In 1928, the British archaeologist Leonard Woolley excavated the ancient Sumerian city of Ur in Mesopotamia.
For the first time after almost six thousand years of oblivion, the human gaze appeared magnificent royal tombs with their countless golden decorations, carts that delivered the deceased king and queen to the other world and … the bodies of court harpers, charioteers and soldiers crumpled in agony, who had to follow the chariots of their masters …
At the bottom of one of the tombs, Sir Woolley discovered something even more striking. Here is what the archaeologist said: “We went deep into the lower layer, which consisted of the usual mixture of garbage, decayed adobe bricks, ash, and shards, so typical for settlements. At a depth of about a meter, everything suddenly disappeared: there were no more shards, no ash, but only river sediments.
An Arab excavator from the bottom of the mine told me that he had reached a clean layer of soil. I went down, examined the bottom of the mine and made sure it was correct, but then I took measurements and found that the clean soil was not at all at the depth where it should be. So I ordered the excavator to come down and continue working. The Arab reluctantly began to deepen the mine, throwing clean soil to the surface, in which there were no traces of human activity. So he walked another two and a half meters, and suddenly flint fragments and shards of painted dishes appeared …"
This puzzled Woolley. Why did the finds go under such a powerful sterile layer? None of Woolley's colleagues could say anything either.
“My wife came up and I turned to her with the same question. "Of course there was a deluge here!" she answered without hesitation. And it was the right answer, continues Sir Woolley. - Most of the inhabitants of the valley probably died, and only a few horrified city dwellers survived to the day when the raging waters finally began to recede from the city walls. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that they saw God's punishment in this disaster … And if at the same time some family managed to escape from the flood that flooded the lowlands, their leader, naturally, began to be glorified as a legendary hero."
The results of further excavations in Mesopotamia turned out to be sensational. The same layer of river sediments was found in other Sumerian cities - Kish, Nineveh, Shuruppak. But they are not too close to each other. It seems that some giant flood destroyed the foundations of the Sumerian civilization.
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However, it was not completely destroyed - after some 100-200 years on the site of the former river drifts, rich cities again roared, and their inhabitants in the evenings told their children the legend about the Flood.
The god Enki came to Zisurd in a dream and the god told him: The flood will flood the main sanctuaries in order to destroy the seed of the human race …
This is the decision and decree of the gods … Every day he tirelessly … Remembering all his dreams … He built a ship … All storms raged with unprecedented force at the same time, For seven days and seven nights the flood flooded the earth, And the huge ship was carried by winds through the stormy waters.
This is the oldest Sumerian legend of the flood. He is six thousand years old. A thousand years later, the northern neighbors and enslavers of the Sumerians - the Assyrians - adopted this myth. They renamed Zisurda Utnapishtim, and moved the action to the city of Shuruppak.
According to the text preserved in Nineveh in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanapal, the gods decided to punish the human race and destroy all life on earth, sending a terrible flood. And only the humane god Ea, who was present at this council of the gods, warned the pious Utnapishtim about the impending danger. Ea approached Utnapishtim's house in Shuruppak, built of branches, reeds and clay.
A breath of wind came his whisper: “Listen, wall, listen! You, a man from Shuruppak, build yourself a ship, throw your property and save your life! Take some seeds of all living things with you on the ship!"
Then the good god Ea told how the ship should be. And Utnapishtim built a huge box with a lid, which was divided into several floors and compartments. This ark was carefully plastered inside and out with mountain resin.
Then Utnapishtim loaded his household, belongings and cattle into it. When the rain poured down, Utnapishtim sat in the ark and closed the door. The storm has begun. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, everything went dark around, and a terrible downpour fell on the ground. The storm continued for six days and nights. When it died down, Utnapishtim opened the windows of the ark and saw the island. It was the summit of Mount Nisir, east of the Tigris.
Six days later, Babylonian Noah released a dove. The dove is back. Then a swallow flew out, but she came back. Finally Utnapishtim released the raven. The raven did not return. Utnapishtim understood this as a sign he expected to leave the ark and enter the land, which was already drying up.
Not only the good god Ea, but also the mother of all people, the goddess Ishtar (or the goddess of the star of Venus), obviously protested against the Flood: "Did I then give birth to people so that they would then be launched like fish under water?" - complained the mother of the people Ishtar. Then the evil god Enlil, the instigator of the Flood, regretted his ill-considered deed and gave Babylonian Noah and his wife eternal life as a token of gratitude for keeping life on earth by building and skillfully using the ark.
The Assyrians, like the ancient Jews, belong to the Semitic peoples.
Mesopotamia is not that far from Palestine, and kindred peoples could easily share such an exciting story with each other. But if you continue to search for legends about the flood, then it's time to believe that the storytellers of that time had wings on their heels. In fact, similar legends can be heard among the peoples of ancient India, Iran, among the ancient Greeks and further - in China, Laos, on the Fiji island, among the Khmers, among the Khanty and Mansi, and even among the North American Indians.
The imagination depicts a truly colossal catastrophe, a flood that flooded almost half of the globe, only after the sinking to the bottom of Atlantis or at least the collision of the Earth with the nucleus of a comet. However, the real evidence of the flood is disappointing.
In the same Mesopotamia, the layer of sand does not exceed 1.5-2 m, and in some places it is only 50 cm. At the same time, no one has yet proved and probably will not be able to prove that these sediments arose simultaneously. In addition, if you adopt the version of the Flood, then what, for example, to do with the ancient Egyptians, who did not know about such a cataclysm. Did you forget to warn them?
Let's digress for a moment from the problems of six thousand years ago and imagine ourselves as historians from, say, the XXVI century. Here we have two messages: one - about an unprecedented flood of rivers in Germany, the other - about a catastrophic flood in Yakutia. A little goodwill, and we already believe that in 2000-2001, both Europe and Siberia almost completely disappeared under water. Of course, in reality there was nothing like this.
However, we can still trace a more subtle connection between the two events. This connection lies in global climate change, in particular, in the appearance of the notorious El Niño atmospheric anomaly in tropical latitudes.
Meanwhile, in the prehistoric era, our planet was regularly shaken by environmental crises. For the first time, significant and long-term fluctuations in water level were traced in the Caspian Sea and then on the lakes of Africa. When the sea receded, forest-steppes turned into steppes, steppes - into deserts, and people had to move closer to the water.
Then an almost simultaneous (by geological clock) rise in the water level began, and the former inhabitants of the coast fell into a series of local floods, the memory of which remained for a long time. The flood, which temporarily interrupted life in the cities of Mesopotamia, became the basis for the biblical myth for 5-4 millennia BC. At this moment, the water level in the Caspian Sea rises by almost 30 meters, which entails changes in ecology in almost the entire Asian part of the continent.
It is known that everything unusual, and especially that which threatens a person's life, often whips up his imagination. The ancient rise in sea level gave rise to a whole complex of legends. It remains to be seen what traditions are now emerging in the depths of our troubled era.
Svetlana VIGOVSKAYA