inscribed on stelae, in hieroglyphical and sacred language, the
principles of all knowledge. After it the second Thoth translated into
the vulgar tongue the contents of these stelae. This would be the only
Egyptian mention of the Deluge, the same Manetho not speaking of it in
what remains to us of his 'Dynasties,' his only complete authentic work.
The silence of all other myths of the Pharaonic religion on this head
render it very likely that the above is merely a foreign tradition,
recently introduced, and no doubt of Asiatic and Chaldean origin."

To my mind the explanation of this singular omission is very plain. The
Egyptians had preserved in their annals the precise history of the
destruction of Atlantis, out of which the Flood legends grew; and, as
they told the Greeks, there had been no universal flood, but only local
catastrophes. Possessing the real history of the local catastrophe which
destroyed Atlantis, they did not indulge in any myths about a universal
deluge covering the mountain-tops of all the world. They had no Ararat
in their neighborhood.

The traditions of the early Christian ages touching the Deluge pointed
to the quarter of the world in which Atlantis was situated.

There was a quaint old monk named Cosmos, who, about one thousand years
ago, published a book, "Topographia Christiana," accompanied by a map,
in which he gives his view of the world as it was then understood. It
was a body surrounded by water, and resting on nothing. "The earth,"
says Cosmos, "presses downward, but the igneous parts tend upward," and
between the conflicting forces the earth hangs suspended, like
Mohammed's coffin in the old story. The accompanying illustration (page
95) represents the earth surrounded by the ocean, and beyond this ocean
was "the land where men dwelt before the Deluge."