Most cultures speak about a big boat filled with animals? I doubt it. To pick a big one, Classical Greek and Roman mythology doesn't mention a world flood. The Norse and their relatives don't have any such story, either.
Concerning Egyptian records, how many kings and cities have been swept away by the desert sands?
We have pretty good written records from the Egyptians going back well past when the flood supposedly happened. There is no break in the Egyptian chronology.
Your asking me to disprove a negative. (i.e. Why is something not there?) I'm not taking the bait.
I can get the same result by asking you to explain why those records still exist. Egyptian writings go back to about 4500 BC. Papyrus was invented around 3000 BC. Papyrus doesn't respond well to water, and yet we have many, many Papyrus writings from before the date that the flood was supposed to have happened. Can you explain their survival?
Most likely, the Biblical flood story comes from around 2200 BC, when Sumerian priests invented mythic science fiction, and wrote a story about the flooding of the earth involving many gods and a pious king Ziusdra. Around 1800 BC, the Bablyonians adapt and expand the flood story in their Epic of Gilgamesh involving the pious king Atrahasis. Around 500 BCE, Hebrew priests in Babylonia take the regionally popular flood story, reduce the gods to one, and demote the king to a commoner named Noah.
Nice conclusion. I dont believe it but at least you posted what you believe. I appreciate the discussion.
Creationists will of course try to claim the chronology is wrong. It can't be wrong enough. Predynastic culture blends rather smoothly with Old Kingdom culture in ways that disallow any total replacement of one people by a completely different one for the last six or so thousand years.
Probably because these are Indo-European myths rather than Semitic ones.
Concerning Egyptian records ....
OK...
WHY are all these folks speaking and writing vastly different languages?
Although the fundamental premise of the creationist approach emphasized the infallibility of literal reading of the bible, few were as aware as those who hold the bible as a daily guide to their lives that the good book was rife with improbabilities and in some cases outright contradictions. Whitcomb and Morris, in one of those necessary departures from literal reading of the scriptures that nonetheless surprise anyone trying to follow their reasoning, concluded that the traditional Ussher flood date of 2450 BC (or its variant of 2459 BC) is probably too recent. On the other hand, noting the similarity of the Sumerian and Biblical flood stories, they consider it impossible that the flood could be vastly older than the stories because the Sumerian version (having been passed on by mere oral tradition, rather than having its truth covered by a divine assurance) was so strikingly similar to the biblical account; surely it would never have retained its similarity to the biblical story if the two traditions had bifurcated many thousands of years before their respective recordings in the first millennium B.C.
Morris quotes one authority who places the date at 3835 BC (based on Abraham birth date of 2167 BC and 1688 years elapsed time between birth of Abraham and flood (John Urquhart, How Old is Man, 1904 Morris p 481)) Elsewhere Morris suggests that the date was in excess of 5000 years ago, though he allowed that some interpretations suggesting that as much as 5000 years had elapsed between the deluge and Abram, which pushes the date of the flood as far back as 7000 BC, stretched the limits of Genesis "almost to the breaking point."
Most ingenious of the recent creationist claims have been those of G.E. Aardsma whose recent paper (Radio carbon and Biblical Chronology ) argues that the Ussher chronology (flood at 2350 B.C.) is too short by exactly a millennium. According to this interpretation, Kings 6:1 should read "1480 years" not "480 years," Aardsma believes; correction of this apparent clerical error would then push Usshers flood date back to 3350 B.C.
http://www.stanford.edu/~meehan/donnelly/bibchron.html
The long and the short of it is that I don't know exactly when 'The Flood' occured. You said that "Papyrus was invented around 3000 BC." Estimates for the flood range from as recent as 2350 BC to an improbable 7000 BC.