The difficulty of assembling in one spot, and of providing for in the ark, the various mammalia and birds alone, even without including the other wise essential provision for reptiles, insects and fishes, is quite sufficient to suggest some error in the current belief. We are to consider the differ ent kinds of accommodation and food which would be required for animals of such different habits and climates, and the necessary pro vision for ventilation and for cleansing the stables or dens. And if so much ingenuity has been re quired in devising arrangements for the com paratively small number of species which the writers on the ark have been willing to admit into it, what provision can be made for the immensely larger number which, under the supposed condi tions, would really have required its shelter? (4) Suggestions. There seems no way of meeting these difficulties but by adopting the sug gestion of Bishop Stillingfleet, approved by Mat thew Poole, Dr. J. Pye Smith, Le Clerc, Rosen muller, and others, namely, that, as the object of the Deluge was to sweep man from the earth, it did not extend beyond that region of the earth which man then inhabited, and that only the ani mals of that region were preserved in the ark.
The bishop expresses his belief that the Flood was universal as to mankind, and that all men, ex cept those preserved in the ark, were destroyed; but he sees no evidence from Scripture that the whole earth was then inhabited; he does not think that it can ever be proved to have been so; and he asks what reason there can be to extend the Flood beyond the occasion of it. He grants that, as far as the Flood extended, all the animals were destroyed.
As Noah was the progenitor of all the nations of the earth, and as the ark was the second cradle of the human race, we might expect to find in all nations traditions and reports more or less dis tinct respecting him, the ark in which he was saved, and the Deluge in general. Accordingly no nation is known in which such traditions have not been found. They have been very industri ously brought together by Banier, Bryant, Faber and other mythologists. (See DELUGE; NoAH.) Our present concern is only with the ark. And as it appears that an ark, that is, a boat or chest, was carried about with great ceremony in most of the ancient mysteries, and occupied an eminent station in the holy places, it has with much rea son been concluded that this was originally in tended to represent the ark of Noah, which eventually came to be regarded with superstitious reverence. On this point the historical and myth ological testimonies (as collected in the authors to whom we have referred) are very clear and conclusive. The tradition of a deluge, by which the race of man was swept from the face of the earth, has been traced among the Chakkeans, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Druids, Chinese, Hindoos, Burmese, Mexicans, Peruvians, Brazilians. Nicara guans, the inhabitants of Western Caledonia, and the islanders of the Pacific; and among most of them also the belief has prevailed that certain in dividuals were preserved in an ark, ship, hoat or raft to replenish the desolated earth with inhabi tants. Nor are these traditions uncorroborated
by coins and monuments of stone. Of the latter there are the sculptures of Egypt, Babylonia. Assyria, and of India ; and, as hinted in a previous article (see ALTAR), it is not unlikely that those of the monuments called Druidical. w Inch bear the name of kist-vaens, and in which the stones are disposed in the form of a chest or house, were in tended as memorials of the ark. At least, It has been shown by Davis (Celtic Researches) that the ark was not only typified among the Celts by rafts and islands, but by a stone ark or chest, which is precisely the meaning of kist (chest) vaen.
(5) Arkite Worship. Being anxious to touch as lightly as possible upon the vast and curious sub ject of Arkite worship, we shall confine our medallic illustrations to the two famous medals of Apamea. There were six cities of this name, of which the most celebrated was that of Syria ; next to it in importance was the one in Phrygia called also litpwr6s, Krbotos, which, as we have seen, means an ark or hollow vessel. This latter thy was built on the river .Marsyas. and there seems to have been a notion that the ark rested on the adjoining hills of Cthenze, and the Sibylline oracles, wherever they were written, also include these hills under the name of Ararat, and mention the same trauition. The medals in question be long. the one to the elder Philip, and the other to Pertinax. In the former it is extremely inter esting to observe, that on the front of the arc is the name of Noah, NrIE in Greek characters. The designs on these medals correspond remarkably. although the legends somewhat %any. In both we perceive the ark floating on the water. containing the patriarch and his wife. the dove on wing, the olive branch. and the raven perched on the ark. These medals also represent Noah and his wife on terra firma, in the attitude of rendering thanks for their safety. On the panel of the ark. in the coin of Pertinax, is the word NUTON, perhaps a provincialism for N/leros, 'an isl mil,' or Nib), 'to revive.' On the exergue of the same medal we read distinctly of the •pallle1711.S. as (10 also in that of the other, the first syllable termi nating the first line. The genuineness of these medals has been established beyond all question by the researches of Bryant and the critical in spection of Abbe Barthelemy. There is another medal, struck in honor of the emperor I h.Jrian, which bears the inscription. 'the ark and the marsyas of the Apanwans.' The coincidences which these medals offer are at least exceedingly curious, and they are scarcely less illustrative of the prevailing belief to which we arc referring, if, as some suppose, the figures represented arc those of Deucalion and Pyrrha.