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The Myth: The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. (Gen. 6:11–13)

The Reality: The story of Noah and the flood originated as a monotheistic version of the Hermopolitan Creation myth and presented an expanded account of events on the first day of Creation.

In the Hermopolitan Creation myth, four males and four females emerged from the primeval flood and crawled onto the first land. These four males and four females, known as the Ogdoad (i.e., group of eight) collectively gave birth to Re, the Hermopolitan Creator deity, who floated on a lotus while the benben bird flew above.

The four male deities were Nun, Huh, Kuk, and Amen, who represented the four primary elements of the universe before Creation, but in some texts other deities were substituted. Nun signified the primeval flood and Egyptians usually portrayed him in anthropomorphic form, standing waist-high in the primeval waters and holding aloft the solar boat that carried other deities.

In the story of Noah, too, four males and four females emerged from a worldwide flood after a mountain arose out of the waters, during which time a sole child may have been born (see Myth #33) with some interesting questions about who his parents were. It also includes the appearance of birds, one of which behaves differently than the others (see Myth #34). In addition, the names of Noah and his three sons closely resemble names associated with the Egyptian Creation cycle.

In old biblical Hebrew, the name “Noah” (which should be transliterated as “Noach”) consists of only two letters “Nun” and “Ched.” We don’t know what the original vowels were because old Hebrew text did not use vowels. The present assignment of vowels is speculative. It is interesting that “Nun,” the Hebrew name for the first letter of Noah’s name, is the same word the Egyptians use to name the primeval flood. The name of the biblical flood hero, therefore, corresponds to the name of the Egyptian deity who represents the great flood of Creation and guides the solar boat across the waters.

Another interesting coincidence between Noah and Nun involves the image of a serpent. Egyptians depicted the four males of the Ogdoad (the eight gods, including Nun, who emerged from the flood) as serpents. In early Hebrew writing, the letter Nun evolved from the image of a serpent.

The names of Noah’s three sons—Ham, Shem, and Japheth—also show connections to the Hermopolitan Creation story. Shem is the oldest of Noah’s three sons and he has a most unusual name. In Hebrew, it means “name.” Therefore, Noah named his son “name,” something that doesn’t quite make sense. Among religious Jews, though, the word “shem” is often substituted for God’s name, and it seems unlikely that Hebrew scribes meant for Noah’s son to be equated with the Hebrew deity.

The word “shem” also forms the root of the Hebrew word “shemoneh” meaning “eight.” This gives us a connection to the Egyptian city of Hermopolis. Hermopolis is the Greek name of the city but Egyptians called it Shmn, which means “eight-town,” after the eight Hermopolitan deities that emerged from the flood. (The Hebrew and Egyptian words for “eight” are the same.) The name of Noah’s son—Shem—and the Egyptian name for the city of Hermopolis—Shmn—therefore, both refer to the eight Hermopolitan deities that emerged out of the primeval flood.

Ham, the name of Noah’s second son, is pronounced “Chem” in Hebrew, and he is depicted as the father of the Egyptian and African peoples. The name derives from the Egyptian word “Keme,” an ancient name for Egypt. It means “the black land” and refers to the fertile black soil left behind when the annual Nile flood withdraws to its banks.

The third of Noah’s sons is Japheth, and many people have tried to identify the name Japheth with the Greek Iapetos, a mythological deity whose son, Deucalion, was the hero of a Greek flood myth. Tempting as that correlation may be, it only makes sense if the Greek myth influenced the development of the biblical story, a conclusion for which we have no evidence.

Turning to the Egyptian sphere, though, again we have a connection. The name Japheth in old Hebrew consists of three consonants, “J-Ph-Th.” The “ph” and “th” sounds are linguistically equivalent to “p” and “t,” so we can write the name as J-PT. In Hebrew, when combining the name of God with another word, one would use a “J” for God’s name, which usually appears in transliteration as “Ja” or “Jo.” In J-PT, the PT part of the name contains the same letters used for the name of the Memphite Creator deity, Ptah, so Japheth would be the linguistic equivalent of the name “God-Ptah.” This is a typical form of Egyptian combination name, such as Atum-Re or Re-Herakhte. It also suggests the frequently used Hebrew term “LORD God.”

In our explanation of the first day of Creation (see Myths #2–#4) we noted that the first day consolidated the appearance of the eight Hermopolitan deities with the presence of Ptah, who called forth the first light. The name “God-Ptah” symbolizes that relationship, combining the eight Hermopolitan deities with Ptah.

The names of Noah and his three sons, therefore, can be seen to provide close correspondences to the Hermopolitan Creation myth. Noah equals Nun, the primeval flood; Ham signifies the first land to emerge from the waters; Shem represents the city of Hermopolis, Shmn, built on the first land (according to the Hermopolitan tradition); and Japheth corresponds to the primary Creator deity, a combined form of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad and Ptah. Because Hebrew scribes needed to present a monotheistic history of the world, they had to recast the story so that the well-known Egyptian deities in this myth appeared in human form.