And then there are the Graeco-Roman flood myths, which should be of greater interest to Bible students, since the Palestinian area, where the Jewish people's lived was part of the Hellenic cultural zone, and naturally the Jews were greatly influenced by that culture.
Cutting and pasting from Wikipedia we see some interesting parallels between the mythical Greek version and the Jewish mythical version.
Quote: The fullest accounts are provided in Ovid's Metamorphoses (8 AD) and in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus.[9]Deucalion, who reigned over the region of Phthia, had been forewarned of the flood by his father, Prometheus. Deucalion was to build a chest and provision it carefully (no animals are rescued in this version of the Flood myth), so that when the waters receded after nine days, he and his wife Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus, were the one surviving pair of humans. Their chest touched solid ground on Mount Parnassus,[10] or Mount Etna in Sicily,[11] orMount Athos in Chalkidiki,[12] or Mount Othrys in Thessaly.[13]
Hyginus mentions the opinion of a Hegesianax that Deucalion is to be identified with Aquarius, "because during his reign such quantities of water poured from the sky that the great Flood resulted."
Once the deluge was over and the couple had given thanks to Zeus, Deucalion (said in several of the sources to have been aged 82 at the time) consulted anoracle of Themis about how to repopulate the earth. He was told to cover your head and throw the bones of your mother behind your shoulder. Deucalion and Pyrrha understood that "mother" is Gaia, the mother of all living things, and the "bones" to be rocks. They threw the rocks behind their shoulders and the stones formed people. Pyrrha's became women; Deucalion's became men.
Deucalion and Pyrrha had at least two children, Hellen and Protogenea, and possibly a third, Amphictyon (who is Autochthonous in other traditions).
Their children as apparently named in one of the oldest texts, Catalogue of Women, include daughters Pandora and Thyia, and at least one son, Hellen.[14]Their descendants were said to have dwelt in Thessaly. One corrupt fragment might make Deucalion the son of Prometheus and Pronoea.[15]
On the other hand, Dionysius of Halicarnassus gives Deucalion's parentage as Prometheus and Clymene, daughter of Oceanus, and mentions nothing about a flood, but instead names him as commander of those from Parnassus who drove the "sixth generation" of Pelasgians from Thessaly.[16]
One of the earliest Greek historians, Hecataeus of Miletus, was said to have written a book about Deucalion, but it no longer survives. The only extant fragment of his to mention Deucalion does not mention the flood either, but names him as the father of Orestheus, king of Aetolia. The much later geographerPausanias, following on this tradition, names Deucalion as a king of Ozolian Locris and father of Orestheus. Plutarch mentions a legend that Deucalion and Pyrrha had settled in Dodona, Epirus; while Strabo asserts that they lived at Cynus, and that her grave is still to be found there, while his may be seen atAthens; he also mentions a pair of Aegean islands named after the couple.[citation needed]
The 2nd-century writer Lucian gave an account of the Greek Deucalion in De Dea Syria that seems to refer more to the Near Eastern flood legends: in his version, Deucalion (whom he also calls Sisythus)[17] took his children, their wives, and pairs of animals with him on the ark, and later built a great temple inManbij (northern Syria), on the site of the chasm that received all the waters; he further describes how pilgrims brought vessels of sea water to this place twice a year, from as far as Arabia and Mesopotamia, to commemorate this event.
reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deucalion
There's more, of course. From India, where civilisation grew up around the great river systems of the Indus and the Ganges, we find similar mythical accounts.
And, in China similar myths exist, where Yu tames the Yellow River and becomes Emperor of the first Xia dynasty. Lots of excitement in academia lately as a researcher believes he's found the source of the great flood account that Yu tamed.
