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indication of the amalgamation of a foreign element with local Deluge traditions.—A Syrian tradition, with some surprising resemblances to P in Gen., has been preserved by the Pseudo-Lucian (De dea Syra, 12, 13). The wickedness of men had become so great that they had to be destroyed. The fountains of the earth and the flood-gates of heaven were opened simultaneously; the whole world was submerged, and all men perished. Only the pious Deukalion-Sisuthros was saved with his family in a great chest, into which as he entered all sorts of animals crowded. When the water had disappeared, Deukalion opened the ark, erected altars, and founded the sanctuary of Derketo at Hierapolis. The hole in the earth which swallowed up the Flood was shown under the temple, and was seen by the writer, who thought it not quite big enough for the purpose. In Usener's opinion we have here the Chaldean legend localised at a Syrian sanctuary, there being nothing Greek about it except the name Deukalion.—A Phrygian localisation of the Semitic tradition is attested by the epithet applied to the Phrygian Apameia (Kelainai) from the time of Augustus (Strabo, xii. 8. 13, etc.); and still more remarkably by bronze coins of that city dating from the reign of Septimius Severus. On these an open chest is represented, bearing the inscription, in which are seen the figures of the hero and his wife; a dove is perched on the lid of the ark, and another is flying with a twig in its claws. To the left the same two human figures are seen standing in the attitude of prayer. The late date of these coins makes the hypothesis of direct Jewish, or even Christian, influence extremely probable.—The existence of a Phœnician tradition is inferred by Usener (248 ff.) from the discovery in Etruria and Sardinia of bronze models of ships with various kinds of animals standing in them: one of them is said to date from the 7th cent. There is no extant written record of the Phœnician legend: on Gruppe's reconstruction from the statements of Greek mythographers see above, p. 141.

5. There remains the question of the origin of this widespread and evidently very popular conception of a universal Deluge. That it embodies a common primitive tradition of an historic event we have already seen to be improbable. If we suppose the original story to have been elaborated in Babylonia, and to have spread thence to other peoples, it may still be doubtful whether we have to do "with a legend based upon facts" or "with a myth which has assumed the form of a history." The mythical theory has been most fully worked out by Usener, who finds the germ of the story in the favourite mythological image of "the god in the chest," representing the voyage of the sun-god across the heavenly ocean: similar explanations were independently propounded by Cheyne (EB, 1063 f.) and Zimmern (ib. 1058 f.; KAT$1$, 555). Of a somewhat different order is the astrological theory advocated by Jeremias (249 ff.). The Babylonian astronomers were aware that