Since, however, there is nothing to be said against the possibility of subsequent partial inundations, there will, I suppose, always be found persons ready to maintain that the deluges of Ogyges and Deucalion were partial and historical; although I submit that the arguments which were formerly used to prove the priority of Ogyges to Deucalion, and the posteriority of both to the general Deluge, turned upon points of chronology which will hardly be sustained at the present day.
If, however, I can succeed in showing that the deluge of Deucalion is identical with the deluge of Noah, I shall consider that I shall have also proved the point for the deluge of Ogyges, which all agree to have been much older!
The following is Mr Grote’s narrative collating the different traditions respecting the deluge of Deucalion:—
“Deukalion is important in Grecian mythical narration under two points of view. First, he is the person specially saved at the time of the general deluge; next, he is the father of Hellên, the great eponym of the Hellenic race; at least that was the more current story, though there were other statements which made Hellên the son of Zeus.” [This was merely the incipient process of the apotheosis of their more immediate founder.] “The enormous iniquity with which the earth was contaminated, as Apollodorus says, by the then existing brazen race, or, as others say, by the fifty monstrous sons of Sykorôn, provoked Zeus to send a general deluge.” “The latter account is given by Dionys. Halic. i. 17; the former seems to have been given by Hellenikus, who affirmed that the ark after the Deluge stopped upon Mount Othrys, and not upon Mount Parnassus (Schol. Pind. ut supra), the former being suitable for a settlement in Thessaly.” [I have already pointed out how the general tradition is everywhere localised.] “An unremitting and terrible rain laid the whole of Greece under water except the highest mountain-tops, where a few stragglers found refuge. Deukalion was saved in a chest or ark, which he had been forewarned by his father Prometheus to construct. After he had floated for nine days on the water, he at length landed on the summit of Mount Parnassus. Zeus hearing, sent Hermes to him, promising to grant whatever he asked. He prayed that men and companions might be sent him in his solitude: accordingly Zeus directed both him and Pyrrha to cast stones over their heads, those cast by Pyrrha became women, those by Deukalion men. And thus the ‘stony race of men’ (if we may be allowed to translate an etymology which the Greek language presents exactly, and which has not been disdained by Hesiod, by Pindar, by Epicharmes, and by Virgil), came to tenant the soil of Greece. Deukalion on landing from the ark sacrificed a grateful offering to Zeus Phyxios, or the God of Escape; he also erected altars in Thessaly to the twelve great gods of Olympus. The reality of this deluge was firmly believed throughout the historical ages of Greece (localising it, however, and post-dating it to 1528 B.C.) Statements founded upon this event were in circulation throughout Greece even to a very late date. The Magarians ... and in the magnificent temple of the Olympian Zeus at Athens, a cavity in the earth was shown, through which it was affirmed that the water of the Deluge had retired. Even in the time of Pausanias the priests poured into this cavity holy offerings of meal and honey. In this, as in other parts of Greece, the idea of the Deukalionian deluge was blended with the religious impressions of the people, and commemorated by their most sacred ceremonies.”—Grote’s “History of Greece,” vol. i. ch. v. 132, 133, “The Deluge.”[188]
Mr Max Müller (comp. “Myth.,” “Chips.,” ii. 12), incidentally speaking of the legend of Deucalion, treats it with great contempt. “What is more ridiculous,” he says, “than the mythological account of the creation of the human race by Deucalion and Pyrrha throwing stones behind them (a myth which owes its origin to a mere pun on λαός and λᾶας).” And ridiculous it certainly is from any point of view from which Mr Max Müller could regard it, i.e. either as the invention of a mythic period, or as a fugitive allegory arising out of some astral or solar legend: per contra, I shall submit that there is nothing forced in supposing that this legend arose out of some one of the processes of corruption to which all tradition is prone, of the known fact that the human race was re-propagated by Deucalion or Noah.[189] If I am asked to explain how it came about that there should have been this identity between the word for a “man” and a “stone,” I must simply confess my ignorance. Perhaps if Mr Max Müller could be brought to look at things more from the point of view of biblical traditions, he might be enabled to see it. All that I can suggest is, that perhaps it may have a common origin with that Homeric expression quoted by Mr Max Müller at [p. 175] (vide supra), “Thou art not sprung from the olden tree or from the rock.” I consider that I shall definitely establish, however, that it originates in a tradition and not “a mere pun,” and at any rate that it is not local, it is not Greek. It is no doubt singular that the word for man, λαός, populus, should so closely resemble the word for a stone, λᾶας; but not only is this coincidence found in the Greek, but we shall see that it is widely spread in all parts of the world. In proof, I adduce the following extract from Dr Hooker’s inaugural lecture at Norwich in 1868, (since the publication of Mr Max Müller’s work):—
“It is a curious fact that the Khasian word for a stone, ‘man,’ as commonly occurs in the names of their villages and places as that of man, maen, and men does in those of Brittany, Wales, Cornwall, &c.; thus Mansmai signifies in Khasia the Stone of Oath; Manloo, the Stone of Salt; Manflong, the Grassy Stone; and just as in Wales Pen mæn maur signifies the Hill of the Big Stone; and in Britanny a Menhir is a standing stone, and a Dolmen a table stone,” &c.[190]
Here it is seen that the word for stone in these respective places is the same with our word “man” it is not specifically said that the word would carry this sense also in the places indicated, but I infer it from the analogy which runs through homo, homme, and by a connection of ideas through the Greek ὠμός to the Sanscrit—thus “âma-ad” (ὠμος-εδω]), are names applied “in the Sanscrit” to “barbarians” who are cannibals. (Max Müller, ii. p. 44.) And I am not sure that Mr Max Müller does not say so directly, in reference to the word “Brahman,” for although the word originally is said to mean power (i. 363), yet “another word with the accent on the last syllable, is Brahmán, the man who prays.”—Max Müller, i. 72.[191]
Also Kenrick (“Essay on Primæval History,” p. 59), “Thus the Hindus attribute the origin of their institutions and race to Manu, whose name is equivalent to man. The Germans made Tuisto (Teutsch) and his son Mannus to be the origin and founder of their nation.” Also Sir W. Jones’ “Asiat. Res.” i. 230; Rawlinson’s “Bamp. Lect.” lect. ii. 67:—“From Manu the earth was re-peopled, and from him mankind received their name Manudsha.”
Gainet (i. 170) says:—“The stones changed then into men by Deucalion and Pyrrha, are they not their children according to nature? In Syriac the word ‘Eben’ signifies equally a child and a stone. In spite of these confusions their accounts of the Deluge are striking as well on account of their resemblance, as on account of their universality, as the reader will soon be able to convince himself.”—Vide Gainet, i. 167.[192]
But if the whole human race were re-propagated by Deucalion and Pyrrha, how are we to locate the anterior legend of Ogyges, occurring among the same people? It is barely possible that the memory of a long antecedent and partial deluge may have remained in the memories of the survivors of the subsequent and universal calamity, but the much more reasonable conjecture seems to be that it was by a different channel the reminiscence of the same event. It must be remembered that it was the Ogygian deluge which was said to have been partial and to have inundated Attica. The deluge of Deucalion by all accounts, except by Pindar, was considered to have been universal, and corresponds in its details with Mosaic accounts, e.g. it was universal, covering the tops of the highest mountains; it was caused by the depravity of mankind; the single pair who were saved, were saved in a ship or an ark, and floated many days on the waters. In the end, they settled on the top of a mountain, went to consult the oracle (as Noah is said to have sacrificed and to have had communications with God), and re-peopled the earth. The version of Lucian gives particulars which brings the tradition to almost exact correspondence. Deucalion and his wife were saved (on account of their rectitude and piety) together with his sons and their wives. He was accompanied into the ark by the pigs, horses, lions, and serpents, who came to him in pairs. If the account of Lucian is somewhat recent, on the other hand it is the account of a professed scoffer, and moreover, shows what I do not remember to have seen noted from this point of view that the tradition was common to Syria as well as Greece.