A Sumerian tablet dating from about 1,700 BC gives directions for the building of a craft to rescue people and animals from an impending flood, and the description is for a circular craft:
In his translation, the god who has decided to spare one just man speaks to Atram-Hasis, a Sumerian king who lived before the flood and who is the Noah figure in earlier versions of the ark story. "Wall, wall! Reed wall, reed wall! Atram-Hasis, pay heed to my advice, that you may live forever! Destroy your house, build a boat; despise possessions And save life! Draw out the boat that you will build with a circular design; Let its length and breadth be the same."The process would have been very similar to the building of a coracle as demontrated in the 1935 video footage above; the round shape would have been adequate because there was no need to steer the craft - it just had to float above the rising floodwaters. See the Guardian link for further details.
Those interested in the relationship of ancient floods in Mesopotamia and Sumeria to the events described in Biblical tales several millennia later should read the outstanding book Noah's Flood by William Ryan and Walter Pitman.
Practically every ancient culture has myths about a great flood. Wikipedia lists 28 different ones, including China, Australia, Ireland, Polynesia, and a whole bunch of Native American cultures.
ReplyDeleteMakes you wonder if they didn't originate from some singular ancient catastrophic event, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteThe next question would then be: does the geologic record support a massive flood? Really, it wouldn't have to cover the entire earth-- just the part where humans were living early on. This even would be passed down, and turned into myth as cultures spread.
Or, then again, it didn't exist at all.
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