by other physical happenings connected with the earth, of a most
destructive character. The Hebrews also, as we may see from the Bible,
had alternative views as to the cause of the Deluge. According to one,
rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights (Gen. vii,
12), and according to the other the Deluge came because "all the
fountains of the "great deep" were broken up, and "the flood-gates
of heaven were opened" (Gen. vii, 11). The latter view suggests that
the rain flood was joined by the waters of the sea. Later tradition,
based partly on Babylonian and partly on Hebrew sources, asserts in
the "Cave of Treasures" [9] that when Noah had entered the Ark and the
door was shut, "the sluices of heaven were opened, and the deeps were
rent asunder," and "that the Ocean, that great sea that surroundeth
the whole world, vomited its waters, and the sluices of heaven being
opened, and the deeps of the earth being rent asunder, the storehouses
of the winds were opened, and the whirlwinds broke loose, and the Ocean
roared and poured out its waters in floods." The ark was steered over
the waters by an angel who acted as pilot, and when that had come to
rest on the mountains of Kardô (Armenia) "God commanded the waters
and they separated from each other. The waters that had been above
ascended to their place above the heavens, whence they had come;
and the waters that had come up from under the earth returned to the
lower deep; and the waters that were from the Ocean returned into it"
(Brit. Mus. MS. Orient. No. 25,875, fol. 17b, col. 1 and fol. 18a,
cols. 1 and 2). Many authorities seeking to find a foundation of fact
for the Legend of the Deluge in Mesopotamia have assumed that the rain
flood was accompanied either by an earthquake or a tidal wave, or by
both. There is no doubt that the cities of Lower Babylonia were nearer
the sea in the Sumerian Period than they are at the present time,
and it is a generally accepted view that the head of the Persian Gulf
lay further to the north at that time. A cyclone coupled with a tidal