The Flood
In many mythologies, the end of the world will come about through a great cataclysm.
In others, there is talk of an age, within the creation we live in today, in which the gods, angered with humanity, attempted to destroy it through a flood.
The biblical story of the flood (Noah’s Ark) is only one of many versions, and has its origin in a Sumero-Babylonian narrative, the poem of Gilgamesh (see mitologia_sumeria). In the Sumerian account, Noah is known by the name of Utnapishtim.
The Greek accounts also tell how Zeus attempted to put an end to humanity with a flood; however, Prometheus (see mitologia_grecorromana) warned Deucalion and Pyrrha.
Manu was saved from the flood of Hinduism (see mitologia_india) by Vishnu, incarnated as Matsya, his avatar in which he takes the form of a fish.
Flood myths also appear in Peru and in China, among the Australian Aborigines and in many Native North American traditions, such as the myth of the Mandan, of the Lone Man (see mitologia_americana}).
Ethnologists in the nineteenth century were able to collect in Serbia a cycle of Slavic myths about the great flood, from which the sole survivor was Krayatz, who was saved by Kurent, the god of wine.