Flood Myth: Did you mean...?

The Kiowa nation has at least two different versions of their origin myth concerning death: How Death Came into the World and Why the Ant is Almost Cut in Two. Both explain the origin of death but differ significantly in characterization...

In Norse mythology, the Sun and the Moon appear as personified siblings pulling the heavenly bodies and chased by wolves, or as plain objects. Written sources, such as the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, have surprisingly little to say about...

Until Sir Arthur Evans unearthed the palace of Knossos, the half-man-half bull killed by Theseus was considered just a popular legend; archaeology changed that perception. King Minos, of Crete, fought hard with his brother to ascend the...

The Raven Flood Totem, Alaska. National Archives and Records Administration. According to the NARA description: "The raven circle at the top represents heaven. The legend is that the raven at flood time flew up to heaven with children in...

Hercules is the Roman name for the Greek hero Herakles, the most popular figure from ancient Greek mythology. Hercules was the son of Zeus, king of the gods, and the mortal woman Alcmene. Zeus, who was always chasing one woman or another...

Sammu-Ramat (r. 811-806 BCE) was the queen regent of the Assyrian Empire who held the throne for her young son Adad Nirari III (r. 811-783 BCE) until he reached maturity. She is also known as Shammuramat, Sammuramat, and, most notably, as...

The gods of the Mesopotamian region were not uniform in name, power, provenance or status in the hierarchy. Mesopotamian culture varied from region to region and, because of this, Marduk should not be regarded as King of the Gods in the same...

This is the 11th tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The cuneiform text on this tablet is startlingly similar to the Biblical story of Noah and his ark in the Book of Genesis. When George Smith, an assistant in the British Museum first read...

An 1876 oil on canvas, Flood at Port-Marly, by Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), the Franco-British impressionist painter. The artist produced a series of six canvases capturing the flooding of the Seine at Port-Marly, a catastrophe that occurred...

Manabozho in the Tree Above the Flood, illustration by R.C. Armour, from his book North American Indian Fairy Tales, Folklore, and Legends, 1905.