Читать книгу IN THE BEGINNING - Welby Thomas Cox Jr. - Страница 27

There are numerous stories of floods in ancient literature. For example, the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, possibly the oldest written tale (dated to roughly 2700 BCE), relates of a great sage who warned of a flood soon to be unleashed by the gods and then built a large circular-shaped boat, reinforced with tar and pitch, to carry his family, grains and animals. After many days of storms, he released a bird to search for dry land (wasn’t that played by Charlton Heston in a movie?).

Similarly, the mythic Indian king Manu of India's ancient Vedic literature, being warned of a flood that would destroy humanity, builds a boat to withstand the deluge. Other flood myths have been seen in ancient African, American, Chinese, European, Egyptian, Korean, Southeast Asian and Scandinavian literature, so there is probably something to the tale.