Thomas Babington Macaulay - "The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 5"

Aphra Behn - "The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II"

Daniel Defoe - "Of Captain Mission"

William Shakespeare - "Der Erste Theil von Koenig Heinrich dem vierten"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Antediluvian World

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> The Antediluvian World




In the Chaldean legend, on the contrary, the rain lasted but seven days;
and we see that the writer had a glimpse of the fact that the
destruction occurred in the midst of or near the sea. The ark of Genesis
(tebah) was simply a chest, a coffer, a big box, such as might be
imagined by an inland people. The ark of the Chaldeans was a veritable
ship; it had a prow, a helm, and a pilot, and men to manage it; and it
navigated "the sea."

4. The Chaldean legend represents not a mere rain-storm, but a
tremendous cataclysm. There was rain, it is true, but there was also
thunder, lightning, earthquakes, wind, a water-spout, and a devastation
of mountain and land by the war of the elements. All the dreadful forces
of nature were fighting together over the doomed land: "the archangel of
the abyss brought destruction," "the water rose to the sky," "the
brother no longer saw his brother; men no longer knew each other;" the
men "filled the sea like fishes;" the sea was filled with mud, and "the
corpses floated like sea-weed." When the storm abated the land had
totally disappeared-there was no longer "any continent." Does not all
this accord with "that dreadful day and night" described by Plato?

5. In the original it appears that Izdhubar, when he started to find the
deified Khasisatra, travelled first, for nine days' journey, to the sea;
then secured the services of a boatman, and, entering a ship, sailed for
fifteen days before finding the Chaldean Noah. This would show that
Khasisatra dwelt in a far country, one only attainable by crossing the
water; and this, too, seems like a reminiscence of the real site of
Atlantis. The sea which a sailing-vessel required fifteen days to cross
must have been a very large body of water; in fact, an ocean.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DELUGE LEGENDS OF OTHER NATIONS.

A collection of the Deluge legends of other nations will throw light
upon the Biblical and Chaldean records of that great event.

The author of the treatise "On the Syrian Goddess" acquaints us with the
diluvian tradition of the Arameans, directly derived from that of
Chaldea, as it was narrated in the celebrated Sanctuary of Hierapolis,
or Bambyce.

"The generality of people," he says, "tells us that the founder of the
temple was Deucalion Sisythes--that Deucalion in whose time the great
inundation occurred. I have also heard the account given by the Greeks
themselves of Deucalion; the myth runs thus: The actual race of men is
not the first, for there was a previous one, all the members of which
perished. We belong to a second race, descended from Deucalion, and
multiplied in the course of time. As to the former men, they are said to
have been full of insolence and pride, committing many crimes,
disregarding their oath, neglecting the rights of hospitality, unsparing
to suppliants; accordingly, they were punished by an immense disaster.
All on a sudden enormous volumes of water issued from the earth, and
rains of extraordinary abundance began to fall; the rivers left their
beds, and the sea overflowed its shores; the whole earth was covered
with water, and all men perished. Deucalion alone, because of his virtue
and piety, was preserved alive to give birth to a new race. This is how
he was saved: He placed himself, his children, and his wives in a great
coffer that he had, in which pigs, horses, lions, serpents, and all
other terrestrial animals came to seek refuge with him. He received them
all; and while they were in the coffer Zeus inspired them with
reciprocal amity, which prevented their devouring one another. In this
manner, shut up within one single coffer, they floated as long as the
waters remained in force. Such is the account given by the Greeks of
Deucalion.

"But to this, which they equally tell, the people of Hierapolis add a
marvellous narrative: That in their country a great chasm opened, into
which all the waters of the Deluge poured. Then Deucalion raised an
altar, and dedicated a temple to Hera (Atargatis) close to this very
chasm. I have seen it; it is very narrow, and situated under the temple.
Whether it was once large, and has now shrunk, I do not know; but I have
seen it, and it is quite small. In memory of the event the following is
the rite accomplished: Twice a year sea-water is brought to the temple.
This is not only done by the priests, but numerous pilgrims come from
the whole of Syria and Arabia, and even from beyond the Euphrates,
bringing water. It is poured out in the temple and goes into the cleft,
which, narrow as it is, swallows up a considerable quantity. This is
said to be in virtue of a religious law instituted by Deucalion to
preserve the memory of the catastrophe, and of the benefits that he
received from the gods. Such is the ancient tradition of the temple."

"It appears to me difficult," says Lenormant, "not to recognize an echo
of fables popular in all Semitic countries about this chasm of
Hierapolis, and the part it played in the Deluge, in the enigmatic
expressions of the Koran respecting the oven (tannur) which began to
bubble and disgorge water all around at the commencement of the Deluge.
We know that this tannur has been the occasion of most grotesque
imaginings of Mussulman commentators, who had lost the tradition of the
story to which Mohammed made allusion. And, moreover, the Koran formally
states that the waters of the Deluge were absorbed in the bosom of the
earth."

Here the Xisuthros of Berosus becomes Deucalion-Sisythes. The animals
are not collected together by Deucalion, as in the case of Noah and
Khasisatra, but they crowded into the vessel of their own accord, driven
by the terror with which the storm had inspired them; as in great
calamities the creatures of the forest have been known to seek refuge in
the houses of men.

India affords us art account of the Deluge which, by its poverty,
strikingly contrasts with that of the Bible and the Chaldeans. Its most
simple and ancient form is found in the Catapatha Brahmana of the
Rig-Veda. It has been translated for the first time by Max Mueller.

"One morning water for washing was brought to Manu, and when he had
washed himself a fish remained in his hands, and it addressed these
words to him: 'Protect me, and I will save thee.' 'From what wilt thou
save me?' 'A deluge will sweep all creatures away; it is from that I
will save thee.' 'How shall I protect thee?' The fish replied, 'While we
are small we run great dangers, for fish swallow fish. Keep me at first
in a vase; when I become too large for it, dig a basin to put me into.
When I shall have grown still more, throw me into the ocean; then I
shall be preserved from destruction.' Soon it grew a large fish. It said
to Mann, 'The very year I shall have reached my full growth the Deluge
will happen. Then build a vessel and worship me. When the waters rise,
enter the vessel, and I will save thee.'

"After keeping him thus, Mann carried the fish to the sea. In the year
indicated Mann built a vessel and worshipped the fish. And when the
Deluge came he entered the vessel. Then the fish came swimming up to
him, and Mann fastened the cable of the ship to the horn of the fish, by
which means the latter made it pass over the Mountain of the North. The
fish said, 'I have saved thee; fasten the vessel to a tree, that the
water may not sweep it away while thou art on the mountain; and in
proportion as the waters decrease thou shalt descend.' Manu descended
with the waters, and this is what is called the descent of Manu on the
Mountain of the North. The Deluge had carried away all creatures, and
Mann remained alone."

There is another form of the Hindoo legend in the Puranas. Lenormant
says:

"We must also 'remark that in the Puranas it is no longer Manu Vaivasata
that the divine fish saves from the Deluge, but a different personage,
the King of the Dastas--i. e., fisher--Satyravata,' the man who loves
justice and truth,' strikingly corresponding to the Chaldean Khasisatra.
Nor is the Puranic version of the Legend of the Deluge to be despised,
though it be of recent date, and full of fantastic and often puerile
details. In certain aspects it is less Aryanized than that of Brahmana
or than the Mahabharata; and, above all, it gives some circumstances
omitted in these earlier versions, which must yet have belonged to the
original foundation, since they appear in the Babylonian legend; a
circumstance preserved, no doubt, by the oral tradition--popular, and
not Brahmanic--with which the Puranas are so deeply imbued. This has
already been observed by Pictet, who lays due stress on the following
passage of the Bhagavata-Purana: 'In seven days,' said Vishnu to
Satyravata, 'the three worlds shall be submerged.' There is nothing like
this in the Brahmana nor the Mahabharata, but in Genesis the Lord says
to Noah, 'Yet seven days and I will cause it to rain upon the earth;'
and a little farther we read, 'After seven days the waters of the flood
were upon the earth.'. . . Nor must we pay less attention to the
directions given by the fish-god to Satyravata for the placing of the
sacred Scriptures in a safe place, in order to preserve them from
Hayagriva, a marine horse dwelling in the abyss. . . . We recognize in
it, under an Indian garb, the very tradition of the interment of the
sacred writings at Sippara by Khasisatra, such as we have seen it in the
fragment of Berosus."

The references to "the three worlds" and the "fish-god" in these legends
point to Atlantis. The "three worlds" probably refers to the great
empire of Atlantis, described by Plato, to wit, the western continent,
America, the eastern continent, Europe and Africa, considered as one,
and the island of Atlantis. As we have seen, Poseidon, the founder of
the civilization of Atlantis, is identical with Neptune, who is always
represented riding a dolphin, bearing a trident, or three-pronged
symbol, in his hand, emblematical probably of the triple kingdom. He is
thus a sea-god, or fish-god, and he comes to save the representative of
his country.

And we have also a new and singular form of the legend in the following.
Lenormant says:

"Among the Iranians, in the sacred books containing the fundamental
Zoroastrian doctrines, and dating very far back, we meet with a
tradition which must assuredly be looked upon as a variety of that of
the Deluge, though possessing a special character, and diverging in some
essential particulars from those we have been examining. It relates how
Yima, who, in the original and primitive conception, was the father of
the human race, was warned by Ahuramazda, the good deity, of the earth
being about to be devastated by a flood. The god ordered Yima to
construct a refuge, a square garden, vara, protected by an enclosure,
and to cause the germs of men, beasts, and plants to enter it, in order
to escape annihilation. Accordingly, when the inundation occurred, the
garden of Yima, with all that it contained, was alone spared, and the
message of safety was brought thither by the bird Karshipta, the envoy
of Ahuramazda." ("Vendudid," vol. ii., p. 46.)

This clearly signifies that, prior to the destruction of Atlantis, a
colony had been sent out to some neighboring country. These emigrants
built a walled town, and brought to it the grains and domestic animals
of the mother country; and when the island of Atlantis sunk in the
ocean, a messenger brought the terrible tidings to them in a ship.

"The Greeks had two principal legends as to the cataclysm by which
primitive humanity was destroyed. The first was connected with the name
of Ogyges, the most ancient of the kings of Boeotia or Attica--a quite
mythical personage, lost in the night of ages, his very name seemingly
derived from one signifying deluge in Aryan idioms, in Sanscrit Angha.
It is said that in his time the whole land was covered by a flood, whose
waters reached the sky, and from which he, together with some
companions, escaped in a vessel.

"The second tradition is the Thessalian legend of Deucalion. Zeus having
worked to destroy the men of the age of bronze, with whose crimes he was
wroth, Deucalion, by the advice of Prometheus, his father, constructed a
coffer, in which he took refuge with his wife, Pyrrha. The Deluge came;
the chest, or coffer, floated at the mercy of the waves for nine days
and nine nights, and was finally stranded on Mount Parnassus. Deucalion
and Pyrrha leave it, offer sacrifice, and, according to the command of
Zeus, repeople the world by throwing behind them 'the bones of the
earth'--namely, stones, which change into men. This Deluge of Deucalion
is, in Grecian tradition, what most resembles a universal deluge. Many
authors affirm that it extended to the whole earth, and that the whole
human race perished. At Athens, in memory of the event, and to appease
the manes of its victims, a ceremony called Hydrophoria was observed,
having so close a resemblance to that in use at Hierapolis, in Syria,
that we can hardly fail to look upon it as a Syro-Phoenician
importation, and the result of an assimilation established in remote
antiquity between the Deluge of Deucalion and that of Khasisatra, as
described by the author of the treatise 'On the Syrian Goddess.' Close
to the temple of the Olympian Zeus a fissure in the soil was shown, in
length but one cubit, through which it was said the waters of the Deluge
had been swallowed up. Thus, every year, on the third day of the
festival of the Anthesteria, a day of mourning consecrated to the
dead--that is, on the thirteenth of the month of Anthesterion, toward
the beginning of March-it was customary, as at Bambyce, to pour water
into the fissure, together with flour mixed with honey, poured also into
the trench dug to the west of the tomb, in the funeral sacrifices of the
Athenians."

In this legend, also, there are passages which point to Atlantis. We
will see hereafter that the Greek god Zeus was one of the kings of
Atlantis. "The men of the age of bronze" indicates the civilization of
the doomed people; they were the great metallurgists of their day, who,
as we will see, were probably the source of the great number of
implements and weapons of bronze found all over Europe. Here, also,
while no length of time is assigned to the duration of the storm, we
find that the ark floated but nine days and nights. Noah was one year
and ten days in the ark, Khasisatra was not half that time, while
Deucalion was afloat only nine days.

At Megara, in Greece, it was the eponym of the city, Megaros, son of
Zeus and one of the nymphs, Sithnides, who, warned by the cry of cranes
of the imminence of the danger of the coming flood, took refuge on Mount
Geranien. Again, there was the Thessalian Cerambos, who was said to have
escaped the flood by rising into the air on wings given him by the
nymphs; and it was Perirrhoos, son of Eolus, that Zeus Naios had
preserved at Dodona. For the inhabitants of the Isle of Cos the hero of
the Deluge was Merops, son of Hyas, who there assembled under his rule
the remnant of humanity preserved with him. The traditions of Rhodes
only supposed the Telchines, those of Crete Sasion, to have escaped the
cataclysm. In Samothracia the same character was attributed to Saon,
said to be the son of Zeus or of Hermes.

It will be observed that in all these legends the name of Zeus, King of
Atlantis, reappears. It would appear probable that many parties had
escaped from the catastrophe, and had landed at the different points
named in the traditions; or else that colonies had already been
established by the Atlanteans at those places. It would appear
impossible that a maritime people could be totally destroyed; doubtless
many were on shipboard in the harbors, and others going and coming on
distant voyages.

"The invasion of the East," says Baldwin ('Prehistoric Nations,' p.
396), "to which the story of Atlantis refers, seems to have given rise
to the Panathenae, the oldest, greatest, and most splendid festivals in
honor of Athena celebrated in Attica. These festivals are said to have
been established by Erichthonis in the most ancient times remembered by
the historical traditions of Athens. Boeckh says of them, in his
'Commentary on Plato:'

"'In the greater Panathenae there was carried in procession a peplum of
Minerva, representing the war with the giants and the victory of the
gods of Olympus. In the lesser Panathenae they carried another peplum
(covered with symbolic devices), which showed how the Athenians,
supported by Minerva, had the advantage in the war with the Atlantes.' A
scholia quoted from Proclus by Humboldt and Boeckh says: 'The historians
who speak of the islands of the exterior sea tell us that in their time
there were seven islands consecrated, to Proserpine, and three others of
immense extent, of which the first was consecrated to Pluto, the second
to Ammon, and the third to Neptune. The inhabitants of the latter had
preserved a recollection (transmitted to them by their ancestors) of the
island of Atlantis, which was extremely large, and for a long time held
sway over all the islands of the Atlantic Ocean. Atlantis was also
consecrated to Neptune."' (See Humboldt's "Histoire de la Geographie du
Nouveau Continent," vol. i.)

No one can read these legends and doubt that the Flood watt an
historical reality. It is impossible that in two different places in the
Old World, remote from each other, religious ceremonies should have been
established and perpetuated from age to age in memory of an event which
never occurred. We have seen that at Athens and at Hierapolis, in Syria,
pilgrims came from a distance to appease the god of the earthquake, by
pouring offerings into fissures of the earth said to have been made at
the time Atlantis was destroyed.

More than this, we know from Plato's history that the Athenians long
preserved in their books the memory of a victory won over the Atlanteans
in the early ages, and celebrated it by national festivals, with
processions and religious ceremonies.

It is too much to ask us to believe that Biblical history, Chaldean,
Iranian, and Greek legends signify nothing, and that even religious
pilgrimages and national festivities were based upon a myth.

I would call attention to the farther fact that in the Deluge legend of
the Isle of Cos the hero of the affair was Merops. Now we have seen
that, according to Theopompus, one of the names of the people of
Atlantis was "Meropes."

But we have not reached the end of our Flood legends. The Persian Magi
possessed a tradition in which the waters issued from the oven of an old
woman. Mohammed borrowed this story, and in the Koran he refers to the
Deluge as coming from an oven. "All men were drowned save Noah and his
family; and then God said, 'O earth, swallow up thy waters; and thou, O
heaven, withhold thy rain;' and immediately the waters abated."

In the bardic poems of Wales we have a tradition of the Deluge which,
although recent, under the concise forms of the triads, is still
deserving of attention. As usual, the legend is localized in the
country, and the Deluge counts among three terrible catastrophes of the
island of Prydian, or Britain, the other two consisting of devastation
by fire and by drought.

"The first of these events," it is said, "was the eruption of
Llyn-llion, or 'the lake of waves,' and the inundation (bawdd) of the
whole country, by which all mankind was drowned with the exception of
Dwyfam and Dwyfach, who saved themselves in a vessel without rigging,
and it was by them that the island of Prydian was repeopled."

Pictet here observes:

"Although the triads in their actual form hardly date farther than the
thirteenth or fourteenth century, some of them are undoubtedly connected
with very ancient traditions, and nothing here points to a borrowing
from Genesis.

"But it is not so, perhaps, with another triad, speaking of the vessel
Nefyddnaf-Neifion, which at the time of the overflow of Llyon-llion,
bore a pair of all living creatures, and rather too much resembles the
ark of Noah. The very name of the patriarch may have suggested this
triple epithet, obscure as to its meaning, but evidently formed on the
principle of Cymric alliteration. In the same triad we have the
enigmatic story of the horned oxen (ychain banog) of Hu the mighty, who
drew out of Llyon-llion the avanc (beaver or crocodile?), in order that
the lake should not overflow. The meaning of these enigmas could only be
hoped from deciphering the chaos of barbaric monuments of the Welsh
middle age; but meanwhile we cannot doubt that the Cymri possessed an
indigenous tradition of the Deluge."

We also find a vestige of the same tradition in the Scandinavian Ealda.
Here the story is combined with a cosmogonic myth. The three sons of
Borr--Othin, Wili, and We--grandsons of Buri, the first man, slay Ymir,
the father of the Hrimthursar, or ice giants, and his body serves them
for the construction of the world. Blood flows from his wounds in such
abundance that all the race of giants is drowned in it except Bergelmir,
who saves himself, with his wife, in a boat, and reproduces the race.

In the Edda of Soemund, "The Vala's Prophecy" (stz. 48-56, p. 9), we
seem to catch traditional glimpses of a terrible catastrophe, which
reminds us of the Chaldean legend:

"Then trembles Yggdrasil's ash yet standing, groans that ancient tree,
and the Jotun Loki is loosed. The shadows groan on the ways of Hel (the
goddess of death), until the fire of Surt has consumed the tree. Hyrm
steers from the east, the waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in
jotun-rage. The worm beats the water and the eagle screams; the pale of
beak tears carcasses; (the ship) Naglfar is loosed. Surt from the south
comes with flickering flame; shines from his sword the Valgod's sun. The
stony hills are dashed together, the giantesses totter; men tread the
path of Hel, and heaven is cloven. The sun darkens, earth in ocean
sinks, fall from heaven the bright stars, fire's breath assails the
all-nourishing, towering fire plays against heaven itself."

Egypt does not contain a single allusion to the Flood. Lenormant says:

"While the tradition of the Deluge holds so considerable a place in the
legendary memories of all branches of the Aryan race, the monuments and
original texts of Egypt, with their many cosmogonic speculations, have
not afforded one, even distant, allusion to this cataclysm. When the
Greeks told the Egyptian priests of the Deluge of Deucalion, their reply
was that they had been preserved from it as well as from the
conflagration produced by Phaethon; they even added that the Hellenes
were childish in attaching so much importance to that event, as there
had been several other local catastrophes resembling it. According to a
passage in Manetho, much suspected, however, of being an interpolation,
Thoth, or Hermes Trismegistus, had himself, before the cataclysm,
inscribed on stelae, in hieroglyphical and sacred language, the
principles of all knowledge. After it the second Thoth translated into
the vulgar tongue the contents of these stelae. This would be the only
Egyptian mention of the Deluge, the same Manetho not speaking of it in
what remains to us of his 'Dynasties,' his only complete authentic work.
The silence of all other myths of the Pharaonic religion on this head
render it very likely that the above is merely a foreign tradition,
recently introduced, and no doubt of Asiatic and Chaldean origin."

To my mind the explanation of this singular omission is very plain. The
Egyptians had preserved in their annals the precise history of the
destruction of Atlantis, out of which the Flood legends grew; and, as
they told the Greeks, there had been no universal flood, but only local
catastrophes. Possessing the real history of the local catastrophe which
destroyed Atlantis, they did not indulge in any myths about a universal
deluge covering the mountain-tops of all the world. They had no Ararat
in their neighborhood.

The traditions of the early Christian ages touching the Deluge pointed
to the quarter of the world in which Atlantis was situated.

There was a quaint old monk named Cosmos, who, about one thousand years
ago, published a book, "Topographia Christiana," accompanied by a map,
in which he gives his view of the world as it was then understood. It
was a body surrounded by water, and resting on nothing. "The earth,"
says Cosmos, "presses downward, but the igneous parts tend upward," and
between the conflicting forces the earth hangs suspended, like
Mohammed's coffin in the old story. The accompanying illustration (page
95) represents the earth surrounded by the ocean, and beyond this ocean
was "the land where men dwelt before the Deluge."

He then gives us a more accurate map, in detail, of the known world of
his day.

I copy this map, not to show how much more we know than poor Cosmos, but
because he taught that all around this habitable world there was yet
another world, adhering closely on all sides to the circumscribing walls
of heaven. "Upon the eastern side of this transmarine land he judges man
was created; and that there the paradise of gladness was located, such
as here on the eastern edge is described, where it received our first
parents, driven out of Paradise to that extreme point of land on the
sea-shore. Hence, upon the coming of the Deluge, Noah and his sons were
borne by the ark to the earth we now inhabit. The four rivers he
supposes to be gushing up the spouts of Paradise." They are depicted on
the above map: O is the Mediterranean Sea; P, the Arabian Gulf; L, the
Caspian Sea; Q, the Tigris; M, the river Pison; "and J, the land where
men dwelt before the Flood."

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