engulfing of the world by the waters of a flood, and the divine preservation of their ancestors, must have long continued, with mankind, to be a theme of the deepest interest. They would be the first story which listening infancy would learn, and the last which narrative old age would continue to recount. The posterity of Noah very probably regarded a personage so favoured of Heaven, with feelings partaking of religious veneration. As mankind departed from the pure worship of Jehovah, and idolatrous and polytheistic rites were interwoven with their religious services, whence would they be more likely to derive them than from the life of one regarded as scarcely less than divine. In this manner the remembrance of the deluge would be perpetuated. And as the human family migrated farther and farther from their common source on the mountains of Ararat, they would bear with them in their dispersion the knowledge of this great event. The details would, however, in time become mingled with many absurdities and fictions. The stream of human memory flows forth fresh and pure from its original fountains; but as it advances, it mingles with the dark waters of oblivion and error which pour into its channel, and its original hue is lost. Evidences of a deluge, accordingly, are found in the traditions of almost all nations; and the mythology and religious rites of many bear testimony, more or less distinct, to the existence of the same event. This evidence it will be my purpose briefly and succinctly to exhibit in the following pages.

CHAPTER VI.

SACRED HISTORY OF THE DELUGE CONFIRMED BY MYTHOLOGY AND TRADITION

SOME authors, with ingenious plausibility, have attempted to trace the events of Noah's history among the constellations of the southern hemisphere. In their opinion, the early descendants of the second fathers of mankind, as they dwelt beneath the open skies of Chaldea, filled with admiration of the history, employed their imaginations in recording it upon the tablet of the heavens. These authors behold in the constellation Argo an image of the ark-in the Sacrificer, the Altar, the Animal which stands near, the Crater or cup of libation, they see portrayed the patriarch presenting his offering of peace to conciliate the offended Deity; the Raven is figured there in commemoration of the bird which was sent forth to explore the earth; in short, they regard all the fifteen southern constellations of the ancients as memorials of the events recorded in the ten first chapters of Genesis.*

A theory equally ingenious, and capable of being sustained by a great number of plausible arguments, discovers allusions to this great event, and particularly to Noah, in the religious mysteries, rites and sacred personages of the whole heathen world. Bryant, author of the "Analysis of Ancient Mythology," says, "I will endeavour to show, that the history of the deluge was preserved in the first ages; that every circumstance of it is to be met with among the historians and mythologists of different

* MAURICE, Indian Antiquities, Vol. I. pp. 30—34.

countries; and that traces of it are to be particularly found in the sacred rites of Egypt and of Greece." Faber, in the "Mysteries of the Cabiri," pursues the same general course of reasoning; and, though he dissents in some particulars, on the whole fortifies the positions, and strengthens the conclusions of his ingenious and erudite master. These two authors find vestiges of the life of Noah and his sons in the story of the Assyrian Derceto, and Astarte of the Phenician Sydyk, Dagon and Agruerus-of the Egyptian Isis, Osiris, Sesostris, Typhon and Oannes-of the Hindoo Menu, Buddhu, and Vishnu-of the Chinese Fohi-and of the Grecian Deucalion, Saturn, Janus, Minos, Dionusus, Inachus, Zeus, Atlas, and Prometheus.

"The mysteries of the Gentile world," Bryant observes, "for the most part consisted of a melancholy process; and were celebrated by night, with torches, in commemoration of the state of darkness in which the patriarch and his family had been involved. When Noah constructed the ark, he made a door in it-a circumstance continually commemorated by the Gentile writers. The entrance through it they esteemed a passage to death and darkness; but the egress from it was represented as a return to life. And, as the residence in the ark was an intermediate state between a lost world and a world renewed, this was constantly alluded to in their symbolical representations. The principal rites in Egypt were confessedly for a person lost and consigned for a time to darkness, but who, after much bewailing and anxious search, was at length found, and supposed to be restored to life. No allusion could possibly point more directly than this to the previous disappearance of the patriarch, to the perils and gloom with which he might well be supposed to be surrounded in the ark, and to his

consequent emerging and final restoration to light and safety. The emphatical expression of the uns, when purified, "I have escaped a sad calamity, and my lot is greatly mended;" and, at the feast of Isis, the exulting exclamation, Ευζηχαμεν, Συγκαίρομεν ! We have found the lost OSIRIS, let us rejoice together! have also a decided reference to the same event." The author, to confirm his position, adduces "the very ceremony of the priests during their efforts to find the missing object of their search." Several of their number went down to the sea-shore by night, bearing a sacred scyphus, in which was a golden vessel in the form of a ship or boat, and into which they poured some of the water of the river; this being done, the shout of tumultuous joy above mentioned broke forth from the crowd, and then Osiris was supposed to be found. According to Plutarch, this ceremony of inclosing Osiris in his tomb or ark, in memory of his having been in his life-time thus concealed to avoid the fury of Typhon, the Egyptian symbol of the ocean, took place precisely upon the seventeenth day of the second month, after the autumnal equinox; that is, in fact, the very day on which Noah, THE TRUE OSIRIS, entered the ark."*

The Ogdoas of the Egyptians, which consisted of eight persons sailing together in the sacred baris or ark, these writers regard as designating the ark of Noah, with its eight inmates, sailing on the waters of the flood. The following is a description of the festival of Isis, the symbol of prolific Nature among the ancient Egyptians. The departure of the sun, Osiris, for the northern signs, was announced by lamentations of the priests, bewailing him as if deceased, and Isis as if abandoned by her

*BRYANT'S Analysis, Vol. II. pp. 237, 331, 335.

husband. Darkness involved the vault where the novice was undergoing the process of initiation into these rites. A golden bull, the symbol of the Egyptian god, was covered with black lawn, and exhibited to the people in token of his imagined decease. Suddenly the darkness was dissipated by the glaring light of torches borne by priests clothed in robes of fine white linen, walking in procession before Isis, who with disconsolate grief was seeking her absent lord. Other priests in similar robes followed. The first priest carried a lamp burning with extraordinary splendour, and fixed in a boat of gold; the emblem of Osiris sailing round the world in the sacred scyphus. "This solemn festival was continued during four complete days, by which were shadowed out the four wintry months, when Osiris was imagined to be found, and his supposed return to the southern signs, by which Isis, or nature, was rejoiced, and vegetation invigorated, was hailed with bursts of joy and songs of triumph. The procession now emerged, like the rising beam of Osiris from the darkness of the nether hemisphere; and the gloomy damps of subterranean caverns were exchanged for the vivifying warmth of a vernal sun. All ranks and ages mingled in the festive dance; garlands of fresh flowers decorated every head, and mirth sate on every brow. Rich unguents and costly perfumes were dispersed in profusion around. Some waked the melodious pipe; others played on the golden and silver sistra; while others again, in transport, smote the Thebaic harp of wondrous structure and of magic potency."*

A somewhat similar ceremony of passing through

* PLUTARCH, respecting Isis and Osiris, p. 366; also, MauRICE, Indian Antiquities, Vol. III. pp. 217-220.