of that catastrophe appears very plausible. In this light it appears particularly significant that Andree [2:40] states that in an early version of the myth the flood is said to have come from the sea ("Meerflut") -- and what else could that mean but a tsunami?
Later versions of the Deukalion story include details that closely parallel the Hebrew-Babylonian flood story. In the course of time the sea flood became nine days and nights of rain, the chest became an ark, animals were included in the passenger list, and Deukalion sent out a dove on successive occasions to see if the waters had receded [63:153-156]. Thus the traditions of two different places, based on floods centuries apart, merged into what is essentially the same story. One of the differences between the Greek and the Hebrew flood traditions is that Deukalion and Pyrrha were furnished with an unspecified but presumably not small number of companions, sprung from "the bones of the earth," to help them repopulate the world; but naturally, if the Greeks believe that their flood had happened less than a thousand years before, they needed more than one family of survivors to regenerate a population equal to that of the world known to them, in the time elapsed since the disaster.
Finally consider Vitaliano's comments on the Atlantis legend:
[Chapter 9: "Lost Atlantis Found?"; pp. 218-219; on Atlantis]Contrary to the prevalent notion, Atlantis is not folklore at all -- that is, it is not part of the oral traditions of any culture anywhere on earth. Every single mention of it stems from one and only one written source, Plato's Dialogs, specifically the Timaeus and the Critias [182]. The Timaeus purports to record a conversation between Socrates, Timaeus (a scientist), Critias (a historian), and Hermocrates (a general), in which they discuss the nature of the universe. Critias tells the tale of Atlantis, which Solon, the great lawgiver of Athens who lived about two hundred years before Plato, is supposed to have told Critias' grandfather. In his youth Solon visited Saïs in the Nile Delta, then the capital of Lower Egypt (se Fig. 38, Chapter 10). There he discoursed with learned priests, and in the course of the discussions found that he knew very little of his own country's ancient history. To encourage the priests to tell tales of antiquity, Solon began to tell of the earliest event of which the Athenians were aware, the Deluge of Deukalion. Upon this one of the more ancient priests exclaimed: "O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children . . . your souls are juvenile, neither containing any ancient opinion derived from remote tradition, nor any discipline hoary from its existence in former periods of time." Was Solon not aware that the Deluge of Deukalion was only the last of a series of catastrophes, and that the Athenians were descended from a noble race who lived long before it? Of the many and mighty deeds of these old Athenians, whose city was founded nine thousand years before Solon's conversation with the priests, the most outstanding was the defeat of a warlike power from the Atlantic Sea.
This warlike power came from an island larger than Libya and Asia put together. The island "afforded easy passage to other neighboring islands; as it was likewise easy to pass from those islands to all the continent which borders on the Atlantic Sea." (For better understanding of this geography the reader is referred to Figure 35. To the Greeks of Solon's time the world consisted of "Europe" and "Asia" -- the latter consisting of Asia Minor and North Africa -- separated by the Mediterranean Sea, all surrounded by the "Ocean Stream," which in turn was surrounded by a continent. By Plato's time the ocean was known to be much wider than a stream, and had been named the Atlantic, but so far as is known, it had not yet been explored by the Greeks.) When the kings of Atlantis attempted to conquer and enslave all the lands of the Mediterranean area, the ancient Athenians led the fight against them and "procured the most ample liberty for all those of us who dwell within the Pillars of Hercules." Subsequently there were great earthquakes and deluges, and in the space of a day and a night the ancient Athenian race was "merged under the earth," while Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea, leaving only unnavigable shoals to mark its site.
In the Critias, a dialog with the same four participants, Critias gives fuller particulars about the history, geography, and religion and culture of Atlantis, and then goes on to tell how the Atlanteans had gradually degenerated until Zeus thought their wickedness should no longer go unpunished; whereupon he called the gods together and said. . . . and there the dialog ends abruptly. Some think Plato died before finishing it, while others believe he started it earlier but shelved it in favor of other matters and never got around to it again.Was Plato describing a place he believed to be real, or was he making it all up to prove a philosophical point? If he believe it to be real, how much of his description can be trusted? Works on Atlantis are of three main kinds: some try to prove Plato's description to be literally true; some allow for distortions in time or place or both; while others flatly refuse to accept it as anything other than fiction. If we ignore those who base their arguments on occult revelations and similar fantasies and do not let themselves be confused by mere facts, we find that all those in the first category, and many of those in the second, have sincerely quoted what they believe to be valid scientific evidence. All too often, however, they have either drawn grossly incorrect conclusions from established scientific facts, or have based their arguments on outdated scientific theories. Truly scientific analyses, on the other hand, have invariably supported those who consider Atlantis to be fiction, and who at best will admit that it could be based in part on real facts known to Plato [5, 544, 227].
The above material on Atlantis shows that it is by no means clear whether Plato was writing what he considered history, or pure fiction, or a combination of the two. This further justifies Vitaliano's and others' claims that Egypt had no legends of Noah's Flood, although it certainly had knowledge of flood and Flood legends of the Greeks.
In view of the above, your statement that "From Egypt via Solon the story of Atlantis came to Greece. So it indeed is Egyptian in origin" is unsupportable.
You presented a lot of material from some website claiming to show that Cuba was Atlantis. I believe that the above material from Vitaliano shows why that is a poor hypothesis.
As for Robert Ballard and his Black Sea explorations, I'm following them with intense interest. The notion that Black Sea filling thousands of years ago gave rise to the legend of Noah's Flood seems to me to explain various features of the legend better than anything else I've seen.
One thing you said seems rather lame:
: The water to fill the Black Sea Basin would have lowered the oceans around the world by a foot, which shows how the regional flood was also global.
Aside from the fact that published figures put the global lowering to more like 1/2 foot, one can hardly call a small lowering of sea level a "global flood".
To VM44:
Excellent points about Isaac Newton Vail! I was not aware that Vail is "credited as the first to come up with the 'anthropological' argument for a worldwide flood." Please tell me more, such as who credits him so.
You might enjoy a recent article in Skeptic magazine about Vail and related pseudo-scientists (Vol. 8 No. 4, 2001, "Whence the Flood Waters? The Rise and Fall (and Likely Return) of the Pre-Flood Water Canopy", Tom McIver, pp. 76-81). It points out that Vail was not the first to come up with an "annular theory", but that Vail likely borrowed many of his ideas from an 1854 book (The Creation & Deluge, According to a New Theory; Confirming the Bible Account, Removing Most of the Difficulties Heretofore Suggested by Skeptical Philosophers, and Indicating Future Cosmological Changes down to the Final Consummation and End of Earth, Samuel Webb). I happened to buy this book at a used book store some years ago and, after skimming it, saw some similarities to Vail's ideas but I then forgot about it and never followed through. McIver's article showed how much Vail borrowed from Webb, and I can now see how later authors like C. T. Russell got their ideas from Vail, and perhaps even Webb.
To proplog:
Yeah, the realization sure can hit you like a ton of bricks! It's no fun realizing that what you believed for 30 or more years is nonsense.
To uncle jimbo:
Thanks for the link to the ICR website that compares features of the Flood stories in Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Watchtower Society would like people to believe that there is almost nothing in common, but the truth is that the two legends are the same in many critical points. The same goes for the creation stories in Genesis and the Sumerian/Babylonian Enuma Elish.
To Earnest:
On teaching my daughter to drive, you have no idea. Last time we went out, about 6-7 weeks ago, she scared both of us pretty good, and today was the first time we went out since then. Normally, nothing any driver does bothers me at all. But after a few close calls I found that I had uttered some screeching sounds, which I have never done before.
: Your revelation (to me at any rate) that the Egyptians had no legend of a flood is quite a mystery. Just as the fact that a civilization has a legend of a global flood does not prove in itself that such a flood took place, so the lack of such a legend does not prove it did not.
Quite so -- in theory. But in practice, absence of evidence is often evidence of absence. This is because it is often possible to establish that certain things would necessarily be observed if some claim were correct. For instance, if I claimed that I had been badly burned in a fire but you could not see any burn scars on me, you'd be justified in thinking I was not telling the truth. Similarly, when we reason on what sort of physical evidence a global Flood would necessarily leave, and we find none of it, we're justified in concluding that such a flood never happened. And when one of the most prominent and ancient of the Middle Eastern civilizations turns up having no global Flood legends, and its history goes back farther than the claimed date for a global Flood, we're entitled to use that absence of evidence as evidence of absence for a global Flood.
: But I would have expected there to be such a legend simply because it was current in the Middle East, and (as you said) "particularly entertaining or frightening legends propagate easily from culture to culture."
I was similarly surprised when I first learned this some years ago. However, to me the lack of an Egyptian Flood legend is minor compared to the fact that its history is continuously recorded back to about 3500 B.C.E.
The possible "allusions" to a global Flood that you mentioned seem so much of a stretch that they don't really indicate anything substantive. They can be understood in any number of other ways.
: But even if these are allusions to a flood the question still remains as to why there is so little in Egyptian literature on the subject. The most reasonable explanation I have come across is that because they had their own flood from the Nile every year, they couldn't attribute the beginning of everything to such a common event.
That's a very reasonable possibility. That would make them resistant to adopting a nasty flood legend from the outside.
To DB:
The material presented at talk.origins is generally very good. It's an excellent debunking of the usual Young-Earth Creationist and so-called Flood Geology nonsense. The notion of a local Flood is espoused on this forum by AChristian, which I'm sure you're now aware of.
AlanF
