In Search of Noah's Flood

[Doug1066]

1 hour ago, cormac mac airt said:

You need to watch your dates better as you’ve done it again, 2911+/-20 BP is circa 961 +/-20 BC NOT BP. Other than that I don’t believe you’re ever going to be able to validate any single flood as Noah’s Flood. But you’ve made an admirable attempt. 
 

cormac

Oops.  That should read 2911+/-20BC.

I'm seeing some serious problems in that events in Egypt and those in Mesopotamia don't seem to line up very well.  Put that together with Mesopotamian dating problems....

Doug

[cormac mac airt]

1 minute ago, Doug1066 said:

Oops.  That should read 2911+/-20BC.

I'm seeing some serious problems in that events in Egypt and those in Mesopotamia don't seem to line up very well.  Put that together with Mesopotamian dating problems....

Doug

Yes, it becomes a quagmire real quick. 
 

cormac

[Doug1066]

2 hours ago, cormac mac airt said:

Yes, it becomes a quagmire real quick. 
 

cormac

'Nother idea.

Suppose I'm using the wrong Pharaoh:  if "the flood" were 100 years later, that might make matching things up a little easier.

Doug

[Doug1066]

On 1/18/2024 at 1:25 PM, Doug1066 said:

'Nother idea.

Suppose I'm using the wrong Pharaoh:  if "the flood" were 100 years later, that might make matching things up a little easier.

Doug

Or 100 years earlier (Still working on it.).

The 4800 BP flood would be the largest in a span of 2000 years.  Egyptian records do not tell how big a flood was, so it's easy to get floods mixed up, even when they're quite a bit different in size.

Den's flood would have occurred about 2911 BC.  Manetho mentions one at the beginning of dynastic rule.  That sounds fanciful, like a device to separate gods from man.  But what if it's true?  Menes was the first Pharaoh.  There was a big flood either during or just before his reign.  And Manetho mentions another one 300 years earlier.

I've mentioned Menes' flood before, though not by name.  It was the big one that swept through Memphis.  I'm uncertain whether it opened a new channel along the east bank, or if it merely deepened one that was already there.  Also, it appears to have filled a channel that ran along the west side of Memphis.  At any rate, after the flood, walls were built to shut it off and a new part of Memphis was built in the old channel.  So now to check the dating on it.

Doug

[Doug1066]

Weigal (1927) gives the accession of Menes as 3407BC.  Manetho identifies the first year before Menes (3708 BC) as the year of the great Memphis Flood.  That's 600 years before Den's Flood.  The date sort of works for the hydrology, but doesn't match up with archeology.  BUT:  Wooley's Flood was about 3500 BC.  Is this the date of the Ur and Uruk2 floods?

Manetho also mentions a flood about 3700 BC.  I'm thinking it must have been a small one as there's no record of it in the hydrology.

Doug

 

Weigall, Arthur.  1927.  A history of the Pharaohs.  Volume 2:  the Twelfth to eighteenth dynasties.  Cambridge Library Collection.  Great Britain.

[cormac mac airt]

On 1/20/2024 at 1:39 PM, Doug1066 said:

Weigal (1927) gives the accession of Menes as 3407BC.  Manetho identifies the first year before Menes (3708 BC) as the year of the great Memphis Flood.  That's 600 years before Den's Flood.  The date sort of works for the hydrology, but doesn't match up with archeology.  BUT:  Wooley's Flood was about 3500 BC.  Is this the date of the Ur and Uruk2 floods?

Manetho also mentions a flood about 3700 BC.  I'm thinking it must have been a small one as there's no record of it in the hydrology.

Doug

 

Weigall, Arthur.  1927.  A history of the Pharaohs.  Volume 2:  the Twelfth to eighteenth dynasties.  Cambridge Library Collection.  Great Britain.

All of which would put them within the Persian Gulf Transgression period circa 4000 - 3000 BC when there were no actual civilizations nor writings from same to “witness” any such Great Floods. That Weigall and Manetho give them older dates doesn’t make them true. How do you reconcile that with the fact you already agreed that any relevant event would be constrained to the period 3000 - 2600 BC? 
 

cormac

[Doug1066]

On 1/21/2024 at 3:34 PM, cormac mac airt said:

All of which would put them within the Persian Gulf Transgression period circa 4000 - 3000 BC when there were no actual civilizations nor writings from same to “witness” any such Great Floods. That Weigall and Manetho give them older dates doesn’t make them true. How do you reconcile that with the fact you already agreed that any relevant event would be constrained to the period 3000 - 2600 BC? 
 

cormac

The Persian Gulf reached its highstand between 6500 and 6100 BC.  Even then, it was only about a meter above current.  Wooley's Ubaid layer would have been exactly at sea level.

The dates I've posted aren't cast in stone.  More like thinking out loud.

I found another list.  It places things about 200 years later than Weibal.  Checking it out.

Except for 14C dates around 3000 BC are subject to a 200-year error.  That's particularly true of archeological dates based on pottery.  They're not estimates - just guesses.

 

I just compiled all flood dates onto one chart.  IF there was a corresponding flood in Egypt, it is way back in pre-dynastic times.  Menes' Flood is not it; although, it was a big one.

There were floods at multiple sites in 5450, 4850 and 4650.

I am giving up on Egypt.  I will see what I can find in the Indus valley.

Doug

[Doug1066]

I'm giving up.  The oldest Egyptian flood I can find dates from about 3700 BC, too recent and too small to be Noah's Flood.  There are some Mesopotamian floods from as early as 6550 BC, but nothing to indicate for certain that any of them are Noah's Flood.  I may do a write up on what I've got, but nobody wants to run articles about experiments that failed.  IF the Mid-Holocene Climate Anomaly was caused by an asteroid impact in the Indian Ocean, there would be flood evidence of it on the Indus and Nile.  But climate change hasn't been a hot topic in archeology until recently.  Mohenjo Daro dates from the 18th century BC.  There are some others, but archeologists aren't interested in floods, so there isn't much data.

Eventually somebody may take enough cores to identify flood layers not located near a ruin.  There's certainly enough area that hasn't been drilled.  A humongous flood layer could still be down there somewhere.

Q:  was there really a Noah's Flood?  A:  There might have been.

Doug

[cormac mac airt]

8 minutes ago, Doug1066 said:

I'm giving up.  The oldest Egyptian flood I can find dates from about 3700 BC, too recent and too small to be Noah's Flood.  There are some Mesopotamian floods from as early as 6550 BC, but nothing to indicate for certain that any of them are Noah's Flood.  I may do a write up on what I've got, but nobody wants to run articles about experiments that failed.  IF the Mid-Holocene Climate Anomaly was caused by an asteroid impact in the Indian Ocean, there would be flood evidence of it on the Indus and Nile.  But climate change hasn't been a hot topic in archeology until recently.  Mohenjo Daro dates from the 18th century BC.  There are some others, but archeologists aren't interested in floods, so there isn't much data.

Eventually somebody may take enough cores to identify flood layers not located near a ruin.  There's certainly enough area that hasn't been drilled.  A humongous flood layer could still be down there somewhere.

Q:  was there really a Noah's Flood?  A:  There might have been.

Doug

You've made an admirable attempt. A better question though IMO, assuming the Flood story originated with a real event or events, would be "what constituted a Great Flood to the original writers of the epic" since THAT is the only relevant item of interest to said peoples?

cormac

[Doug1066]

57 minutes ago, cormac mac airt said:

You've made an admirable attempt. A better question though IMO, assuming the Flood story originated with a real event or events, would be "what constituted a Great Flood to the original writers of the epic" since THAT is the only relevant item of interest to said peoples?

cormac

The biggest flood during that time span would be one.  How much smaller a flood could be and still be considered big, is an open question.

A simple trick is to take a time-span of, let's say, 1000 years.  The largest flood in that time span would be a 1000-year flood.  The Egyptian records don't mention anything less than about 300 years apart.  Mesopotamian ones show two floods in about the same year,

A disclaimer, though:  We're looking at floods from the Younger Dryas, the African Wet Period and the Late Holocene.  The largest flood in a 1000 years keeps changing.

Today, most people would think of a 100-year flood as big.  But in the time-spans we're looking at, a 100-year flood wouldn't even get honorable mention.

 

At any rate, Noah's Flood will be found, if at all, in the African Wet Period.  I'm sort of interested in that period, so I'm going to look up some pluvial lakes and get out their hydrology.  I must have something about deserts:  last night I watched "Lawrence of Arabia."

Doug

 

[Doug1066]

Summary:

Younger Dryas Floods on the Nile:

12500-11700 BP (2 floods)

12600-12300 BP (2 floods)

11400-11200 BP (2 floods)

11000-10950 BP (2 floods)

These are all too old to be connected with Noah's Flood.

 

63 floods listed on Palermo Stone; all too recent to be Noah's Flood.

 

Middle-Holocene floods on the Nile:

8500 BP

7200 BP

6080 BP  This is the largest Nile flood I found.  No evidence that it is connected to any Mesopotamian flood.

 

Flood at Nippur:  5650 BP

Flood at Uruk and Ur:  5450 BP.  Probably too old to be Noah's Flood.

Flood at Abu Salabka:  4880 BP.

Flood at Kish and Shurruppak:  4850 BP.  Possible contender for Noah's Flood, but there is a better one.

Flood at Shurruppak:  4800 BP.  Not all that big; probably not Noah's Flood.

Flood on Jordan:  4750 BP.  Wrong drainage.

Flood at Kish and Ur:  4650 BP.  Best contender for Noah's Flood.

 

No evidence of an impact event.  No apparent connection between Nile and Mesopotamian floods.

Thanks for bearing with me.

Doug

 

 

 

 

 

[Doug1066]

Here's a reference that says it all:

Herget, Jurgen and Alessandro Fontana, Eds., 2020.  Paleohydrology - Trcaes tracks and trails of extreme events, In: Geography of the Physical Environment.  Springer Publcations. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23315-0

It's time for me to go big, or go home.

Doug

[Doug1066]

I can't leave it alone:

There's an idea that the "south wind" referred to in the Atrahasis was the result of a Cyclone in the Indian Ocean generating a seiche wave that traveled up the Persian Gulf.

Problem:  there are no historical records of seiche/storm waves in the Persian Gulf.  We don't know if such a thing is even possible.  The Red Sea is about the same size and orientation as the Persian Gulf.  There is a record of a seiche wave in it that struck the Suez Port Authority gauging station in 1910 with a measured height of 10.9 feet.  Extrapolate that to Ur in 2500-4000 BC and the height of the wave is 7.8 feet.  Wooley's flood reached a height of 28 feet.  The largest known seiche wave in the region in recorded history was not even one-third as deep.  "Noah's Flood" was not the result of a cyclonic storm in the Indian Ocean.

 

If you want to read about a REAL flood, read up on the Zanclean Flood.

 

I have been trying to show that the fourth head of the River of Eden was the Pison/Wadi al-Batin.  The Bible names the river, indicating that when Genesis was written, the river carried water.  If that river was Wadi al-Batin, then I need a source that can supply it with water.  Lake Fera is a possible source.  Lake Fera is the remnant of a pluvial lake that once existed in northern Arabia.  If the water rose to again fill the lake, it would overflow into Wadi al-Batin.  I am guessing that the information in Genesis dates from about 3000 BC.  Did Lake Fera have water in it in 3000 BC?  Lake Fera is in the Mediterranean climate area.  The Mediterranean Wet Period was from about 12,000 BP to 7,000 BP.  By 3,000 BP the area was hyper-arid.  The water level in the lake would have approximated today's level.  Conclusion:  Lake Fera was not the water source called for in Genesis.

A few years ago, the city of al-Batin, which is on Wadi al-Batin, received extensive damage in a flash flood.  That flood just soaked into the sand and didn't even reach the sea.  It is unlikely that a flash flood could have provided the water to make Wadi al-Batin into the Pison River.

A few miles southwest of al-Batin, the Wadi Ramah sinks under a sand dune.  The wadi has engraved the bedrock; the subterranean channel connects to Wadi al-Batin.  A few more miles farther southwest is Mahd adh Dahab, the "Cradle of Gold" in the land of Havilah "where there is fine gold and onyx stone."  Mahd adh Dahab is a placer gold deposit.  Placer deposits are emplaced by water.  Was there enough water at Mahd adh Dahab in ancient times to supply the river with water?  It takes water to work a placer deposit, so there was obviously some there.  The mine is still being worked with water pumped from wells.

The caravan route known as the Incense Road started at Saba in what is now Yemen, went up the Red Sea coast and cut inland to Mahd adh Dahab.  It then followed a string of pools and oases in Wadi Ramah, arriving at the Persian Gulf and turning north to Babylon.  The part that crosses the desert is still being used by camel caravans.  The rest has been replaced by modern roads.  Up the Incense Road came incense and myrrh and gold from Mahd adh Dahab - the three gifts Jesus' "wise men (Assyrian or Babylonian astrologers)" used as gifts.

So I still don't know where that water was coming from.

 

I have also been trying to identify Lake Titonis mentioned by Apollonius of Rhodes in the Argonautica.  I think I may have done it.  In about 1300 BC the crew of the Argo voyaged to Egypt.  This crew was one generation before the seige of Troy.  There is even a mention of Achilles as a child.  For reasons I don't understand, they portaged their ship for 12 days and nights to Lake Siwa.  They followed the north shore of Lake Siwa eastward to a shallow river (The Argo only drew two feet of water.).  They followed this into Lake Qattar and followed its north shore to the northeast end, passing through some rock narrows and following a river back to the Mediterranean at Tobruk.

Lake Siwa is now the tiny Siwa Oasis.  In 1300 BC the water level was much higher.  Lake Qattar doesn't exist anymore; it dried up.  And the river that flowed back to the Mediterranean is also dry.  But in 1300 BC they held water!  So Apolonius and Herodotus were telling the truth.  One of Herodotus two rivers was at Tobruk.  The other was likely at the Chotts in Alergia, though I'm going to need to do some more work on that.

 

So that's where I stand.

Doug