Hebrew Myths (17 page)

(
c
) God then ordered Noah to build, and caulk with pitch, an ark of gopher-wood large enough for himself, his family and chosen examples of all other creatures living on earth. He must take seven beasts and birds of every clean kind, two of every unclean kind and two creeping things of every kind. He must also provide them with food. Noah spent fifty-two years on this shipwright’s task; he worked slowly in the hope of delaying God’s vengeance.
²⁰⁵

(
d
) God Himself designed the ark; which had three decks and measured three hundred cubits from stem to stern, fifty from gunwale to gunwale, and thirty from hatches to keel. Each deck was divided into hundreds of cabins, the lowest made to house all beasts both wild and tame; the middle deck, all birds; the upper deck, all creeping things, and Noah’s family besides.
²⁰⁶

(
e
) Certain wandering spirits also entered the ark, and were saved. A couple of monsters too large for any cabin, nevertheless survived: the Reem, which swam behind, resting its nose on the poop; and the
Giant Og. This was Hiya’s son by the woman who had since married Ham and who begged Noah to keep Og’s head above water by letting him cling to a rope-ladder. In gratitude, Og swore that he would be Noah’s slave; but though Noah compassionately fed him through a port-hole, he afterwards resumed his evil ways.
²⁰⁷

(
f
) When Noah set about gathering the creatures together, he was appalled by his task, and cried: ‘Lord of the Universe, how am I to accomplish this great thing?’ Thereupon the guardian angel of each kind descended from Heaven and, carrying basketsful of fodder, led them into the ark; so that each seemed to have come by its own native intelligence. They arrived on the very day that Methuselah died, at the age of nine hundred and sixty-nine years, a full week before the Deluge began; and God appointed this time of mourning as a time of grace, during which mankind might still repent. He then commanded Noah to sit beside the door of the ark and observe each creature as it came towards him. Such as crouched down in his presence were to gain admittance; such as remained standing must be excluded. Some authorities say that according to God’s orders, if the male lorded it over the female of his own kind, both were admitted, but not otherwise. And that He gave these orders because it was no longer men alone that committed bestiality. The beasts themselves rejected their own mates: the stallion mounted the she-ass; the jackass, the mare; the dog, the she-wolf; the serpent, the tortoise; and so forth—moreover, females frequently lorded it over males. God had decided to destroy all creatures whatsoever, except those that obeyed His will.
²⁰⁸

(
g
) Earth shook, her foundations trembled, the sun darkened, lightning flashed, thunder pealed, and a deafening voice the like of which was never heard before, rolled across mountain and plain. Thus God sought to terrify evil-doers into repentance; but without avail. He chose water rather than fire as a fit punishment for their unspeakable vices, and opened Heaven’s sluices by the removal of two Pleiades; thus allowing the Upper and Lower Waters—the male and female elements of Tehom, which He had separated in the days of Creation—to re-unite and destroy the world in a cosmic embrace.

The Deluge began on the seventeenth day of the second month, when Noah was six hundred years old. He and his family duly entered the ark, and God Himself made fast the door behind them. But even Noah could not yet believe that God would wipe out so magnificent a handiwork, and therefore had held back until waves lapped at his ankles.
²⁰⁹

(
h
) The floods spread swiftly over the entire earth. Seven hundred thousand evil-doers gathered around the ark, crying: ‘Open the door, Noah, and let us enter!’ Noah shouted from within: ‘Did I not urge you to repent these hundred and twenty years, and you would not listen?’ ‘Now we repent,’ they answered. ‘It is too late,’ he said. They tried to break down the door, and would have overturned the ark, but that a pack of rejected wolves, lions and bears which were also trying to enter, tore hundreds of them in pieces, and dispersed the rest. When Tehom’s Lower Waters rose, the evil-doers first threw children into the springs, hoping to choke their flow, then climbed trees or hills. Rain cascaded down, and soon a rising flood bore up the ark, until at last it floated fifteen cubits above the highest peaks—yet so buffeted by waves that all inside were hurled to and fro like beans in a boiling pot. Some say that God heated the Deluge in the Pit’s flames, and punished fiery lusts with scalding water; or rained fire on the evil-doers; or let carrion birds tear out their eyes as they swam.
²¹⁰

(
i
) A pearl hanging from the ark’s roof shone calmly on Noah and his family. When its light paled, he knew that the hours of daylight had come; when it brightened, he knew that night was at hand, and thus never lost count of the Sabbaths. Some say, however, that this light came from a sacred book which the Archangel Raphael gave to Noah, bound in sapphires, and containing all knowledge of the stars, the art of healing and the mastery of demons. Noah bequeathed this to Shem, from whom it passed by way of Abraham to Jacob, Levi, Moses, Joshua and Solomon.
²¹¹

(
j
) Throughout the next twelve months neither Noah nor his sons slept, being continually busied with their charges. Some creatures were accustomed to eat at the first hour of the day or night; others at the second, third or fourth hour, or even later; and each expected its own fodder—the camel needed straw; the ass, rye; the elephant, vine shoots; the ostrich, broken glass. Yet, according to one account, all beasts, birds, creeping things and man himself, subsisted on a single food: namely fig-bread.
²¹²

(
k
) Noah prayed: ‘Lord of the Universe, release me from this prison! My soul is wearied by the stench of lions, bears and panthers.’ As for the chameleon, no one knew how to feed it; but one day Noah opened a pomegranate, and a worm fell out which the starving creature devoured. Thereupon he kneaded shoots of camel-thorn into a cake, and fed the chameleon with the worms that it bred. A fever kept both lions sick all this time; they did not prey on other beasts,
but ate grass like oxen. Seeing the phoenix huddled in a corner, Noah asked: ‘Why have you not demanded food?’ ‘Sir,’ it replied, ‘your household are busy enough; I do not wish to cause them trouble.’ He then blessed the phoenix, saying: ‘Be it God’s will that you never die!’
²¹³

(
l
) Noah had parted his sons from their wives, and forbidden them marital rites: while the world was being destroyed they must take no thought for its replenishment. He laid the same prohibition upon all beasts, birds and creeping things. Only Ham, the dog, and the cock-raven disobeyed. Ham sinned in order to save his wife from disgrace: had he not lain with her himself, Shem and Japheth would have known that she was already bearing a child to the fallen angel Shemhazai. Nevertheless, God punished Ham by turning his skin black. He also punished the dog, by attaching it shamefully to the bitch after copulation; and the raven, by making it inseminate the hen-bird through its beak.
²¹⁴

(
m
) When one hundred and fifty—though some say, forty—days had passed, God shut the sluices of Heaven with two stars borrowed from the Great Bear. This still pursues the Pleiades nightly, growling: ‘Give back my stars!’ He then sent a wind that drove Tehom’s waters toppling over Earth’s brink, until the Deluge slowly subsided. By the seventh day of the seventh month, Noah’s ark had come to rest upon Mount Ararat. On the first day of the tenth month, summits of other mountains rose in sight. Having waited a further forty days, Noah opened a skylight and told the raven to fly off and fetch back news of the outside world. It replied insolently: ‘God, your master, hates me; and so do you! Were not His orders: “Take seven of all clean creatures, and two of all unclean”? Why choose me for this dangerous mission, when my mate and I are only two? Why spare the doves, which number seven? If I should die of heat or cold, the world would be bereft of ravens. Or do you lust after my mate?’ Noah cried: ‘Alas, Evil One! Even my wife is forbidden me while we are afloat. How much more your mate, a creature not of my kind?’ The raven thereupon hid itself. Noah searched the ark with care and, presently finding the truant hidden under the she-eagle’s wing, said: ‘Evil One! Did I not order you to see whether the floods have abated? Be off at once!’ The raven answered impudently: ‘It is as I thought: you lust after my mate!’ Noah, enraged, cried: ‘May God curse the beak that uttered this calumny!’ And all the creatures, listening, said ‘Amen!’ Noah opened the skylight, and the raven—which had meanwhile impregnated the she-eagle, and other carrion-birds besides, thus depraving their natures—flew out but soon came back. Again sent
out, again it came back. The third time it stayed away, gorging on corpses.
²¹⁵

(
n
) Noah now gave similar orders to a dove, which also soon returned, finding no tree to roost upon. Seven days later, he freed the dove a second time, and it returned towards nightfall, carrying a freshly plucked olive leaf in its bill. He tried once more, after another seven days had passed, and this time it did not return. On the first day of the first month, Noah climbed through the skylight and looked around. He saw only a vast sea of mud stretching to the distant mountains. Even Adam’s tomb had vanished from sight. Not until the twenty-seventh day of the second month did wind and sun dry this morass sufficiently to let Noah disembark.
²¹⁶

(
o
) As soon as his foot touched land, he took stones and raised an altar. God sniffed the sweet odour of burnt offerings, and said: ‘Despite man’s evil disposition, I will never again use water to destroy him. Henceforth, so long as Earth lasts, let seed-time follow harvest; and harvest, seed-time—as summer follows winter; and day, night.’ God blessed Noah and his family with: ‘Be fruitful, multiply, rule all beasts, birds and creeping things!’ He also permitted them to eat flesh, on condition that they first bled the carcase, explaining: ‘A beast’s soul lies in its blood’; and instituted the death penalty for any man or beast that should do murder. Then He set the Rainbow in the sky, saying: ‘Whenever I bring rain clouds over the earth, this shining bow will recall My promise!’
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***

1
. Two ancient myths parallel the
Genesis
Deluge: one Greek, one Akkadian. The Akkadian, found in the
Gilgamesh Epic
, was current also among the Sumerians, the Hurrians and the Hittites. In it the hero Utnapishtim is warned by Ea, god of Wisdom, that the other gods led by Enlil, the Creator, have planned a universal deluge, and that he must build an ark. Enlil’s reason for wiping out mankind seems to have been their omission of his New Year sacrifices. Utnapishtim builds a six-decked ark in the shape of an exact cube, with sides of one hundred and twenty cubits, and uses bitumen to caulk it. The ark is completed in seven days, Utnapishtim having meanwhile given his workmen ‘wine to drink, like rain, so that they might feast in the style of New Year’s day.’ When a blighting rain begins to fall, he, his family, craftsmen and attendants bearing his treasures, besides numerous beasts and birds, enter the ark. Utnapishtim’s boatman then battens down the hatches.

2
. For a whole day the South Wind rages, submerging mountains and sweeping away mankind. The gods themselves fly up in terror to Heaven, where they cower like dogs. The deluge continues for six days, but ceases on the seventh. Thereupon Utnapishtim opens a hatch and looks about him. He sees a flood, level as a flat roof, bounded by fourteen distant mountain tops. All mankind has been drowned and returned to clay. The ark drifts to Mount Nisir, where Utnapishtim waits seven more days. He then sends out a dove which, finding no resting place, returns. After another seven days, he sends a swallow, which also returns. Then a raven which, finding carrion to eat, does not return, because the floods have now diminished.

3.
Utnapishtim releases all his people and animals, pours a sevenfold libation of wine on the mountain top, and burns aromatic woods—cane, cedar and myrtle. The gods smell this sweet odour and crowd about the sacrifice. Ishtar praises Utnapishtim, and reviles Enlil for causing a senseless disaster. Enlil cries angrily: ‘No man should have survived my deluge! Are these yet alive?’ Ea confesses that Utnapishtim was warned of the deluge in a dream. Enlil, mollified, boards the ark and, blessing Utnapishtim and his wife, makes them ‘like unto gods’, and places them in Paradise where, later, they are greeted by Gilgamesh.

4
. In a fragmentary Sumerian version, the Deluge hero is the pious King Ziusudra (named Xisuthros in Berossus’s third-century
B.C.
Babylonian History
). Xisuthros digs up certain sacred books which he has previously buried in the city of Sippar.

5
. The
Genesis
myth is composed, it seems, of at least three distinct elements. First, historical memory of a cloudburst in the Armenian mountains which, according to Woolley’s
Ur of the Chaldees
, flooded the Tigris and Euphrates about 3200
B.C.
—covering Sumerian villages over an area of 40,000 square miles with eight feet of clay and rubble. Only a few cities
perched high on their mounds, and protected by brick walls, escaped destruction.

A second element is the autumnal New Year vintage feast of Babylonia, Syria and Palestine, where the ark was a crescent-shaped moon-ship containing sacrificial animals. This feast was celebrated at the New Moon nearest the autumnal equinox with libations of new wine to encourage the winter rains.

Remains of the ark on Ararat—‘Mount Judi near Lake Van’—are mentioned by Josephus who quotes Berossus and other historians; Berossus had written that the local Kurds still chipped pieces of bitumen from it for use as amulets. A recent American expedition claims to have found half-fossilized timbers there dating from about 1500
B.C.
An Armenian historian, Moses of Chorene, calls this sacred site Nachidsheuan (‘the first place of descent’). ‘Ararat’ appears in an inscription of Shalmanassar I of Assyria (1272–1243
B.C.
) as
Uruatri
or
Uratri.
Later it becomes
Urartu
, and refers to an independent kingdom surrounding Lake Van, known to the Hebrews of Biblical times as the Land of Ararat (2
Kings
XIX. 37;
Isaiah
XXXVII. 38).