s resembles closely the Babylonian
story as told by Pir-napishtim. The god Titlacahuan instructed a man
named Nata to make a boat by hollowing out a cypress tree, so as to
escape the coming deluge with his wife Nena. This pair escaped
destruction. They offered up a fish sacrifice in the boat and enraged
the deity who visited them, displaying as much indignation as did Bel
when he discovered that Pir-napishtim had survived the great disaster.
Nata and Nena had been instructed to take with them one ear of maize
only, which suggests that they were harvest spirits.

In Brazil, Monan, the chief god, sent a great fire to burn up the
world and its wicked inhabitants. To extinguish the flames a magician
caused so much rain to fall that the earth was flooded.

The Californian Indians had a flood legend, and believed that the
early race was diminutive; and the Athapascan Indians of the
north-west professed to be descendants of a family who escaped the
deluge. Indeed, deluge myths were widespread in the "New World".

The American belief that the first beings who were created were unable
to live on earth was shared by the Babylonians. According to Berosus
the first creation was a failure, because the animals could not bear
the light and they all died.[232] Here we meet with the germs of the
Doctrine of the World's Ages, which reached its highest development in
Indian, Greek, and Celtic (Irish) mythologies.

The Biblical account of the flood is familiar to readers. "It forms",
says Professor Pinches, "a good subject for comparison with the
Babylonian account, with which it agrees so closely in all the main
points, and from which it differs so much in many essential
details."[233]

The drift of Babylonian culture was not only directed westward towards
the coast of Palestine, and from thence to Greece during the
Phoenician period, but also eastward through Elam to the Iranian
plateau and India. Reference has already been made to the resemblances
between early Vedic and Sumerian mythologies. When the "new songs" of
the Aryan invaders of India were being composed, the sky and ocean
god, Varuna, who resembles Ea-Oannes, and Mitra, who links with
Shamash, were already declining in splendour. Other cultural
influences were at work. Certain of the Aryan tribes, for instance,
buried their dead in Varuna's "house of clay", while a growing
proportion cremated their dead and worshipped Agni, the fire god. At
the close of the Vedic period