“The Eight” Flood Survivors in Global Deluge Legends A Shared Human Memory

A big percentage of the – by now – over 700 global Flood legends, mentioned exactly eight people who were spared and survived. It is uncanny that this number is handed down as fact so uniformly, instead of ten or five or some other random number.

EGYPT: In ancient Egypt one Flood hero was Toth who survived the Deluge along with his Seven Sages.

The Egyptian ‘Ogdoad (does the Latin word for 8 ‘octo’ from that?) were a group of eight survivors led by the main character Nun and his wife Naunet. Nun or Nu (Noah) is pictured in Egyptian art as upholding his boat with the seven other survivors here:

The eight deities were four pairs of males and females with their names and derivatives as follows:

The names of Nu and Nut were written with determiners for Heaven and Water. Nu like Nuah, Manu, Nuh, Nüwa, Nu-u, Nur, and many other similar ethnic names of Noah the Flood survivor.

SUMERIA: The ancient Sumerian King list speaks of 10 pre-Flood kings, after whom “the Flood swept over. After the Flood had swept over and kingship descended from heaven, Kish (Cush) became the seat of kingship. Sumerian legends also mention Oannes and his seven wise men who traveled the new Earth and instructed the people everywhere in ethics, agriculture and morals.

BABYLON: An ancient Babylonian legend speaks of a pre-Flood series of ten kings, whereas the ancient Hindus (N.W India) spoke about a series of Ten Pitris who ruled before the global Flood, and the ancient Egyptians described them as the “Ten Shining Ones” who ruled consecutively before the Deluge. These pre-Flood patriarchs lived much longer than we do, and this was confirmed by the ancient historians Berosus, Nicolaus of Damascus, Hesiod, Plato, Hecataeus, Mochus, Hieronymus, and Manetho.

The last of these kings in the aforementioned lists was also the hero who led seven others – making eight again! – aboard a vessel in which they survived the global Flood. In ancient Babylon, the hero’s name was Zisudra who led the survival on a ship with seven other humans, the Seven Apkallu.

HEBREWS: Moses wrote his five books of the Torah from his own contemporary experiences and compiled the history of the world from his Egyptian adoptive family’s hieroglyphic records as well as from the Babylonian-Sumerian cuneiform tablets from his biological Hebrew ancestors. In his very accurate Genesis narrative he mentions the Eight Survivors on the Ark by name as Noahk, his three sons Shem, Yapheth, and Ham, and their four wives.

INDIA: In ancient N.W. India, you can find a temple to the Flood hero the ‘god’ Manu (note the similarity to Nu), who survived the global Flood or “Pralaya” with his Seven Rishis.
In the legend from the Southern Indian Tamils the Flood was survived by again eight people, Satyavrata (Noah), Sharma (Shem), Charma (Ham), and Pra-Japati (Yapheth), plus their wives of course. So apart from the exact number of eight flood survivors, even the very names of the sons are almost identical to Noah’s sons in Moses record Genesis chapter 10.

MANU and his seven Rishis

CHINA: Although the ancient history of China does not consider their original group of eight patriarchs, called the ‘San Huang Wu Di’, all as survivors of the Flood, it is noteworthy that even the Chinese have a group of Eight primo-patriarchs consisting of the ‘Three August Ones’ and the ‘5 Emperors’.

Fu Xi and Nu Wa pictured with dragon tails intertwined

Actually two of those ARE considered Flood survivors, to wit Fuxi and Nüwa, who were then the only people on a post Flood earth. because they were siblings they asked the Creator if they could marry, and permission was granted. Then they procreated by making children from clay that came alive and populated the world.

Then there is another group of Eight Immortals or the Eight ‘Xian’ These ‘Ba Xian’ were a group of legendary “immortals” in Chinese mythology. Each immortal’s power can be transferred to a power tool (法器) that can bestow life or destroy evil. Together, these eight tools are called the “Covert Eight Immortals” (暗八仙). Most of them are said to have been born in the Tang or Song dynasty. They are revered by the Taoists and are also a popular element in the secular Chinese culture. They are said to live on a group of five islands in the Bohai Sea, which includes Penglai Mountain-Island. These Immortals are:

• He Xian’gu
• Cao Guojiu
• Li Tieguai
• Lan Caihe
• Lü Dongbin
• Han Xiangzi
• Zhang Guolao
• Zhongli Quan

BA GUA

The number eight in Chinese history is also related to the Ba Gua or Pa Kua, 8 trigrams created by Fuxi, one of the Flood survivors, and these represent the fundamental principles of reality, seen as a range of eight interrelated concepts. Each consists of three lines, each line either “broken” or “unbroken,” respectively representing yin or yang. Due to their tripartite structure, they are often referred to as “trigrams” in English.

Chinese Character For Ship

Even more significant is the fact that the character for boat or ship is made up of three radicals, one for basic boat, and eight mouths a denomination for people! (see above)

Ship with eight mouths

The odds are astronomically long that these supposedly distinct civilizations would have the same legend of a global Flood with eight people surviving from the pre-Flood population that was led by a series of ten kings if it were not real history that happens to corroborate the accounts from Genesis, from the Greek, Babylonian and Sumerian legends.

From 8 to almost 8 billion in 4000 years?

This older graphic below shows only 6 of the present 7 plus billion people in the world. Is it possible that 8 people could procreate into alomst 8 billion people in only 4400 years. According to scientists it is very likely that our present world population indeed could be traced back to a small group around 2400 BC.