According to the Bible, Noah's ship is a ship that was built by the Old Testament patriarch at the command of God. He did this to save the family and all the animals of the world from the impending Flood. It is believed that in this way it was possible to save life on Earth. In this article, we will talk about the construction of the ark and its search, which has been going on for many centuries.
Bible Sources
In the Bible, Noah's ship is described in the Old Testament. It is argued that the Flood was preceded by a general decline in morality. God, seeing how corrupted man was, even repented that he had once created him.
However, he found a pure righteous man serving him. It was Noah. God appeared to him, saying that he would destroy mankind, and he was commanded to build an ark. After the work was completed, Noah's sons and wives entered the ship, as well as a couple of all the animals, in order to save them too.
A week after that, it began to rain, which destroyed the rest of humanity.
Timeconstruction
The Bible states that Noah was 500 years old when he started building the ark. At that time, the patriarch had three sons: Ham, Shem and Japheth. By the time the work was completed, he was already 600 years old.
The age of Noah, like other antediluvian patriarchs, is in the hundreds. It is believed that he lived a total of 950 years.
According to Jewish tradition, the dates indicated in the Bible correspond to the lunar months of the Jewish calendar. From this we can conclude that the flood continued during the modern calendar year.
Noah's ship is mentioned in many medieval sources. In particular, in the works of Marco Polo, Josephus Flavius, as well as in the Russian "Tale of Bygone Years".
Search for the Ark
In Armenian history there are references that Hakob Mtsbnetsi, a saint of the Armenian Apostolic Church, who lived in the III-IV centuries, went in search of the ship, Noah's Ark. He repeatedly climbed Mount Ararat, since, according to legend, there was a ship on its top.
According to legend, every time he fell asleep in the middle of the journey. And when he woke up, he again found himself at the foot of the mountain. During another attempt, an angel appeared to him, who asked him to stop searching for the ark, promising in return to give him a piece of the ship's wooden paneling. Upon waking up, Saint Hakob allegedly discovered this fragment nearby and took it to the Etchmiadzin Cathedral, which is located on the territory of the modern Armenian city of Vagharshapat. This artifact remains there today.
At the place where, according to legend, Mtsbnetsi found a fragment of the ark, a monastery was erected. Akhor gorge, where all this happened, became known as the gorge of St. Akop.
This belief is believed to be an adaptation of an earlier legend that also claimed that the summit was inaccessible. Efforts to locate Noah's ship on Mount Ararat have been made regularly since the 4th century AD.
19th century explorers
From the 19th century, expeditions began to be made to the places where, according to legend, the ark landed on the ground. However, none of them were successful. At the same time, many researchers claimed to have seen something that they identified as the remains of this ship.
In 1887, a certain John Joseph, who called himself the Archbishop of Babylon, announced the discovery of the ark. Six years later, he even made an attempt to organize an expedition to dismantle the ship and deliver it to the Chicago World's Fair. Joseph managed to get the necessary funding, but the Turkish authorities prohibited the transportation of the ark if it was found.
Historians consider all of John's claims extremely dubious due to his identity, as he constantly used titles that were not confirmed by anything, and spent some time in an insane asylum in California.
Messages from pilots
At the beginning of the 20th century, reports began to come in from pilots who claimed to have seen the ark. One of the first was the Russian lieutenant Vladimir Roskovitsky, who duringWWI emigrated to America.
He claimed that while flying over Mount Ararat, he saw a large ship and assumed that it was Noah's Ark. The pilot made a drawing of what he saw, filed a corresponding report. A year later, the authorities allegedly sent an expedition led by Roskovitsky, who found the ark and took many photos of Noah's ship.
However, during the revolution, the report disappeared. In addition, Turkey at that time participated in active hostilities against Armenia and Russia, and Mount Ararat itself was occupied.
No documentary evidence of this discovery has been preserved. Even the existence of a pilot with such a surname has not been confirmed. The main source of this whole story was an article by a certain person who called himself the son of Roskovitsky, which was published in the magazine "Technology - Youth".
French expedition
In 1955, the expedition to Ararat was organized by the French explorer and industrialist Fernand Navarra. He brought back the remains of a plank, which he himself claimed had been broken off from the wooden frame of the ark.
Some scientists have confirmed that the age of the tree presented by him is about five thousand years. But all studies were variable and subjective. For example, experts could not even agree on what kind of oak it was.
As a result, radiocarbon analysis data obtained from five laboratories established that the tree appeared in the second half of the first millennium AD.
Araratskayaanomaly
One of the main places where the search for the ark is still going on is the Ararat anomaly. This is an object whose nature is still unknown. It is located at an altitude of approximately 2200 meters above sea level, protruding from the snow on the northwestern slope of Mount Ararat.
Some scientists explain its appearance by natural causes, focusing on alleged photos of Noah's Ark. The ship, in their opinion, it is not. However, access to this area is difficult. Largely due to the fact that it is located on the Armenian-Turkish border. This is a closed military zone.
In 2007, a joint Turkish-Hong Kong expedition was organized. Three years later, its participants made an official statement that Noah's Ark was found at an altitude of 4000 meters, where it was frozen into a glacier. The researchers even managed to get into some rooms, make a video and photo of Noah's ship on Mount Ararat. The age of the found remains is estimated at 4800 years.
Another place where the ark can be located is the Tendriuk area, located 30 kilometers south of Ararat. In the American magazine Life in 1957, photographs were published of Turkish pilot Ilham Durupinar, who, looking through aerial photographs, discovered a strange object resembling a ship in outline.
The study of this phenomenon was taken up by the American doctor Ron Wyatt. After several expeditions, he came to the conclusion that this is Noah's Ark. In 1987, a touristcenter.
Criticism
At the same time, professional archaeologists are skeptical about both versions. In particular, researchers believe that the Bible is not talking about Mount Ararat, but about the area in the north of Assyria, known at that time as Urartu.
In the Middle Ages, there was an opinion that it was impossible to look for the ark. It was believed that the day it was discovered, the end of the world would come. There are many supporters of this theory today. The search for Noah's Ark was also condemned in medieval Armenia. Mount Ararat was considered holy, so it was blasphemous to look for a ship on it.
