In the Book of Genesis it is not Noah but the seventh patriarch Enoch who is translated, three generations before the Flood.
There appears to have been some connection or confusion between Enoch and Noah in ancient tradition; both are holy men, and Enoch is said, like Noah, to have predicted the Flood.
It is a curious fact that the dynasty of gods, with which Egyptian mythical history commences, resembles in some respects the list of antediluvian kings of Babylonia given by Berosus as well as the list of antediluvian patriarchs in Genesis.
This dynasty has sometimes seven, sometimes ten reigns, and in the Turin Papyrus of kings, which gives ten reigns, there is the same name for the seventh and tenth kings, both being called Horus, and the seventh king is stated to have reigned 300 years, which is the length of life of the seventh patriarch Enoch after the birth of his son.
Here are the three lists of Egyptian gods, Hebrew patriarchs, and Chaldean kings.
Egypt. Patriarchs. Chaldean Kings. Ptah. Adam. Alorus. Ra. Seth. Alaparus. Su. Enos. Almelon. Seb. Cainan. Ammenon. Hosiri. Mahalaleel. Amegalarus. Set. Jared. Daonus. (Dun in the inscriptions.) Hor. Enoch. Ædorachus. Tut. Methuselah. Amempsin. Ma. Lamech. Otiartes (Opartes). Hor. Noah. Xisuthrus.
It is well known that Enos, like Adam, signifies “man;” hence some writers have supposed that the list of Noah’s ancestors was originally counted from Enos, so that Lamech, Noah’s father, would have been the seventh in descent. There is, moreover, a curious resemblance between the names of the descendants of Seth and those of the descendants of Cain, Methuselah, indeed, being apparently more correctly written Methusael (Gen. iv. 18), which is the Assyrian _Mutu-sa-ili_, “Man of God.” Now Lamech, the descendant of Cain, is the seventh from Adam. It may be noticed that Irad or Jared is the same word as the Assyrian _Arad_, “servant,” and _Arad_ or _Ardutu_ is the Assyrian rendering of the Accadian Ubara, the first part of the name of the father of Xisuthrus, who is actually called Ardates by Abydenus.
Mr. George Smith believed that the real connection between the traditions of Babylonia and Palestine would never be cleared up until the literature of the Syrian population which intervened is recovered. It is very possible that light may be thrown upon the question by the excavations now being made at Jerablus, the site of Carchemish, the capital of the ancient Hittites. Terah may be the same word as Tarkhu, who seems to have been worshipped as a god by the Hittites; and Lucian has preserved a legend of the Flood and the patriarch Sisythes, who is evidently the Xisuthrus of the Babylonians, which was current at Hierapolis or Mabug, a little to the south of Jerablus. In this legend the ark has become a coffer, Sisythes and his family are alone preserved, and the Flood was sent to punish the wickedness of mankind.