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Claim CH501:

We can expect to find Noah's ark on Mount Ararat.




  1. Mount Ararat (known locally as Agri Dagi) is very likely the wrong place to look. Genesis says only that the Ark landed on the mountains of Ararat, where Ararat is not a single mountain but a region (2 Kings 19:37, Isa. 37:38, Jer. 51:27). That region, known in Assyrian records as Urartu, is, roughly, bounded on the west by the Euphrates River, on the south by the western Taurus Mountains (northern Iraq), somewhat east of Lake Urmia, and north to include the plain of the Araxes River. "The mountains of Ararat" implies not a single peak, but a mountainous region within this area, such as the Qardu region (northern Kurdistan) west of Lake Urmia. Early reports of the ark place it on several different mountains, including some in the Qardu region. Mount Ararat is not mentioned as a landing site until the eleventh or twelfth century (Bailey 1989, 61-82).

  2. No wooden structure, including the ark, should be expected to survive intact after 4,500 years. The weather on Ararat is harsh and changeable; it would have destroyed the ark if it were exposed. Some people claim that the ark could have survived in a glacier, protected by the covering ice, but this also is unlikely. First, the ice would have crushed the ark. Second, glaciers flow, carrying along whatever is inside them. Different parts often flow at different rates, which would deform the ark. And the ark started on the ground, so it would have been eroded as the glacier dragged it over the rocks.


  1. Bailey, 1989, see below.

Further Reading:

Bailey, Lloyd, 1989. Noah: The Person and the Story in History and Tradition. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

created 2001-3-31