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Kirata -> RE: Biblical Myth: Noah's Ark (4/24/2011 5:07:18 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DomKen
was not noticed by either the Egyptian nor the Chinese civilizations...
Egyptian:
Ra was warned by the Watery Abyss that humans had grown too rebellious, so he took Hathor and ordered her to punish the people.
Hathor went to earth and slew millions of humans. The streets of the town of Chetenuten began to run like a river with blood because of her horrific endeavour. So much blood drained into the Nile that it overflowed the riverbanks, and the bloody water flooded the land, destroying everything. This water eventually ran into the sea, which overflowed as well. Hathor began drinking this horrible mixture of blood and water.
Ra was displeased with Hathor's work, as he had only wanted to punish, and not destroy, the human race. So he asked Thoth, the wisest God, for help. He then told the Goddess Sektet to mix together dada, fruit and barley to make beer. The beer was then to be mixed with human blood, in the hopes that it would attract Hathor.
Ra's servents were then ordered to pour out the mixture on the remaining land near Hathor. The beer became a great sea, and Hathor was drawn to it by the smell of the blood. She drank the beer until she was so intoxicated that she staggered off to sleep, leaving the last few humans behind.
From those humans, earth was repopulated.
Various (but similiar) versions can be found on the web, the above one being from here.
Chinese:
A kite once quarrelled with the crab and pecked a hole in its skull (which can still be seen today). In revenge, the crab caused the sea and rivers to swell until the waters reached the sky. The only survivors were a brother and sister who took a pair of all kinds of animals with them in a huge chest. They floated for seven days and nights. Then the brother heard a cock crowing outside, sent by the spirits to signal that the flood had abated. All disembarked, birds first, then the animals, then the two people. The brother and sister did not know how they would live, for they had eaten all the rice that was stored in the chest. However, a black ant brought two grains of rice. The brother planted them, and the plain was covered with a rice crop the next morning.
Another Chinese flood story in which a brother and sister survive is amusing for the tricks the brother must engage in to get his very proper sister to agree to sleep with him so the land can be repopulated.
The first Chinese myth above is from a very large survey of flood myths, indexed by region, which can be found here.
K.
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