Page 195 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

and climbed into it with Pyrrha. The king of the gods caused mighty rains
to pour from heaven, flooding the greater part of the earth. All mankind
perished in this deluge, save a few who had fled to the highest
mountains. ‘It also happened at this time that the mountains of Thessaly
were split asunder, and the whole country as far as the Isthmus and the
Peloponnese became a single sheet of water.’
Deucalion and Pyrrha floated over this sea in their box for nine days
and nights, finally landing on Mount Parnassus. There, after the rains had
ceased, they disembarked and sacrificed to the gods. In response Zeus
sent Hermes to Deucalion with permission to ask for whatever he wished.
He wished for human beings. Zeus then bade him take stones and throw
them over his shoulder. The stones Deucalion threw became men, and
those that Pyrrha threw became women.
37
As the Hebrews looked back on Noah, so the Greeks of ancient
historical times looked back upon Deucalion—as the ancestor of their
nation and as the founder of numerous towns and temples.
38
A similar figure was revered in Vedic India more than 3000 years ago.
One day (the story goes)

when a certain wise man named Manu was making his ablutions, he found in the
hollow of his hand a tiny little fish which begged him to allow it to live. Taking pity
on it he put it in a jar. The next day, however, it had grown so much bigger that
he had to carry it to a lake. Soon the lake was too small. ‘Throw me into the sea,’
said the fish [which was in reality a manifestation of the god Vishnu] ‘and I shall
be more comfortable.’ Then he warned Manu of a coming deluge. He sent him a
large ship, with orders to load it with two of every living species and the seeds of
every plant, and then to go on board himself.’
39
Manu had only just carried out these orders when the ocean rose and
submerged everything, and nothing was to be seen but Vishnu in his fish
form—now a huge, one-horned creature with golden scales. Manu
moored his ark to the horn of the fish and Vishnu towed it across the
brimming waters until it came to rest on the exposed peak of ‘the
Mountain of the North’:
40
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. The Deluge had
carried away all creatures and Manu remained alone.
41
With him, and with the animals and plants he had saved from destruction,
began a new age of the world. After a year there emerged from the
waters a woman who announced herself as ‘the daughter of Manu’. The
couple married and produced children, thus becoming the ancestors of

37 The Gods of the Greeks, pp. 226-9.
38 World Mythology, pp. 130-1.
39 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 362.
Ibid., Satapatha Brahmana, (trans. Max Muller), cited in Atlantis: the Antediluvian
40
World, p. 87.
41 Ibid. See also Folklore in the Old Testament, pp. 78-9.

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