Osiris.—The account of Osiris in Diodorus Siculus is exactly similar. He travels into all countries like Bacchus. He builds cities; and although represented as at the head of an army, is described with the muses and sciences in his retinue. In every region he instructed the people in planting, sowing, and other useful acts.—Tibullus, i. E. 8, v. 29. He particularly introduced the vine, and when that was not adapted to the soil, the use of ferment and wine of barley. He first built temples, and was a lawgiver and king (Diod. Sic.).—Bryant, ii. 60.

Chin-nong (vide also Bunsen, supra, [p. 63]) “was a husbandman, and taught the Chinese agriculture, &c., discovered the virtues of many plants. He was represented with the head of an ox, and sometimes only with two horns.”—Comp. Bryant, iii. 584.

Manco Capac.—Peru, vide infra, [ch. xiii.]; very curious.

Strabo, 3, 204, says of the Turditani in Spain (Iberia), “They are well acquainted with grammar, and have many written records of high antiquity. They have also large collections of poetry (comp. [ch. vii.]), and even their laws are described in verse, which they say is of six thousand years standing.”

Deucalion, according to Lucian, was saved from the Deluge on account of his wisdom and piety—“εὐβουλιης τε και εὐσεβιης εἱνεκα.” [εὐβουλια—literally, “good counsel.”]

Mercury gave Egypt its laws—“Atque Egyptiis leges et literas tradidisse.”—Cicero, “De Natura Deorum,” iii. 22.

Apollo.—Cicero says the fourth Apollo gave laws to the Arcadians (comp. infra, [p. 331]): “Quem Arcades Νομιον appellant, quod ab eo se leges ferunt accepisse,” id. iii. 23; vide also Plato, “Leges,” i. 1.

CHAPTER XI
DILUVIAN TRADITIONS IN AFRICA AND AMERICA.

Boulanger (1722–59), a freethinker, and the friend and correspondent of Voltaire, was so dominated by his belief in the universal Deluge as a fact, that he made its consequences the foundation of all his theories. Writing in the midst of a scepticism very much resembling that of the present day, he says, “What! you believe in the Deluge?” Such will be the exclamation of a certain school of opinion, and this school a very large one. Nevertheless, this profound writer, by the exigencies of his theory, was irresistibly brought to the recognition of the fact. “We must take,” he continues, “a fact in the traditions of mankind, the truth of which shall be universally recognised. What is it? I do not see any, of which the evidence is more generally attested, than those which have transmitted to us that famous physical revolution which, they tell us, has altered the face of our globe, and which has occasioned a total renovation of human society: in a word, the Deluge appears to me the true starting-point (la veritable epoque) in the history of nations. Not only is the tradition which has transmitted this fact the most ancient of all, but it is moreover clear and intelligible; it presents a fact which can be justified and confirmed.” He proceeds, and the drift and animus of the writer will be sufficiently apparent in the passage—“It is then by the Deluge that the history of the existing nations and societies has commenced. If there have been false and pernicious religions in the world it is to the Deluge that I trace them back as to their source; if doctrines inimical to society have been broached, I see their principles in the consequences of the Deluge; if there have existed vicious legislations and innumerable bad governments, it will be upon the Deluge that I lay the charge.” It is, then, only in attestation of the fact that I adduce this author; and in his proof he has accumulated a large mass of indirect evidence, which a certain school of opinion find it convenient altogether to ignore in reference to this subject. In this class are the various institutions among different nations to preserve the memory of the Deluge, as for instance, the “Hydrophories ou la fête du Deluge à Athenes,” and at Ægina, the feast of the goddess of Syria at Hierapolis, both having strange resemblances with the Jewish feasts of “Nisue ha Mâim, or the effusion of waters,” and the tabernacles, in their traditional aspects, i.e. in their observances not commanded by Moses; the “effusion des eaux a Ithome ... et de Siloe” the feast of the Deluge (of Inachus) at Argos; a feast, the effusion of water, in Persia, anterior to its Mahometanism; similar festivals in Pegu, China, and Japan; in the mysteries of Eleusis; in the “peloria,” “anthisteria,” and “Saturnalia;” and finally in the pilgrimages to rivers in India[201] and other parts of the world; “of the multitude of traditions preserved in the diluvian festivals and commemorative usages of the gulphs, apertures, and abysses which have at one time or another vomited forth or absorbed waters” (i. 84); again, the pilgrimages to the summits of mountains in India, China, Tartary, the Caucasus,[202] Peru, &c. “It is easy to see,” he adds (p. 320), “that this veneration is based upon a corrupted tradition, which has taught these people that their fathers formerly took refuge on the top of this mountain at the time of the Deluge, and subsequently descended from it to inhabit the plains.”