The ancient story of a great flood -- first recorded in writing around 1700 B.C. -- may actually have originated around 5,000 B.C. because it appears as a "picture story" in the stars, according to new evidence pieced together by a local astronomer-archaeologist.
Known to Christians and Jews as the story of Noah and the ark, the story of a deluge so complete that it wiped out all life except for those aboard a boat that was built under direction from God, is recorded in 11 ancient texts, including the Bible, the Torah and the Koran.Utah archaeologist John McHugh says though there is "no archaeological, paleontological or geological evidence" for such a catastrophic flood, "ancient cosmologists verified it" by "viewing it as a picture story in the constellations."
The notion of "proving" such a story to be true through astronomy seems "crazy to us, because we use science and history" to explain modern events, including weather-related phenomena, McHugh said.
Yet ancient cultures that had yet to develop such methods routinely viewed the heavens as a pictorial reflection of "events believed to have occurred on earth in ancient times."
The way McHugh has pieced his theory together begins with his belief that the first known record of the flood story -- penned in 1700 B.C. by the Babylonians -- was formed in part by using constellations that derived from the religious texts of the pre-Babylonian Sumerians.
If, in fact, the flood story were based on such a picture story in the stars, "then all of the major themes and elements should correspond to constellations," including "the flood waters, a flood hero, a boat and a benevolent deity."
Reading cosmological, astrological and astronomical texts from Mesopotamia, McHugh found writings regarding a "wet region" of the southern night sky known as the Apsu, translated as a "flood wave" or "terrible inundation."
His reasoning extended that a constellation of a flood ship should also be positioned within the stellar floodwaters, which he also found a description of.
Known as the Magur, the ship constellation -- now referred to as Argo -- was "based on the crescent-shaped, cargo vessel" that was commonly used on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia in ancient times. "Every second millennium B.C. version of the flood hero endures the flood waters in a Magur," he said, noting the description in one Middle Babylonian (1600-1000 B.C.) flood account says the "big boat" was built "entirely of reeds . . . let it be a huge Magur with the name, The Life Saver."
The "benevolent deity" mentioned in all the flood accounts warns a righteous man of the impending flood, urging him to build a boat to preserve mankind. In pre-biblical accounts, the god is known as Ea, or Enki in Sumerian. Cosmological texts describe how this god is "lord of the Apsu," and ancient star atlases state that Ea is the water-god constellation, renamed Aquarius by later cultures. In early flood accounts, this is the god who warns the flood hero of the deluge, McHugh said.
While he found writings about the Magur and Ea constellations in several early texts, McHugh said only one -- The Epic of Gilgamesh from the 7th century B.C. -- provided enough clues to help him understand "which constellation was the flood hero." Tablet XI of that epic speaks of "the only mortals to have attained everlasting life" -- the Assyrian Noah, known as Ut-napishtim, and his wife.
It also records that while Ut-napishtim "was mortal," he and his wife shall now "be as we gods are," dwelling "far off at the mouth of the rivers." For the picture story to be complete, McHugh said he found the flood hero by looking for a Tigris-Euphrates constellation that flowed into the stellar waters of the Apsu and found the river constellation Eridanus.
That's important, he said "because Eridanus leads from the foot of the most conspicuous constellation in the stellar sky" -- the constellation Orion.
Because Orion was a "man constellation" in both Mesopotamia and the Near Eastern cultures, the reference to the flood hero "dwelling far off at the mouth of the rivers" may be a literal one, McHugh said. "Ancient cosmologists probably perceived this flood hero constellation as 'evidence' that he had survived the catastrophic flood in ancient times."
While all of the evidence from the earliest texts fits nicely together, McHugh said by around 700 B.C., the precession of equinoxes in the night sky had moved the stellar boat Magur (Argo) about halfway below the southern horizon when viewed from the Assyrian capital at Nineveh. This "sinking" of the traditional stellar flood ship coincided with the time the Assyrian flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh was written.
Because McHugh's theory rests on the continued visibility of the central "pieces" of the flood story in the stars, he looked for -- and found -- evidence that the old ship constellation was replaced in Gilgamesh and later texts with another constellation positioned in the sky's "wet region." Six constellations were contained within that area, one of them a square "field" within the floodwaters.
That description meshes with the Gilgamesh account of Noah's construction of the "flood boat," which says "a field was her perimeter, ten poles (60 meters) each the height of her walls."
McHugh said since Mesopotamian agricultural fields were measured in square units of 60 meters per side, "it can be inferred that the new flood boat was shaped like a cube."
Though the ancients knew such a vessel would not be seaworthy, McHugh believes that to maintain the integrity of the stellar flood story, "cosmographers were forced to replace the original flood ship constellation with another that could be seen sailing in the stellar floodwaters of the Apsu.
"This seems to explain why, beginning with the 7th century B.C. Assyrian flood story, each subsequent flood boat is quadrangular in shape. . . . By replacing the original flood ship constellation with the field Iku, Assyrian cosmologists had created the original 'ark,' . . . which insured that the flood boat would be perennially seen sailing in the flood waters."
Today, the stars that make up the flood boat are known as the Pegasus Rectangle asterism, McHugh said. "The ark is this huge, really long rectangle in the Bible -- at least 180 cubits, or about 330 yards."
A Catholic who recently graduated with a master's degree in archaeology from Brigham Young University, McHugh said religious scholars in particular are interested in his work because his timing of the earliest versions of the flood story could place it as far back as 5000 B.C.
"My research suggests that the flood story could have appeared much earlier than the advent of writing. If you're a religious person, you want to hear that."
Though he has his personal religious beliefs, McHugh is careful to say he doesn't know whether the flood described in all the ancients texts was a historic event or a tale perpetuated through the ages in the night sky.
"I'm not saying that picture story isn't based on real event, but in my theory the flood just can't have the magnitude that a lot of modern-day creationists assign to it. Today, the constellations are thought of as fairy tale kind of stories -- but not to the ancient cultures. If you can prove the story happened in the stars, to them that's how it happened."
While McHugh spends most of his days now looking through the dirt as an archaeologist for Orem-based Baseline Data Inc., his theories about the stars are grabbing a lot of national attention.
Last month, National Public Radio aired a program explaining his "picture story" flood theory, followed by a piece done by the science editor for ABC's "Good Morning America." A flurry of e-mail has been racing around the Internet as a result of the publicity, and McHugh said he's now considering an offer to put his work forward for a national publishing house. A scholar in Hawaii also wants to do a documentary on his theory.
First presented at the Society of Biblical Literature in 1998, McHugh's theory seems to intrigue scientists, astronomers and religious scholars alike with a new take on the story some view as myth and others accept as divine.
McHugh said whether his work will have any lasting impact is as much a mystery as many of his scholarly suspicions were before he pieced them together.
"I've been rejected a bunch of times, not information-wise, but because of the picture story in the stars. Who knows where it will go from here?"