Does Ancient Egypt Support A Worldwide Noah Like Flood?

[Turtle]

Thanks Turtle, I'd be happy to read it. Of course, you know me I will probably have a few questions afterward :)

 

I had a sense of an agenda creeping in at the beginning, but figured everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt. I sure hope that's not the case. I come to Hypography to learn the facts as best as they can be known.

 

my pleasure. :) of course you know me; i'll be happy to answer those questions or find someone who can. :D

 

so on some more facts creeping in and your mention of localized floods rather than global. instead of jumping around to all our flood threads, i'll just point out that in one of them craig cited the evidential case for a major flood event in the Black Sea basin around 5000 bce. i found a link to one report & here's a quote to whet your whistle and the full monty for you to chow down on if you're hungry.

 

 

Ballard & the Black Sea @ national geographic

 

...

• About 7,000 years ago the Mediterranean Sea swelled. Seawater pushed northward, slicing through what is now Turkey.

 

• Funneled through the narrow Bosporus, the water hit the Black Sea with 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. Each day the Black Sea rose about six inches (15 centimeters), and coastal farms were flooded.

...

 

edit: ps that article is not as complete as i thought and it's somewhat dated. :omg: there is a more up to date summary with criticism of the theory and other references @ the wikipedia page on the topic. >>

 

Black Sea Deluge Theory

...Criticism

While some geologists claim it as fact that the sequence of events described did occur, there is debate over their suddenness and magnitude. In particular, if the water level of the Black Sea had initially been higher, the effect of the spillover would have been much less dramatic. A large part of the academic geological community also continues to reject the idea that there could have been enough sustained long-term pressure by water from the Aegean to dig through a supposed isthmus at the present Bosporus, or enough of a difference in water levels (if at all) between the two water basins.

 

Countering the hypothesis of Ryan and Pitman are data collected prior to its publication by Ukrainian and Russian scientists including Valentina Yanko-Hombach, who claims that the water flow through the Bosporus repeatedly reversed direction over geological time depending on fluctuation in the levels of the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. This contradicts the hypothesized catastrophic breakage of a Bosporus sill. Likewise, the water levels calculated by Yanko-Hombach differed widely from those hypothesized by Ryan and Pitman.

 

In 2007, a research anthology on the topic was published which makes available much of the earlier Russian research in English for the first time, and combines it with more recent scientific findings.[2]

 

A five-year cross-disciplinary research project under the sponsorship of UNESCO and the International Union of Geological Sciences was conducted 2005–9.[9]

 

A February 2009 article reported that the flooding might have been "quite mild".[10]

 

According to a study by Giosan et al.,[11] the level in the Black Sea before the marine reconnection was 30 m below present sea level, rather than the 80 m, or lower, of the catastrophe theories. If the flood occurred at all, the sea level increase and the flooded area during the reconnection were significantly smaller than previously proposed. It also occurred earlier than initially surmised, ca. 7400 BC, rather than the originally proposed 5600 BC. Since the depth of the Bosphorus, in its middle furrow, at present varies from 36 to 124 m, with an average depth of 65 m, a calculated stone age shoreline in the Black Sea lying 30 m lower than in the present day would imply that the contact with the Mediterranean may never have been broken during the Holocene, and hence that there could have been no sudden waterfall-style transgression.

 

...

Edited November 3, 2011 by Turtle

[Deepwater6]

I read up on most of the information everybody presented. When I typed "Oldest story known to man" into the search engine it came back with Shuruppak. A Sumerian king and the end of the Urak period. There was an Archaeologically attested river flood in Shuruppak, but I'msure you guys new that already. Where does it fit in?

 

Now, If we take religion out of the conversation for a minute. These early writings all seemed to have the same goal. Which is teach humans to treat each other right or suffer consequences for your misdeeds. It seems to me, wise elders in Shuruppak or wherever this story originated decided that this would be an effective way to control the masses. This may have been prompted by elders being imtimidated by being around larger and larger masses of people as the early cities swelled.

 

Getting back to God. As stated in other threads I do believe in a higher power, but not in any organised religion. I walked away from the religion that I was brought up on much to the chagrin of my parents. The reason? Too many irregularities and cases completely contrary to reason in my mind. Be that as it may I don't begrudge anyone's belief in any religion. If it works for you so be it.

 

So, If Turtle can prove that the Epic of Gilgamesh was where this story originated from it will render that story meaningless in the Bible? If Sunshine can prove his point it will confirm the existence of a creator? It just all seems like a lot of circumstantial evidence for such a big question.

 

Thoughts?

[Turtle]

I read up on most of the information everybody presented. When I typed "Oldest story known to man" into the search engine it came back with Shuruppak. A Sumerian king and the end of the Urak period. There was an Archaeologically attested river flood in Shuruppak, but I'm sure you guys new that already. Where does it fit in?

 

good thinkin' lincoln. it fits in with flood stories not being unique to the bible. following your example, i found this link.

>> The 10 Oldest Books Known to Man

 

Now, If we take religion out of the conversation for a minute. These early writings all seemed to have the same goal. Which is teach humans to treat each other right or suffer consequences for your misdeeds. It seems to me, wise elders in Shuruppak or wherever this story originated decided that this would be an effective way to control the masses. This may have been prompted by elders being imtimidated by being around larger and larger masses of people as the early cities swelled.

 

the goal may as well have been to entertain as to instruct.

 

Getting back to God. As stated in other threads I do believe in a higher power, but not in any organised religion. I walked away from the religion that I was brought up on much to the chagrin of my parents. The reason? Too many irregularities and cases completely contrary to reason in my mind. Be that as it may I don't begrudge anyone's belief in any religion. If it works for you so be it.

 

So, If Turtle can prove that the Epic of Gilgamesh was where this story originated from it will render that story meaningless in the Bible? If Sunshine can prove his point it will confirm the existence of a creator? It just all seems like a lot of circumstantial evidence for such a big question.

 

Thoughts?

 

i don't hold that noah is meaningless, only that it is not historically unique, not factually correct, and not from the mouth or hand of a supernatural agent or agents. the problem i have with religion (spiritualism, mysticism, name your euphemism) here, is religion here. by here, i mean at the hypography science forum. our purpose, our interests, and our rules are quite clear on the matter. while i find belief in the supernatural a delusion, i don't go to sites promoting such belief and provoke the members. by the same token, when believers come here and willfully, deceitfully, and intentionally provoke, i have little to no patience with it. to paraphrase aristophenes, i call a fig a fig and a trough a trough.

[CraigD]

There is great reason why you don’t recall reading ‘great flood in ancient Egypt’ in the myths of ancient Egypt. There isn’t any but the primeval flood which in some fashion agrees with Genesis 1, and the once yearly flooding of the Nile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_creation_myths

The cited wikipedia articles and its references don’t appear to me to support the claim that ancient Egyptian creation myths involve a “primeval flood”. Like the earliest Sumerian creation myths, the Egyptian ones describe the the world – dry land, literally – arising from a primordial sea characterized as feminine, creative, and chaotic – the Egyptian Nu and the Sumerian Nammu.

 

As has been much discussed in this thread, Sumerian myth, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, describes a subsequent expunging of most of humankind from the world with a great flood, a story almost identical to the Christian Biblical flood. Egyptian myth, however, appears to lack this story, perhaps because their mundane experience with flooding lead it to be associated with benign, rather than destructive, effects?

 

Sunshine, do you mean by your reference above to “the primeval flood” as a feature in ancient Egyptian myth, the arising of the world from Nu? Or do you mean they had a story like the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Biblical flood :QuestionM