The Search
For centuries Armenian monks, Russian soldiers, German scientists, an English politician, an American astronaut, and even a Baywatch star have looked for the ark. “The discovery of Noah’s ark would be the greatest archaeological find in human history,” Melville Bell Grosvenor, National Geographic Society president, is reported to have said.
“In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.” Is it possible the ark of Noah could still be on Mount Ararat? Or somewhere else? Mount Ararat is awe-inspiring and treacherous. Most mountains, even very tall ones, don’t look quite so majestic because of other mountains around them. However, Mount Ararat rises nearly 12,000 feet above the semi-arid plains of eastern Turkey in one of the most politically sensitive places on earth. Ararat is such a treacherous mountain that its Turkish name, Agri Dagh, means “the Mountain of Pain.” Blinding snowstorms, avalanches, deep crevasses, and volcanic scree make it a challenge to explore. Glaciers in places two hundred feet thick cover several square miles of the mountain. Poisonous snakes and scorpions add to the danger. And because Ararat sits by itself, it acts like a giant lightning rod. John Morris reported that when he climbed Ararat, “Our ice axes and crampons were singing, our hair was standing on end, even J.B.’s beard and my moustache were sticking straight out.”[1] The earliest story we have of a search for the ark occurred 1,800 years ago. Saint Jacob, bishop of Medzpin, was a devout man. Every day he would climb Ararat, fall asleep from exhaustion, and wake up the next morning at the bottom of the mountain where he had started. He repeated his efforts daily until finally an angel appeared to him and gave him a piece of wood from the ark, which he carried down the mountain. Jacob’s wood is still preserved in the Etchmiadzin Cathedral in Armenia. One thousand years later, European travelers told stories they heard from Armenian monks. Marco Polo, for instance, wrote, “In the central part of Armenia stands an exceedingly large and high mountain, upon which, it is said, the ark of Noah rested.” A British scholar, John Kitto, visited Ararat in the 1830s and reported, “Many attempts were made in former times to attain the summit, access to which the native Armenians believe to be supernaturally forbidden; yet with strange incongruity, they sell to pilgrims relics from the wood of the ark, which is still believed to lie upon the summit.”[2] In 1829, a German scientist and mountaineer, Friedrich Parrot, explored Ararat with three Russian soldiers, four scientists, and a monk as an interpreter. The group became the first in modern times to reach the summit where, Parrot wrote, "no human being has ever been since the time of Noah." To memorialize the occasion they planted a cross they had carried with them. A major earthquake on June 20, 1840, altered Mount Ararat and destroyed a monastery and chapel built by St. Jacob. A Russian army officer who explored the area in the early 1900s lamented that Jacob’s chapel had contained “many ancient relics of the epoch of Noah, many ancient manuscripts and books,”[3] but they were now buried.
The earthquake opened up the Ahora Gorge, which drops more than a mile, and after the earthquake more and more sightings of the ark have been claimed, many in or around the Ahora Gorge. Among those who have searched for the ark are
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In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Ararat has been searched by hundreds of “arkaeologists,” who believe the ark is there. But the critical evidence—a piece of wood, a photograph, a detailed report, an eyewitness—all seem to have been seen at one time, sometimes by many witnesses, but cannot be found. George Greene is not the best known ark searcher, but his story illustrates the almost-but-not-quite nature of the search. In the summer of 1953, George, an oil and pipeline engineer, was working in Turkey, and since he had a helicopter at his disposal, he went looking for the ark. He spotted it in an almost inaccessible region of Mount Ararat between 13,000 and 14,000 feet. While the pilot hovered above the ark, George photographed it and carefully noted the location on his geologic maps. He said the ark was sitting on a shelf on the side of a vertical rock cliff. Only a third was visible; the rest was covered by snow and rock debris. When George got back to the United States, he wanted to raise money to find the ark again, and so he showed his pictures to dozens of people. His work kept him on the road—Utah in 1954, Nova Scotia in 1955—and a friend in Texas kept the pictures until 1961 when George picked them up. A bit later he went to British Guiana to help out at a gold mine. We don’t know whether he took the pictures with him. What we do know is that on December 27, 1962, George Greene was found face down in the swimming pool at his hotel in Georgetown, British Guinea. Some think he had been thrown there from the balcony of his room. Perhaps his killers—if there were killers—thought he had gold in his room. But nothing was taken. . . except the contents of his briefcase, which was empty. Did he have the pictures with him? At least thirty people say they saw the photos and one even sketched out what he remembered the picture of the ark looked like. As far as anyone knows, George Greene’s pictures of the ark on Ararat have not been seen in more than fifty years. Stories are also told in Noah: The Real Story of four fake ark finds: Vladimir Roskovitsky in 1916, George Jammal, who showed 40 million viewers on CBS his “piece of wood from the ark” that he had literally cooked up, the Durupinar Site, and pictures of “The Discovery of the Ark” in 2010. While most arkaeologists explore Ararat, some believe the ark is elsewhere. Mount Judi The Bible says the ark came to rest “on the mountains of Ararat.” According to the Ararat tradition, Noah and his family settled just east of the mountain in Nakhchivan in Azerbaijan. The tomb of Noah still stands there today. However, the Quran—along with early Jewish and Syriac traditions predating the Quran—says the ark came to rest “on al-Judi,” usually identified with Cudi Dagi, almost two hundred miles southwest of Ararat near the Turkish city of Cizre, which also has a tomb of Noah. Advocates of Mount Judi say “The mountains of Ararat” in Genesis refers to the entire mountainous region in Armenia between the Black and Caspian Seas, including Mount Judi. Mount Suleiman Following clues given by Ed Davis, a U.S. army sergeant who was taken to the ark in 1943 while stationed in northern Iran, Bob Cornuke and two others climbed Mount Suleiman, a 15,300-foot mountain on the southern rim of the Caspian Sea. At 12,500 feet they found a “massive formation.” Parts of it “looked like the petrified remains of an old Spanish galleon.” Bob Cornuke says, “I don’t intend to try to convince anyone of anything.” But if he’s right, Noah’s ark is not on Mount Ararat in Turkey, but on Mount Suleiman in northern Iran. |
[1] John Morris, Adventure on Ararat, quoted in Charles Berlitz, The Lost Ship of Noah (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1987), 70.
[2] John Kitto, Daily Bible Illustrations, (London: Robert Carter & Bros., 1874), 160-163.
[3] Tim F. LaHaye and John D Morris, The Ark on Ararat (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers, 1976), 31.
[2] John Kitto, Daily Bible Illustrations, (London: Robert Carter & Bros., 1874), 160-163.
[3] Tim F. LaHaye and John D Morris, The Ark on Ararat (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers, 1976), 31.