For five thousand years, the biblical story of Noah's ark has been stirring the minds of people. Indeed, in fact, from the date of the Great Flood - April 2, 2369 BC. - the rebirth of humanity began. And the closer the Rubicon is to the end of the 20th century and the expected second coming of Christ, the more people who want to find material evidence of the flood - Noah's Ark. One of the attempts was made in the summer of 2000 by an international expedition, which included Russian and Armenian climbers.
The history of the flood, described in detail in the book of Moses - Torah, from where the Old Testament was copied, most likely, is also not the original. The Sumerian epic songs that have come down to us about Gilgamesh (late III - early II millennium BC), a semi-legendary ruler, are amazingly accurate about the flood.
According to the Bible, God ordered Noah to build not just a ship, but a watercraft unsinkable in any storm: "And make it like this: the length of the ark is three hundred cubits, its width is fifty cubits, and its height is thirty cubits" (152 m, 25 m and 12.5 m respectively). (Genesis 6-15, 16). Later, scientists found out that the ratio of the width of the ark and its height corresponds to the so-called "golden ratio", i.e. it is built with great mathematical precision. As a result, the ship could safely endure not only the rolls of huge waves, but even dive to shallow depths. Its displacement was 32,525 tons, and the lower deck was divided into 494 compartments. As for the evidence, as early as 475 BC. the pagan priest of Faith reported that many people, both in his time and earlier, reached the top of Ararat and saw Noah's ark. Greek and Babylonian historians claimed that an “ancient ark” lies in the mountains of Armenia, and people tore off its skin to use it as an antidote or an amulet. According to legend, the Armenian monk Hakob (Yakov), who lived in the 3rd century, repeatedly began climbing Ararat in order to search for the ark, but each time, falling asleep at a height, in the morning he woke up at the beginning of the route. Once an angel appeared to him and on behalf of God handed over a piece of the ark, telling the monk not to try to look for confirmation of what is described in the Bible. Now this piece of wood is kept in the Cathedral of Echmiadzin; which is the center of the Armenian Apostolic Church. A small particle was chipped off from it and presented to Empress Catherine II. And the piece itself was recently shown at the Hermitage.to use it as an antidote or amulet. According to legend, the Armenian monk Hakob (Yakov), who lived in the 3rd century, repeatedly began climbing Ararat in order to search for the ark, but each time, falling asleep at a height, in the morning he woke up at the beginning of the route. Once an angel appeared to him and on behalf of God handed over a piece of the ark, telling the monk not to try to look for confirmation of what is described in the Bible. Now this piece of wood is kept in the Cathedral of Echmiadzin; which is the center of the Armenian Apostolic Church. A small particle was chipped off from it and presented to Empress Catherine II. And the piece itself was recently shown at the Hermitage.to use it as an antidote or amulet. According to legend, the Armenian monk Hakob (Yakov), who lived in the 3rd century, repeatedly began climbing Ararat in order to search for the ark, but each time, falling asleep at a height, in the morning he woke up at the beginning of the route. Once an angel appeared to him and on behalf of God handed over a piece of the ark, telling the monk not to try to look for confirmation of what is described in the Bible. Now this piece of wood is kept in the Cathedral of Echmiadzin; which is the center of the Armenian Apostolic Church. A small particle was chipped off from it and presented to Empress Catherine II. And the piece itself was recently shown at the Hermitage.woke up in the morning at the beginning of the route. Once an angel appeared to him and on behalf of God handed over a piece of the ark, telling the monk not to try to look for confirmation of what is described in the Bible. Now this piece of wood is kept in the Cathedral of Echmiadzin; which is the center of the Armenian Apostolic Church. A small particle was chipped off from it and presented to Empress Catherine II. And the piece itself was recently shown at the Hermitage.woke up in the morning at the beginning of the route. Once an angel appeared to him and on behalf of God handed over a piece of the ark, telling the monk not to try to look for confirmation of what is described in the Bible. Now this piece of wood is kept in the Cathedral of Echmiadzin; which is the center of the Armenian Apostolic Church. A small particle was chipped off from it and presented to Empress Catherine II. And the piece itself was recently shown at the Hermitage.
A certain Dutchman Strue visited Ararat in June 1670. In his book, he tells how he received a reward from a hermit in Rome for his healing. The award turned out to be a wooden cross carved from the wood of Noah's ark by the hermit himself, who lived on the mountain. His name was Alexander Domingo.
The existence of the ark is mentioned in his book "Million" also by Marco Polo, who passed through the Armenian Highlands in the 70s of the XIII century. He gives the following description: "You should know that in the country of Armenia, on the top of a high mountain, rests Noah's ark, covered with eternal snows."
The first official ascent of Mount Ararat was made on September 27, 1829 by an expedition led by Friedrich Parrot, professor of Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia) University. Together with him, the deacon of the Echmiadzin monastery ascended to Ararat, the 20-year-old translator Khachatur Abovyan, who later became a famous Armenian enlightener and twice more climbed to Ararat, two Cossacks of the 41st Jaeger Regiment Alexei Zdorovenko and Matvey Chelpanov and two peasants from the village of Arguri Hovhannes Ayvazyan and Murat Poghosyan. “As for the question of finding the ark on Ararat, physics does not reject such a possibility,” Parrot wrote in his book “Journey to Ararat”. - Considering that the top of Ararat soon after the flood again "began to be covered with eternal ice and snow, especially if we take into account that circumstance,that ice and snow cover up to 100 feet (32 m) thick in high mountains is quite common, there is no convincing reason to doubt that ice cover could easily have formed on the top of Ararat, sufficient to bury an ark 30 cubits high (12, 5 m) ".
At the southern foot of Mount Ararat was the Armenian village of Bayazet, whose inhabitants from generation to generation told about the case of a shepherd who saw a huge wooden ship in the mountains one spring. In the message of the Turkish expedition of 1833, the story told by the shepherd is confirmed, namely: it is said about a ship that appeared in the summer from under the southern glacier.
Even more intriguing was the ascent to the summit of Mount Ararat in search of the ark of the Archdeacon of Jerusalem, Doctor of Theology Nuri. With his five companions on April 25, 1892, he reached the summit. And "there they saw a ship made of wood." According to Nuri's description, everything inside the ship was covered with snow, while outside the tree retained its deep red color. Scientists dealing with the problem of the Flood widely comment on the testimony of Russian military pilots who saw the ark on the slopes of Mount Ararat in August 1916 during a reconnaissance flight. Lieutenant Vladimir Roskovitsky reported that he saw from the side of the airplane "a lake, and on its edge the skeleton of a large ship, 1/4 frozen into the ice." The news of Roskovitzky's flight was first published in 1949 in the Geneva Journal, immediately became a sensation without a single proof and spread all over the world. However, none of the scientific journals reacted to this, considering the publication without foundation in the scientific sense. It is interesting that none of the personnel of this unit remembers a lieutenant with such a surname. Perhaps he changed it on purpose. According to other sources, two other pilots of the 3rd Aviation Regiment of the Russian Air Force Base - Senior Lieutenant Zabolotsky and Lieutenant Pyotr Lesin (Lesmin) - recorded a strange object at an altitude of 4300 m in the lake - a multi-storey raft that was half submerged in ice. The unit commander, Colonel Alexander Coor, sent a report about this to Nicholas II. The First World War was in full swing, but the emperor immediately sent two scientific groups of 150 people to Ararat. They climbed the mountain from two different sides. The search lasted for a month, but the ark was found. The structure was carefully examined,measured and took wood samples. The material for making the raft turned out to be oleander. It is an evergreen tree from the cypress family that does not rot and is particularly durable. In addition, it was coated with a composition similar to modern varnish.
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Ice is also an excellent "preservative" for the ark, from under which a part of the ship comes out every 4-5 years, when the summer is especially hot. This was the case in 1916 as well.
A detailed report on the expedition was sent to Petersburg, which by that time had become Petrograd. The documents got to Leon Trotsky. According to one version, he destroyed them, and shot the couriers. According to the other, the report is stored in one of the St. Petersburg archives and, possibly, will one day be declassified.
In 1921, according to the Treaty of Kars, Ararat, along with some other territories, went to Turkey. Being a border zone with the USSR, and since 1991 - with Armenia, this mountain range is closed for free visits. Climbing Mount Ararat requires a special permit from the Turkish authorities. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to conduct research here.
This permission was obtained by the members of the international expedition, who intended to climb Mount Ararat and search for the ark in early August 2000. Your correspondent was among them. The expedition was attended by 27 people from six countries: the USA, Canada, Italy, Norway, Russia and Armenia. By agreement in Turkey, the citizens of this country were to join us.
Among us, there were already the conquerors of Ararat. Hamlet Nersesyan from Los Angeles climbed to the top of the biblical mountain on August 4, 1986. A 65-year-old chemist from Milan, Angelo Palego, has been to Ararat 15 times since 1985 solely in search of the ark. Once the famous climber Reinhold Messner climbed with him, single-handedly conquered all 14 eight-thousanders of the planet.
We shared a room with Angelo Palego in a Kars hotel, and he told me about his findings. On July 11, 1989, at an altitude of 4300 m, he came across two deep cracks running parallel to one another and forming an even rectangle measuring 100 by 26 meters. It was not immediately possible to get to the structure from the glacier. “You have to go down there on a rope about 200 meters,” said Palego. the glacier has melted a lot this year, we will definitely find it this time."
And here we are at the foot of Mount Ararat. The dazzling white glacier at its top is just a stone's throw away. He attracts to him with such force that, if allowed, he would run, although in the mountains you will not particularly run away. But the Turkish authorities at the very last moment, when we are already standing on the side of the mountain, forbid us to climb without explaining the reasons. We are forced to return to Armenia, abandoning the hope of recovery until uncertain times.
And the mystery of the ark still remains unsolved. Perhaps the French archaeologist André Parrot was right, who in his book “The Flood and Noah's Ark” (1953) wrote, not without irony: “He is indeed being sought, and from time to time, as a rule, is found again. He, like a magnet, invariably attracts people who do not quite clearly represent the border between the legendary and the real."
Ashot LEVONYAN. "X-Files of the 20th Century"