[155] “Comment le nom du premier navigateur connu, tel qu’il se prononça en Hébreu et qu’il nous est transmis par la Génese, ‘Noh, Naus, Noach,’ serait-il devenu le nom d’une arche flottante, d’un navire, en Sanscrit et en vingt autres langues? Nau, sanscrit; Naw, armenien; Naus, grec; (Navis, latin); Noi, hibernien; Neau, bas breton; Nef, nav. franc; Noobh, irlandais; Naone, vanikoro; Nacho, allemand vieux; Naw, timor; Nachen, allemand; _S’nechia_, islandais; _S’naeca_ ou Naca, anglo-sax.; _S’nace_, ancien anglais; Sin-nau, cambodge, &c.
“Enfin nous demandons comment le nom Hébreu de l’arche de Noë. Tobe, prononcé comme on écrivait généralement en Orient, en sens inverse, donne le nom d’un vaisseau dans vingt langues qui sont des dialectes du Sanscrit? L’écriture boustrophedone, qui fait les lignes alternativement à droite et gauche sans interruption a pu donner naissance à cette manière de lire:—Boat, anglais; boite, français; bat, anglo-saxon; boot, hollandais; bat, suedois, baat, danois; batr, islandais; bad, breton; bote, espagnol; boar, persan; batillo, italien; pota, sanscrit.” Vide other similar proofs from Vicomte d’Anselme’s “Monde Païen,” &c. In Gainet, i. 223, a curious additional instance of the same word having connections with “boat” and arc (tobe) might be discovered in Kibotos, the name of a mountain in Phrygia, where the ark is said to have rested (Gainet, i. 220). Also we have almost the same words—ark and arc—to express (though according to a different etymology) these dissimilar objects.
“The words oar and rudder can be traced back to Sanskrit, and the name of the ship is identically the same in Sanscrit (naus, nâvas), in Latin (navis), in Greek (naus), and in Teutonic, Old High Germ. (nachs), Anglo-Saxon (naca).”—Max Müller, “Comp. Mythol.,” p. 49.
I may draw attention, as having reference to other branches of this inquiry, to a possible affinity with the name of the patriarch, in the term Noaaids, applied by the Laplanders to their magicians (Pinkerton, i. 459, &c.); and to the term Koadernicks, applied by the Samoids to the same (id. 532). I own there might be danger in pushing the inquiry further, as I might even bring the patriarch Noah into contact and connection with Old Nick!
I may also refer to the term “Janna” (Janus), as applied to the officer “who had the office of entertaining ambassadors” at the court of Kenghis Khan (id. v. 7, p. 40; Rubruquis’s Embassy, A.D. 1253, also 56).
[156] Comp. “Traditions of the New Zealanders.”
[157] Do not the seven richis or sages correspond to the seven (or eight) (Phœnician) Kabiri. (There were seven or eight persons in the ark, accordingly as we take separate account or not of Noah.) As regards the Kabiri, their number (seven or eight, accordingly as we include “Æsculapius”) must be the clue to the solution of “the most obscure and mysterious question in mythology.” Bunsen (“Egypt,” iv. 229) says of an astral explanation:—“It does not enable us to explain the details of those representations which do not contain the number seven (or eight), and, in fact, seven brothers.” It will suffice, from our point of view, if there are numerically seven persons. Bunsen (iv. p. 291) says—“It is quite clear that the fundamental number of the gods in the oldest mythologies of Phœnicia, and all Asia, as well as Egypt, was seven. There were seven Kabiri, with the seven Titans. There are also seven Titans mentioned in other genealogies of the race of Kronos. Of the latter, one dies a virgin and disappears.” But as with the Kabiri we have seen the number seven, or eight, accordingly as Æsculapius is included or not, so (vide p. 314) we see the primitive gods of Egypt either seven or eight, accordingly as Thoth, “the eighth,” or Horus, figure as the “last divine king” (p. 319). When Horus so figures, “he is frequently represented as the eighth, conducting the bark of the gods, with the seven great gods,” &c. Moreover, it is elsewhere (p. 347) said that “the Phœnicians, in their sacred books, stated that the Kabiri embarked in ships, and landed near Mount Kaison. This legend was corroborated by the existence of a shrine on that coast in historic times.” [Query, The tradition of the Deluge localised, and the shrine commemorative of that catastrophe (vide Boulanger, &c., infra, [p. 244]); and supposing that the tradition of the number saved in the Flood had been preserved down to a certain date, we should then expect that the number would become rigid and fixed. But that if the tradition of the actual survivors had become indistinct, what more natural than that the eight principal characters of ante-diluvian, or even post-diluvian, history should be substituted for them, and that the same confusion and agglomeration of legend should take place as we shall see occurring in the tradition of Noah?]
In the Persian or Iranian legend of Shâh-nâmeh, “the three sons of Ferêdûn—Ireg, Tur, and Selm—are mentioned as their patriarchs, and among them the whole earth was divided.” But in the more ancient Gâthâs there is mention of “the seven-surfaced or seven-portioned earth.” [Query—apportioned by the eighth?] Vide Bunsen’s “Egypt,” iii. 478.
For the Indian tradition compare the following from Hunter’s “Bengal” (i. p. 151)—“Another coincidence—I do not venture to call it an analogy—is to be found in the number of children born to the first pair. As the Santal legend immediately divides the human species into seven families, so the Sanscrit tradition assigns the propagation of our race after the flood to seven rishis.” I also find in F. Schlegel’s “Philosophy of History” (p. 150, Robertson’s trans.)—“The Indian traditions acknowledge and revere the succession of the first ancestors of mankind, or the holy patriarchs of the primitive world, under the name of the seven great rishis, or sages of hoary antiquity, though they invest their history with a cloud of fictions.”
[158] Syncellus, quoting Berosus (vide Abbé de Tressan, “Mythology,” p. 10), says that Oannes (the mysterious fish, vide ante) left some writings upon the origin of the world. These, no doubt, correspond to the “Liber Noachi.” I do not disguise that this statement is probably derived from what is called the false Berosus. The reference, however, which I have made to these writings at [p. 139] may raise doubt whether they did not embody true traditions.