The biblical ark has attracted the attention of archaeologists for centuries, but a recent discovery could turn our minds around. Irving Finkel, an employee of the British Museum, told reporter Jason Goodyear about his outstanding find.
Even those who didn't go to Sunday school know what Noah's ark looked like. The new Hollywood movie Noah further reinforces the conventional wisdom. Did you think the ark was a long wooden ship with a pointed prow and a large house on deck? Nothing like this. At least that's what Irving Finkel, a Middle Eastern historian at the British Museum, says in his book The Ark Before Noah. By translating an ancient version of the Flood story found on a clay cuneiform tablet, Finkel discovered instructions on how to build an ark. The discovery itself is outstanding, but it is especially interesting that the ship described in the text is round.
Everyone knows the story of the flood, Noah and the animals, but isn't this tablet older than the Bible?
As you know, Babylon had its own version of the flood myth. It was found on clay tablets back in 1872 here, in the British Museum. At one time, this created a real sensation among Christian and Jewish theologians who studied the Bible. The parallels between the new find and the biblical text were so obvious that it is difficult to doubt their connection. Since then, many more tablets from different periods have been found. Some have come down to us entirely, others have only fragments left. And finally, our last tablet, one of the oldest: it was written around 1750 BC. e.
What else, besides age, is this plate remarkable for?
It follows from it that the Babylonians envisioned the ark as a coral, a round and light wicker flat-bottomed boat. It turned out to be completely unexpected
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given, after all, according to the biblical description of Noah's ark - something like a long ship. This idea is firmly rooted in our minds, and the sudden appearance of this boat in the text is at first shocking. Deciphering the words on the plate, you simply get confused and think: "What the hell is this?"
Coracles were common at the time the tablet was written?
In Iraq, corals were built from ancient times to the very middle of the 19th century. In photographs from the 1920s, they are seen in abundance along the river banks. They were used as taxis. To get across the river with two daughters and a couple of goats, it was enough to hire a ferryman on a coral. The good thing about Coracles is that it is lightweight, floatable and completely waterproof, that is, essentially unsinkable. These are the qualities that Noah's ark required.
It must be floating, but it does not need to sail anywhere, unlike a purposefully moving ship with a bow and stern. The Ark just needs to float like a cork until the water subsides. But what is completely unexpected - the plate describes how it was built, all dimensions are indicated, even the amount of bitumen and ropes. And the given figures, of course, are too large for a coral, but at the same time they are very accurate.
So the plate is a set of instructions? Or is it a description of what really happened?
Well, that's a good question. The answer is not entirely straightforward. It seems to me that the story of the flood has a real basis, because Iraq is located along large rivers and is often subject to flooding. There is a lot of historical evidence of this. I think it all started with the fact that a tsunami hit the territory of Iraq, or Mesopotamia, sometime in the distant past. Perhaps, many villages were immediately washed away into the bay, and this event will forever remain in the memory of the people.
Then the story gradually became a myth. And I think that all these technical details are not instructions at all for those who are going to build an ark for themselves. As far as I understand, itinerant storytellers have long passed from mouth to mouth the story of floods - about the wrath of the gods, about salvation at the last moment, about the flood itself and the subsequent settlement of the world. This is the classic, main theme of their mythology, and, judging by the cuneiform tablets, it was formed even before the advent of writing.
So why do we need such detailed information?
Our gripping tale is centered around divine intervention and a ship, but remember that its audience consisted primarily of boatmen, fishermen and coral builders. Imagine: the whole village has gathered and is fascinatedly watching this drama in the spirit of the films with Bruce Willis, and then the narrator, portraying a god, loudly says: "You must build a boat!" And if he simply says: "The largest boat in the world," the audience will surely ask: "Well, how did it look?" As soon as all these questions arise: which boat? how big? - neither the interested audience, nor the narrator can get away from them.
Over time, curiosity should only grow, but it was resolved, it seems to me, very simply. Some school teacher who trained professional scribes taught the children practical calculations like "how many bricks are needed for a wall." And one day he offered his students a problem: “As you know, the ark is a round coral. Suppose its area is 3600 m2, and the height of the walls is 6 m. How many ropes are needed for construction if their diameter is one inch? " It is this kind of problem that we find on mathematical tablets; future scribes should have been perfectly able to solve them. The coral is shaped like a donut, and if you know the height of the walls and the thickness of the rope, you can calculate the required length of the ropes from the drawing.
Note that the tablet, found in 1872, contains a much longer version of the myth, with details of the materials for the ark being kept to a minimum. But I am sure that the original version paid much more attention to preparing for the flood and building the ark, because the listeners made their own corals and found all the technical details important and entertaining. Over time, the myth got into a more urbanized environment, and of course, in the capital of the Assyrian Empire, no one was interested in such details, so they gradually disappeared from the stories.
Could such a super ship be able to withstand a family and a few animals?
I found a photo of a coral with thirty people on board, so it's possible. Now they are shooting a documentary about ancient shipbuilding specialists who are trying to accurately reproduce the ark according to the description. They hired workers, prepared materials, and calculated dimensions, strengths, and load capacities using computer models. And they soon came to the conclusion that it was impossible to build a coral of this size, as indicated on the plate - half a football field. With such a gigantic scale, its structure simply would not withstand the loads. Therefore, it was necessary to reduce the ark so that using traditional methods of construction, it still turned out to be strong enough. As a result, it turned out to be 2-3 times less.
That is, most likely, the Babylonians never tried to build such a ship?
I do not think that in ancient times anyone tried to build a coral of this size. People accepted the very mythological theme of the ark, not really thinking about it. Of course, they spent their entire lives next to boats and therefore were interested in details. It was in the narrative that so many details emerged, but I don't think the listeners ever thought to recreate the ark. The main thing is that the concept itself suits them.
Is there a chance that Noah or some other similar character actually existed?
According to the Bible, the whole world is hopelessly mired in vice and only Noah could save it. In Babylonian myth, the flood did not happen because people were sinful. Rather, they just made a lot of noise and very much bothered the gods with their eternal vanity. These are two completely different worlds, both psychologically and poetically.
It is a matter of taste to imagine Noah as a man in sandals, with a beard and a sailor's gait, or to consider this story as a symbolic depiction of the frailty of mankind in the face of God. The whole story is about how the forces of nature and God's will can destroy the whole world, and that sometimes a single person is enough to turn away the wrath of God. This is the most important religious and philosophical idea, and it is absolutely irrelevant to it whether there really was Noah or someone like him a thousand years earlier. Much more important to me is the power of this story: it has an unforgettable impact on the reader - both in ancient Babylonia and in the Bible, where it takes on a whole new meaning.