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elder Philip, of a man and woman, in one compartment, 
sitting in a floating ark, with a bird carrying a branch above 
them, and in another compartment, leaving the ark, on which 
the letters NOE* are inscribed; the curious Mexican painting, 
copied by Humboldt, in which the “ man and woman who 
survived the age of water ” are represented safe in an ark- 
like structure, while the goddess of water is deluging the 
world — these remarkable traditions can be explained from no 
other standpoint than that which assigns to the Noachian 
Deluge a place among the undoubted facts of history. With- 
out going so far as Bryant, who in his Ancient Mythology 
contends that traditions of the Deluge form the basis of all 
Heathen worship, and that all the ideal gods of the Heathen 
world were representatives of Noah, and those who were 
saved with him in the ark, — without at all going* so far as this, 
I am prepared to maintain, that in the mythology of the 
ancients, apart altogether from the testimony of the Divine 
Word, there is more than sufficient to prove, that in the 
remote past, some such catastrophe as the Noachian Deluge 
did undoubtedly take place. 
MYTHOLOGICAL. 
In the Egyptian mythology we read of Osiris being enticed 
into an ark by Typhon, apparently a personification of the 
Ocean ; of the ark being sealed, and thrown into the sea, till, 
after sundry tossings, it is cast on the coast of Byblus ; while 
among the hyroglyphics, we meet with the Deity coming forth 
from the flood, as a child upon a water-lily. It cannot be 
denied that the traditions about Osiris are mixed up to a 
great extent, as was indeed natural, with overflowings of the 
Nile, but there is enough in the outstanding incidents to 
justify Professor HitchcoclPs remark, that Osiris is “ the Noah 
of Egypt.” 
The Assyrian tradition, which Berosus copied from the 
records of the Temple of Belus at Babylon, points most dis- 
* I am not forgetful that attempts have been made to demonstrate that 
these letters have no reference to the name of Noah ; but as Bryant in his 
Vindication of the Apamcean Medal has well replied — “ The history still 
would remain in legible characters, independent of the inscription. Thus, 
take away the letters NQE, or assign them to a different purpose than the 
name of Noah, yet the historical part of the coin can neither be obliterated 
nor changed. The ark upon the waters, and the persons in the ark, will still 
remain ; the dove, too, and the olive will be seen ; and the great event to 
which they allude will be too manifest to be mistaken.” 
