The Great Flood

The great gods, their sleep ruined by the clamour of teeming humanity, resolved in council to send the Flood. But Ea, cleverest of gods, could not bear the waste; bound by oath not to warn any man, he whispered instead to a reed wall — behind which sat Utnapishtim of Shuruppak. 'Tear down your house, build a boat. Abandon wealth, save life. Take aboard the seed of every living thing.' Utnapishtim built the vessel in seven days, caulked it with pitch, and loaded his family, his craftsmen, his silver, and beasts of the field both wild and tame. The storm came with the dawn — so terrible that the gods themselves fled upward and cowered like dogs against the wall of heaven, and Ishtar cried out like a woman in labour at what they had done. Six days and seven nights the tempest ground the world; on the seventh, silence. The boat grounded on Mount Nimush. Utnapishtim released a dove — it returned. A swallow — it returned. A raven — it saw the waters receding, ate, circled, and did not return. Then he opened the hatch, poured a libation on the mountaintop, and burned sweet cane, cedar and myrtle; and the gods, starved of offerings since the world drowned, gathered like flies around the sacrifice. Enlil, first furious that any had survived, was reconciled by Ea's reproach — punish the sinner for his sin, not the world entire — and blessed Utnapishtim and his wife with the life of gods, settling them at the mouth of the rivers.

When the earth filled with violence, God repented of having made humankind and resolved to blot it out with a flood — all but Noah, who was righteous in his generation. Noah was commanded to build an ark of gopher wood, three decks sealed with pitch, and to bring aboard his wife, his three sons and their wives, and the animals — two of every kind, seven pairs of the clean. The fountains of the great deep burst and the windows of heaven opened; forty days of rain drowned the highest mountains, and everything that breathed on dry land died. When the waters had prevailed a hundred and fifty days, God remembered Noah; the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Noah sent out a raven, which went to and fro; then a dove, which found no rest and returned; then the dove again, which came back at evening with a fresh olive leaf in her beak; then the dove a third time, which did not return. Noah came out on dry ground and built an altar, and offered of every clean beast and bird; and the Lord smelled the pleasing odour and vowed never again to curse the ground for man's sake, setting the rainbow in the clouds as the sign of the covenant.

When Zeus resolved to destroy the men of the Bronze Age — some say for their impiety, some for the atrocity of Lycaon, who served human flesh at the god's table — Prometheus warned his son Deucalion. Deucalion built a chest, provisioned it, and embarked with his wife Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora. Nine days and nine nights the flood carried them, until the chest grounded on Parnassus. When the rains ceased Deucalion came out and sacrificed to Zeus God-of-Escape; and Zeus, pleased, sent Hermes to grant him whatever he chose. Deucalion chose people. Told to throw the bones of their mother over their shoulders, the pious pair understood: the mother is Earth, her bones are stones. The stones Deucalion threw became men; those Pyrrha threw became women — which is why, Pindar says, people are laos, from laas, the stone. From their son Hellen descend all the Hellenes.

As Manu washed his hands at morning, a tiny fish swam into his palms and begged: 'Rear me, and I will save you.' Manu kept it in a jar; it outgrew the jar, then the pond, then the Ganges, until only the ocean would hold it — for it was no ordinary fish (the later tellings say it was Vishnu himself). The fish told Manu: 'In such-and-such a year the flood will come and carry away all creatures. Build a ship; and when the waters rise, think of me.' The flood came as foretold and swept the world. Manu, alone of living men, embarked; the great horned fish swam to him, and Manu made the ship's rope fast to its horn. So it towed him over the drowned world to the Mountain of the North, where Manu tied the ship to a tree and descended with the subsiding waters. All creatures had perished. Manu, desiring offspring, poured clarified butter and curds into the waters as sacrifice; within a year a woman rose from the offering — Ida — and through her Manu begot the race of Manu, which is humankind.

In the time of Yao, the waters rose until they embraced the mountains and lapped at heaven, and the people had no dry place. Gun was charged with the work. He stole from heaven the xirang, the self-renewing soil that grows to dam any breach, and for nine years he built dikes — and for nine years they failed, for walls alone cannot hold a world of water. For his theft and failure Gun was executed at Feather Mountain; but his body did not rot, and from it (split open with a sword, some say) sprang his son Yu. Yu changed the method: not walls but channels. For thirteen years he surveyed the nine provinces, dredged the beds, cut the passes — men say he wore the hair from his shins and the nails from his fingers, that he passed his own gate three times hearing his infant son cry within and would not enter, for the work was not done. A dragon dragged its tail to trace his channels; a dark turtle hauled the mud. When the rivers at last ran seaward in their courses, the land was portioned for planting, and Yu — Yu the Great now — received the mandate and founded the Xia. The flood was never punishment, and no one escaped it: it was work, and a man mastered it.

The Fourth Sun, the Sun of Water, ended in a flood that stood the sky's waters upon the earth for fifty-two years, and the people of that age were changed into fish. Before the waters came, Titlacahuan-Tezcatlipoca summoned the man Tata and his wife Nene: 'Hollow out a great cypress, and enter it when the waters rise. Eat only a single ear of maize each.' They obeyed, floating sealed in the log while the world drowned, nibbling their ration kernel by kernel. When the waters fell and the log grounded, they saw a fish — and hunger and appetite overcame command. They drilled fire with sticks and roasted it. The smoke rose and dirtied the sky; the star-gods Citlallinicue and Citlallatonac cried out, 'Who smokes heaven?' — and Titlacahuan descended in fury. 'Is this how I am repaid?' He struck off their heads and set them on their hindquarters, making them the first dogs. So the Fifth Sun opened without them, and dogs to this day look at people with eyes that remember being human.