Today the word "ark" has become synonymous with "salvation." The Bible tells about a huge ship built by Noah at the behest of the Almighty. But why did he order it?
The first people, expelled from paradise, lived by their own labor - by the sweat of their brow they worked the land, raised children and adapted to life, not hoping for anyone's help.
Millennia have passed. People forgot their Creator, began to sin. Their wicked deeds filled the cup of God's patience. And he decided to destroy humanity. But among many people, he considered the family of the patriarch Noah worthy of salvation. According to the Bible, God warned Noah about an impending catastrophe, commanding him to build an ark, accurately describing its parameters. Noah was a God-fearing man and fulfilled the Creator's order. It took about a hundred years to build this ship. In addition to Noah's family, there were many animals on board.
At exactly the appointed time, an unimaginable downpour began. He poured without stopping for forty days and nights. The whole Earth disappeared under the water column of a continuous ocean. The peaks of the mountains were not even visible from under the water! For seven months Noah's ark sailed across the endless ocean. But when the ship sailed over the Caucasian mountains, which were submerged in the water, the bottom of the ark caught on the top of Mount Ararat and it ran aground. Only a year after the start of the disaster, Noah opened the roof of the ship and looked around. The family of the righteous was on the ship until the water slept. The Bible indicates that this happened 4400 years ago. Noah and his family left his floating shelter. Nobody needed the ark anymore - they forgot about it. And who needed to drag such a bulky structure from the top of the mountain? The ark fulfilled its role - it saved people and the animal world of the planet.
It is interesting that a legend similar to this one was not only among the ancient Jews, but also among the neighboring peoples. In the Sumerian epic, this ship of salvation was called Utnapishtim. The Babylonian chronicler of the III century - Berossus wrote that numerous pilgrims go to Mount Ararat, picking off pieces of the ark for amulets. This means that even then this ship was considered a shrine. In the 14th century, one of the monks wrote to Rome that the inhabitants of Armenia revered Mount Ararat as sacred: "The people living there told us that no one climbed the mountain, as it probably could not please the Almighty." It is quite difficult to get to the top of Ararat - dangerous animals and poisonous snakes, numerous rockfalls and avalanches, strong winds and thick fogs, deep cracks and gorges make these ascents extremely dangerous in the gorges.
At the same time, traveling to China in the 13th century, Marco Polo noted in his notes: “… in this country of Armenia, on the top of a high mountain rests Noah's Ark, covered with eternal snows, and no one can climb there, to the top, especially that snow never melts and new snowfalls add to the thickness of the snow cover."
In the 16th century, another traveler, Adam Olearius, wrote the following in his book Journey to Muscovy and Persia: “The Armenians and Persians believe that the remnants of the ark are still on the mentioned mountain, which over time have become solid and strong as stone” …
But the most intense searches for the ark took place in the 19th century. Moreover, not only believers, but also severe atheists were engaged in searches. The first is to find a biblical relic, the second is to refute biblical truth. Some of them claimed to have seen a structure similar to the skeleton of a ship.
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So, for example, in 1856, three Englishmen decided to prove that the story with the ark was just fiction. They arrived in the Ararat region and hired several guides for very big money (the locals believed in terrible legends and did not want to go to the mountains in search of the ark, but money then decided everything). They found the ark! But the shock was so great that the British decided to keep the find a secret, threatening the guides with death for divulging: after all, the Ark found was convincing proof of the real existence of Noah and the truthfulness of the Bible. Just before his death, one of the guides, nevertheless, told about this find.
At the same time, there was a statement by Archbishop Nurri, who claimed that in one of the glaciers he saw Noah's Ark, made "of very thick dark red wooden beams." But I could not get close to him, because of the rising hurricane wind.
The search for the legendary ark did not stop even in the 20th century. In 1916, Rostovitsky, one of the first Russian aviators, claimed that when flying over Mount Ararat, he clearly saw the outlines of an incredibly large ship. The Russian government, interested in this information, sent an expedition to Armenia. But the revolution that broke out canceled the search for the Ark, and all the materials of the expedition (reports, photographs) disappeared without a trace. Subsequently, the members of this expedition who survived in the crucible of the war claimed that they had found the Ark! But there was no evidence, and then this territory went to Turkey. And for the seekers of the Ark, the north-western slope of Ararat became inaccessible: there were Turkish military bases there.
In 1955, a French climber brought from his Caucasian expedition a piece of a board, according to his assurances that it was part of Noah's ark. He claimed to have found the Ark frozen in the ice of a mountain lake. When examining this fragment by radiocarbon analysis, it turned out that the object was a contemporary of Christ or even Julian the Apostate, that is, its age dates back to five thousand years. But in scientific circles, this find did not cause delight - you never know where he took this piece of wood.
It must be said that even if the version with the finding of the remains of the ark on Mount Ararat is not confirmed, the optimists of the search engines have another search target - Tendruk (Turkey, 30 km south of Mount Ararat). It was there that the Turkish pilot filmed an object very similar to the wreck of a ship. And then an American researcher brought back fossils from the area that looked like ship beams. There are many more versions where Noah's ship may be located: perhaps this is the Iranian part of Elbrus or, even, the Krasnodar Territory.
It should be noted that too many objects have recently been found in the mountains that resemble a ship in outline - and this greatly complicates the search. Perhaps there is a mistake in this approach. After all, the word "ark" in translation sounds like a "box". Noah built his floating facility not as a ship, in its classical sense (bow, stern), but simply as a chest. This is how the order of the Most High is described in the Bible: “Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make compartments in the ark, and coat it with pitch inside and out. And make it this way: the length of the ark is three hundred cubits; its breadth is fifty cubits, and its height is thirty cubits. And make a hole in the ark, and bring it at the top of the cubit, and make the door to the ark on its side; arrange the lower, second and third dwellings in it. " Let's try to translate this into modern measures of length. So, the chest should be 157 meters long,15 meters high and 26 meters wide. Such a "box" contained about three floors of cages, had an air intake and a door on the side of the entire structure. And the Jewish people did not know how to build ships at that time. So, if you are looking for the Ark, then you need to pay attention to the search for huge tarred logs or an object that looks like a three-story house. Noah was given the task: to take a couple of all kinds of animals, so there were also premises on the ark to accommodate this entire zoo.therefore, on the ark, there were also rooms to house this whole zoo.therefore, on the ark, there were also rooms to house this whole zoo.
The question arises - why are modern people busy looking for the Ark, which is more than four thousand years old? Believers dream of discovering shrines. Perhaps shrines mean things forgotten by Noah on the ark, things that are perceived as artifacts. But most importantly, seekers hope to find any sacred texts related to Noah's journey across the ocean (these are either some records of Noah himself or his family members, or books given by the Almighty).
Seekers with an inquiring mind are trying to find convincing evidence of the information contained in the Bible.
The hope of finding the ark in the vicinity of Ararat is rather illusory. Over the past millennia, large earthquakes have periodically occurred in the mountains, the slopes of the mountains are covered with frozen ancient multilayer lava. In addition, no one was able to find there at least some traces of marine sediments (after all, if the mountains were covered with water, they should be there).
You can try to explain the finds that the searchers of the ark could take for its remains (this is the testimony of pilots, and travelers, and climbers, etc.). So the rocks often have a very bizarre shape (Mother Nature's fantasy is all right). Some of them may have looked like the skeletons of a ship. And the boards? So in ancient times, wooden buildings could have been erected in the mountains. For example, livestock pens - why not? By the way, here is some more interesting information in connection with this assumption: at the place of the search for the Ark, in ancient times, there was a highly developed state of Urartu. The inhabitants of this country undoubtedly built houses, grew plants on mountain terraces and raised livestock.
Our native 21st century provided a person with enough technical means to search for lost artifacts, which, undoubtedly, is Noah's ark. So one of the researchers, studying the map obtained by the satellite, discovered on Mount Ararat a formation resembling a ship frozen in ice in outline. So, the story of the search for the rescue ship is not over.