Free Flood Legends by Charles Martin

expect the ark to survive some 3,000 years of weather, let alone the volcanic activity that affects the area.
    In the Sanskrit version, we are told that Manu's boat landed on the peak of Mt. Naubandhanam. What we know about the resting place comes only from the text: it is called "the highest peak of the Himalayas." Today, the highest peak is known as Mt. Everest, in English, but has gone by the Hindi name of
Sagarmatha
for centuries. In fact, I have been unable to locate any existing record of the name
Naubandhanam
outside of the
Mahābhārata
. The
Atharva Veda
, written several centuries before the
Mahābhārata
, does refer to one of the summits in the Himalayas as
Navaprabhramsana
, which means "Gliding Down of the Ship." 2 However, this name, too, is not found outside of the literature. It seems that history, for now at least, has lost the location of Manu's mountain.
    The Gilgamesh Epic
, containing one of the other better-known versions of the Flood myth, was written around 600 B.C. and stored in the library at Nineveh. In the epic, the hero, Gilgamesh, speaks with the survivors of a deluge. The survivors tell him that the vessel has come to rest on the peak of Mt. Nişir. Nişir, like Naubandhanam of the Sanskrit version, has an obscure past.
    Many claim that
Nişir
is simply the Babylonian name for Ararat, though this claim has little to no supporting evidence. Traditionally, Mt. Nişir is located in the modern-day Zagros Range of Iran. During the reign of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal (883–859 B.C.), Mt. Nişir referred to a mountain now known as Mt. Cudi, 3 and some claim that it is on
this
mountain that the tomb of the Flood hero is said to be located. 4 However, the so-called Tomb of Noah does not exactly have a sign labeling it as such!
    What a mess! Mountains are missing, boats are elusively hiding, and rumors abound. So what are we to make of this? How can we synthesize these different names, these different locations, and these different cultures, and find a common thread? The easiest and most often sought solution is to dismiss the peak as purely fictitious, viewing it as a symbol that refers to "the edge of the world." 5 This is convenient and easy, considering the peaks themselves are difficult — if not impossible — to locate, as we have already seen. Theodore Gaster, in his book
Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament
, notes that many cultures believed that a local mountain range was the end of the earth. Therefore, he argues, we should not view the mountains in the Flood myths as
actual
mountains. Instead, we should view the mountains as
symbolic
writing, indicating that the vessel came to rest beyond the reach of the known world, rather than at an actual given location. He gives as an example the Malayans, who viewed the Caucasus mountain range as "the hills of Qâf," a barrier protecting the earth from the "surrounding cosmic ocean." 6 Since there is no "surrounding cosmic ocean," he argues, we can view these mountains — and other fictitious mountains — as symbols. This makes sense …but only if we take the entire Flood story as a fable. If we take the Flood myth as history, and assume that the vessel was a
real
vessel, then we must also assume that it came to rest at a
real
location. Besides, as we shall see, the belief that the mountains were "the edge of the earth," so to speak, is not commonly held amongst
all
ancient peoples.
    To many cultures, mountains — rather than representing the end of the world — merely served as barriers separating the peoples from more barbaric, less civilized cultures. The Hittites, for example, viewed the Caucasus Mountains as the dwelling place of the backward
Lullu
people, and the Greeks placed the Hyperboreans "in that general area." 7 This was not a fictional realm where monsters waited beyond the edge of the map to gobble up sailors and ships, but a real location with real inhabitants. In other words, as plausible as it is that the