From: mls@panix.com (Michael Siemon)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: More (verbal) Flooding of "the" flood
Summary: Egypt & America
Date: 18 Nov 92 01:59:04 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC

In article <1992Nov17.123322.9457@news.nd.edu> scharle@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu (scharle) writes:
>In article <1992Nov16.164447.21120@linus.mitre.org>, m23364@mwunix (James Meritt) writes:

>|> _IF_ you assume accuracy in the part of the biblical description,
>|> then the presence of 1 (one) non-flooded local on earth at the time would
>|> be sufficient to show that it did not occur as described.  I refer you to
>|> 	a. The Aztec civilization
>|> 	b. the Great Pyramid of Giza
>|> 
>|> Both of these existed at the time of the so-called world-wide flood, ...

>    According to Bishop Ussher, the Flood occured in 2348 BCE.  Remember that
>there was a considerable time between Adam and the Flood -- Methuselah
>alone lived 969 years.
>    As far as I can tell, the time of the building of the pyramids of Egypt
>began around 2500 BCE and lasted a couple of hundred years ...

The (major) pyramids began construction in the 3rd dynasty under Djoser
(there were some minor earlier ones) generally dated from mid-27th century
BCE (though I am told that recent excavation casts some doubts on the
standard consensus, possibly putting things back a few centuries more),
and the date of Khufu (Cheops) in the 4th dynasty (and thus the building
of the Great Pyramid at Giza) was about 2500, as you say (but again with
some possibility of its moving back a ways.)

More to the point, the whole of the Old Kingdom left a record (now extant
in the fragments of the Turin papyrus) has a record with Nile floods given
for EACH year or each king.  This takes us down to circa 2100, with nary
a trace of even regional flooding, just the normal gentle yearly overflow
in the Nile valley (with an interesting correlation that the breakup of
the Old Kingdom, as in other periods of decline in Egypt, was associated
with poor floods towards the end of this span.)

>considerable problems with a world-wide catastrophic Flood having occurred
>about then.  There is also a continuous history in Mesopotamia covering
>that era -- Sargon of Akkad began his reign somewhere aroud 2350 BCE.

There are king lists for the Sumerian cities before (and after) Sargon,
but nothing that would count as a "continuous history" of that region --
not even like the Egyptian case (where we know some symbolic event for
each [preserved] year in addition to the flood level, but basically no
political or other incident that we'd *like* to know.)  Here, the most
interesting nexus of stuff concerns Gilgamesh who seems to take over as
a quasi-historical figure from the Sumerian equivalent of Noah at about
3000 BCE.  Given the prominence of *regional* flooding (disastrous in
character, as opposed to the benign Nile flood) in some archaeological
layers in southern Iraq at that time, this *may* be a historical seed
of the Mesopotamian->Jewish flood myth.

>     However, I have doubts about the Aztec civilization beginning that
>early.  Does anyone have some dates on Mesoamerican civilizations?

The Aztecs are *definitely* parvenus; they originate only a century or
so before Cortez wiped them out.  Of course they are heirs of more
ancient Central American cultures, but even the earliest of these
(Olmecs, for example) go back nowhere *near* as long as the Nile or
Mesopotamian cases.  The earliest historical records come in with the
Mayans, not much over 2000 years ago.  (The Mayan calendar has a long
cycle stretching back much earlier, but that has no more historical
meaning than the wild constructions of Hindu cyclical calendrics.)
There are certainly no archaeological strata in Mexico confirming any
putative global flood, either in historic or prehistoric times.

Jim should stick to the instance of the pyramids (and generalize it
to the whole of the first phase of Egyptian civilization, 1st dynasty
through 6th) and not drag in red herrings like Mexico.  The Egyptian
case is quite sufficient to estalish his point.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon			Inflict Thy promises with each
mls@panix.com				Occasion of distress,
					That from our incoherence we
					May learn to put our trust in Thee