Wives aboard Noah's Ark
The wives aboard Noah's Ark were part of the family that survived the Deluge in the biblical Genesis flood narrative from the Bible.
[4] A kabalistic work that appeared in 1670, known as Comte de Gabalis, maintains that the name of Noah's wife was Vesta.
Patriarch Eutychius of Alexandria, writing in Arabic, also states that Shem's wife was Salit, Ham's Nahlat, and Japheth's Arisisah, all daughters of Methuselah.
[9] Hungarian folklore has several tales about Japheth and his wife called Eneh, attributing this information to the Chronicles of Sigilbert, Bishop of Antioch in the 14th-century Képes Krónika.
Mandaean literature, of uncertain antiquity, refers to Noah's (or Shem's)[12] wife by the name Nuraita (or Nhuraitha, Anhuraita, various other spellings).
(According to George Sale's Commentary on the Quran (1734), some Muslim commentators asserted that Noah had had an infidel wife named Waila, who perished in the deluge, and was thus not aboard the Ark.)
Similar traditions seem to have endured for several centuries in some form, for in Petrus Comestor, we read that the wives of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth are Phuarpara, Pharphia, Cataflua, and Fliva respectively, and in a 15th-century Middle English catechism, we find written "What hicht Noes wyf?"
"[citation needed] Ælfric of Eynsham's Anglo-Saxon translation of the Heptateuch (c. 1000) included illustrations with the wives' names recorded in the captions.
In medieval mystery plays Noah's wife is often portrayed as a comical harridan who refuses to board the arc and has to be dragged into it by force [16] According to the 15th-century monk Annio da Viterbo, the Hellenistic Babylonian writer Berossus had stated that the sons' wives were Pandora, Noela, and Noegla, and that Noah's wife was Tytea.
The Portuguese friar Gaspar Rodriguez de S. Bernardino wrote in Itinerario da India por terra ate a ilha de Chypre in 1842 that the wives of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth were named Tytea or Phuarphara, Pandora or Parphia, Noela or Cataflua, and Noegla, Eliua or Arca.
In Robert Southey's Common-place Book from around the same time, similar names are given, with the information attributed to the "Comte de Mora Toledo": Titea Magna; Pandora; Noala or Cataflua; and Noegla, Funda or Afia, respectively.
