Attos' Magazine

Volume #105, March/2010

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Immanuel Velikovsky

Worlds In Collision

By Immanuel Velikovsky

The Floods of Deucalion and Ogyges

The history of Greece knows two great natural catastrophes: the floods of Deucalion and of Ogyges. One of them, usually that of Deucalion, is described by Greek authors as having been simultaneous with the conflagration of Phaëthon. The floods of Deucalion and Ogyges brought overwhelming destruction to the mainland of Greece and to the islands around and caused changes in the geographical profile of the area. That of Deucalion was most devastating: water covered the land and annihilated the population. According to the legend, only two persons—Deucalion and his wife—remained alive. This last detail must not be taken more literally than similar statements found in descriptions of great catastrophes all around the world; for example, two daughters of Lot, who hid with him in a cave after the catastrophe of Sodom and Gomorrah, believed that they and their father were the only survivors in the land.

The chronologists among the Fathers of the Church found material for assuming that one of the two catastrophes, the flood of Deucalion or that of Ogyges, had been contemporaneous with the Exodus.

Julius Africanus wrote: “We affirm that Ogygus [Ogyges] from whom the first flood [in Attica] derived its name, and who was saved when many perished, lived at the time of the Exodus of the people from Egypt along with Moses.” He further expressed his belief in the coincidence of the catastrophe of Ogyges and the one that occurred in Egypt in the days of the Exodus in the following words:

“The Passover and the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt took place, and also in Attica the flood of Ogygus. And that is according to reason. For when the Egyptians were being smitten in the anger of God with hail and storms, it was only to be expected that certain parts of the earth should suffer with them.”

Eusebius placed the Flood of Deucalion and the conflagration of Phaëthon in the fifty-second year of Moses’ life. Augustine also synchronized the Flood of Deucalion with the time of Moses; he assumed that the Flood of Ogyges took place earlier.

A chronologist of the seventh century (Isidore, bishop of Seville) dated the Flood of Deucalion in the time of Moses; chronologists of the seventeenth century likewise calculated that the Flood of Deucalion took place in the time of Moses, close to but not simultaneous with the Exodus.

It would seem to be more probable that, if the catastrophes occurred one shortly after the other, the catastrophe of Ogyges took place after that of Deucalion which practically destroyed the land, depopulated it, and erased every memory of what had happened up to that time. In the words of Plato, who quoted the Egyptian priest speaking to Solon, the catastrophes must have escaped the notice of the future generations because, as a result of the devastation, “for many generations the survivors died with no power to express themselves in writing.” The memory of the catastrophe of Ogyges would have vanished in the catastrophe of Deucalion if Ogyges had preceded Deucalion.

Apparently, the truth is with those who placed the catastrophe of Deucalion in the days of Exodus; but those who reckoned that Ogyges was a contemporary of Moses were also correct, except that Moses did not live until the Flood of Ogyges -it took place in the days of Joshua.

In commemoration of the Deucalion flood, the people of Athens observed a feast in the month of Anthesterion, which is a spring month; the feast was called Anthesteria. On the thirteenth of the month, the main day of the feast, honey and flour were poured into a fissure in the earth as a sacrifice.

The date of this ceremony -the thirteenth day of Anthesterion in the spring- is revealing if we remember what was said in the section entitled “13.” It was on the thirteenth day of the spring month (Aviv) that the great planetary contact occurred which preceded by a few hours the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.

The offering of honey and flour as the main ceremony of the feast is also revealing if we recollect that manna, or heavenly corn, tasting like honey, fell on the earth after the contact of the earth with a celestial body.

As to the provenance of the name Deucalion, scholars admit that it is not known. For the name and the person of Ogyges we have some concrete information. Although Ogyges was a king, the Greek annalists who wrote of the “flood of Ogyges” as one of the outstanding events of the past of their country, at the same time did not know anything about a king of that name in Greece.” Who was Ogyges?

We can solve this problem. When the Israelites under Moses approached the border of Moab, Balaam in his blessing of Israel used these words: “His king shall be higher than Agag [AgogI.” Agog must have been the most important king of that time in the area around the eastern Mediterranean.

In my reconstruction of ancient history, I shall put forward proofs that the Amalekite king, Agog I, was identical with the Hyksos king whose name the Egyptologists tentatively read Apop I, and who, a few decades after the invasion of Egypt by the Amu (Hyksos), laid the foundation of Thebes, the future capital of the New Kingdom in Egypt.

In conformity with this assertion, I can point to the fact that Greek tradition, which does not know of any activities of King Ogyges in Attica, occasionally places the domicile of Ogyges in Egyptian Thebes, and Aeschylus calls Thebes of Egypt “the Ogygian Thebes,” to differentiate it from the Greek Thebes in Boeotia. Ogyges is also credited with founding Thebes in Egypt.

Agog was a contemporary of the aging Moses; he was a ruler who, in his time, had no equal in the region bordering the eastern Mediterranean; the catastrophe in the time of Joshua, successor to Moses, was called by his, Agog’s, name.

The assertion of Solinus, the author of Polyhistor, that the flood of Ogyges was followed by a night of nine months’ duration does not necessarily signify a confusion with the darkness that ensued after the cataclysm of the Exodus; as the causes were similar, similar results must have followed. The eruption of thousands of volcanoes would suffice to produce this darkness, of a shorter duration than that which followed the cataclysm of the Exodus.

Thus, the Greek traditions of the floods of Ogyges and Deucalion contain elements which, though interchauged, can he traced to two great upheavals in the middle of the second millennium before the present era.

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