Egypt

(map)

People have become rebellious. Atum said he will destroy all he made and return the earth to the Primordial Water which was its original state. Atum will remain, in the form of a serpent, with Osiris.

Faulkner, Raymond, transl., The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Book of Going Forth by Day (San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1994), plate 29.

This story says little about flooding, but it was the basis for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's ballad "Der Zauberlehrling" ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice," 1797), which in turn inspired Paul Dukas' symphonic poem L'apprenti sorcier (1897), whose music and story was used in Walt Disney's film Fantasia (1940) with Mickey Mouse in the role of the apprentice. In that film, flooding is vividly depicted.

Lucian includes the story in a chapter about people believing preposterous tales.

"When I was young," Eucrates said in a gathering of a few of his friends, "my father sent me traveling to Egypt for my education, and I thought to sail to Koptos to see and hear the statue of Memnon. On the voyage up, I chanced to meet a man from Memphis, one of the scribes of the temple, who was said to have lived underground for twenty-three years learning magic from Isis."

"You mean Pancrates," said Arignotus, "my own teacher, clean shaven, in white linen, always deep in thought, speaking imperfect Greek, tall, flat-nosed, with protruding lips and thin legs."

"The same. I did not know him at first, but I saw him working all sorts of wonders, such as riding crocodiles and taming beasts. By degrees I became his companion and associate, so that he shared his secrets with me.

"Whenever we came to a stopping place, he would take the bar of a door or a broom or pestle, put clothes on it, say a certain spell, and it would go off and draw water or buy provisions or prepare meals -- in every way wait upon us. (We had left human servants behind.) Then when it was done, he would again make the servant a broom or pestle by saying another spell over it. I was keen to learn this, but though he was obliging in everything else, this spell he jealously guarded. One day I hid and heard the spell; it was just three syllables. The next day, while Pancrates was away, I took the pestle, dressed it up, said the syllables over it, and told it to carry water.

"When it had filled the jar, I said, 'Stop! Carry no more water. Be a pestle again.' But it would not obey now. It kept on carrying until it filled the house for us by pouring it in. At my wit's end, I took an axe and cut the pestle in two; but each part took a jar and began to carry water, so now I had two servants instead of one.

"Pancrates appeared on the scene, understood what had happened, turned the servants to wood again, and then left without warning, leaving me to my own devices."

"Then you still know how to turn the pestle into a man?" said Deinomachus.

"Yes," said Eucrates, "but I cannot bring it back to its original form, and we would be obliged to let the house be flooded."

"Will you never stop telling such buncombe?" said Tychiades. "At least put off your amazing and fearful tales to some other time, for the sake of these lads. You ought not accustom them to hear things like this that will make them afraid of every sound by filling them with all sorts of superstition."

A. M. Harmon, transl., Lucian (London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1921), 3: 371-377.