Theodor H. Gaster argues that myths were written in a more poetical sense rather than in a factual, history text-book style. According to him the early people of Egypt and Mesopotamia, “…thought of its phenomena mythopoeically rather than intellectually-not as they might be in and of themselves but rather as they manifested themselves in direct contact” (Gaster, 269). These people wrote of how they encountered the world around them, and although at first glance it may appear primitive, you have to remember these people did not have the scientific advances that our culture has today. Without that knowledge today’s man would most likely react in a similar way to the world around them. “A storm for example, was not a meteorological condition to be analyzed and explained by objective science, but a terrifying (or at least awesome) encounter, and might therefore be represented as a monstrous b
In Gilgamesh an ark is built to save a select few after the god Utnapishtim reveals to Gilgamesh that an old city situated on the bank of the Euphrates river would be flooded by the gods. They were instructed to, “Reject chattels and save lives! Put aboard the seed of all living things, into the boat” (Dalley, 110). This is a common story of how the gods wanted to flood a certain area, and wanted a selected few to be saved. There was probably a time when there were many floods in this area that fueled the stories of men building boats and arks to save the living things in the area. Possibly someone had the foresight to build a boat as the flooding became a regular occurance in these areas, and were viewed as visionary when they were able to save many lives. This could be a mixture of fact and fiction. The fact would be that there had actually been a flood, but the majority of the details were proba
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