Searches for Noah's Ark

carved at Mount Judi. The Talmud suggests he visited Noah's Ark in the 7th century BCE. At the end of the Genesis flood narrative, when the flooding subsides, the Ark is said to come to rest "on the mountains of Ararat." The Book of Jubilees specifies a particular mountain, naming it "Lûbâr". The Torah does not describe any particular holiness about the Ark, and so little attention is given to its fate after Noah's departure. According to the Talmud, the Assyrian king Sennacherib found a beam from the Ark and, reasoning that it was the god who delivered Noah from the flood, fashioned the wood into an idol. This expands upon the biblical account of Sennacherib worshiping in the temple of Nisroch, interpreting the god's name to be derived from the Hebrew word neser ("beam"). A Midrash regarding the Book of Esther says that the gallows erected by Haman was built using a beam from the Ark. The targumim for Genesis 8 interpret "Ararat" as "Qadron" and "Kardu" (i.e., Corduene). In his recounting of the Flood, Josephus seeks to link the story of Noah to the Sumerian flood myth as described by Berossus, Hieronymus of Cardia, Mnaseas of Patrae, and Nicolaus of Damascus, thereby placing Noah's Ark on a mountain in Armenia, where he says relics from the ship are exhibited "to this day." However, Josephus later describes Carrhae as the location of the Ark, again claiming that the locals would show the remains to visitors. Jerome of Stridon translated "Ararat" as "Armenia" in the Vulgate, whereas the Armenians themselves associated Noah's Ark with Corduene until the 11th century. Epiphanius of Salamis wrote: "Thus even today the remains of Noah’s ark are still shown in Cardyaei." Similarly, John Chrysostom proposed to ask non-believers: "Have you heard of the Flood—of that universal destruction? That was not just a threat, was it? Did it not really come to pass—was not this mighty work carried out? Do not the mountains of Armenia testify to it, where the Ark rested? And are not the remains of the Ark preserved there to this very day for our admonition?" Agathangelos relates a similar story, although not directly related to the Ark, in which the 3rd century Armenian king Tiridates scales Masis and brings back eight rocks to use in the foundation of new churches. ==Middle Ages and early modern period==

In the 7th century, the Etymologiae states "Ararat is a mountain in Armenia where the historians testify that the Ark came to rest after the Flood." The Quran describes the Ark landing on "al-jūdī," which is understood to refer to Qardu, now known as Mount Judi. Heraclius is reported to have scaled Mount Judi to visit the site of the Ark in either 628 or 629. One legend claims that Omar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb removed the Ark from a site near Nisibis and used the wood to construct a mosque. Despite the longstanding association of Armenia with Ararat in Western Christianity, Christians in Armenia did not adopt the idea of Masis as the landing site of the Ark until the arrival of Crusaders in the late 11th century. Thereafter, Armenians adopted the Western identification of Masis as "Mount Ararat", and relocated the Jacob of Nisibis legend to that peak. Regardless of this cultural impediment, other travelers claimed the summit was physically inaccessible, due to the permanent snow line and an abundance of precipices. Late medieval reports from Ararat often mentioned the survival of Ark fragments, but there was less consensus about whether the vessel itself survived. Petachiah of Regensburg simply declared "the Ark is not there, for it has decayed." Just over a century later, however, Hayton of Corycus claimed that "on the mountain's summit something black is visible, which people say is the Ark." ==19th century==

The first recorded ascent of Ararat was led by Friedrich Parrot in 1829. In his account of the expedition, Parrot wrote that "all the Armenians are firmly persuaded that Noah's Ark remains to this very day on the top of Ararat, and that, in order to preserve it, no human being is allowed to approach it." On his ascent, he discovered "a piece of wood about four feet long and five inches thick, evidently cut by some tool, and so far above the limit of trees that it could by no possibility be a natural fragment of one." Bryce cut off a portion of the wood to keep, and later argued that it might plausibly be a remnant of Noah's ark. Although he admitted another explanation for the wood had occurred to him, he determined that "no man is bound to discredit his own relic." As an April Fools' Day joke, George McCullagh Reed, writing as "Pollex" for his opinion column in the New Zealand Herald, claimed that the avalanche had revealed the remains of Noah's Ark. Reed's story largely takes the form of a dispatch supposedly received from the Levant Herald in Constantinople, which he believed to have ceased operations several years earlier; in fact the paper had by that time relaunched as the Eastern Express. The report describes the findings of "Commissioners appointed by the Turkish Government", including a nonexistent English scientist named "Captain Gascoyne", which had already been submitted to Sultan Abdul Hamid II and the German ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. A reference to "an enterprising American traveller" seeking to purchase the Ark for exhibition in the United States was intended by Reed to be recognized as P. T. Barnum. Over the next several months, Reed's prank was picked up by newspapers around the world. While some publications presented the story tongue-in-cheek, others uncritically reprinted much of what Reed originally wrote, attributing it (as he had) to a correspondent in Constantinople. On 24 November, Reed wrote another column apologizing for the hoax and expressing amusement that the story had spread so far: Despite this retraction, the story has continued to be circulated, often referencing the Prophetic Messenger article, which Tim LaHaye and John D. Morris called "the most complete and accurate account of the discovery." John Joseph Nouri John Joseph Nouri claimed to have discovered Noah's Ark on the summit of Mount Ararat in April 1887. Little else about him is known for certain. He was born in Baghdad in 1865, and in 1885 he was consecrated as an archdeacon in the Chaldean Catholic Church. During his tour of the United States, he attracted attention with his long list of formal titles: "His Pontifical Eminence, the most Venerable Prelate, Monseignior. The Zamorin Nouri. John Joseph Prince of Nouri, D.D, LL., D. (By Divine Providence.) Chaldean Patriarchal Archdeacon of Babylon and Jerusalem, Grand Apostolic Ambassador of Malabar, India and Persia. The Discoveror of Noah's Ark and the Golden Mountains of the Moon. The Sacred Crown's Supreme Representative General of the Holy Orthodox, Oriental, Patriarchal Imperiality of 900,000,000 People of Asia. The First Universal Exploring Traveler of One Million Miles." Those who knew him, including J. O. Kinnaman, Frederick G. Coan, and John Henry Barrows, regarded him as a charismatic, well-traveled scholar who spoke multiple languages. In 1893, Nouri attended the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago. An 1897 report that Nouri had been crowned Patriarch at the Chaldean Pontifical Cathedral at Thrissur has been taken as vindication of his authenticity. Nevertheless, Turkish officials did not corroborate his claim of discovering Noah's Ark. ==20th century==

Searches since the mid-20th century have been largely supported by evangelical, millenarian churches and sustained by ongoing popular interest, faith-based magazines, lecture tours, videos and occasional television specials. Alleged Russian expedition In 1940 the article "Noah's Ark Found" appeared in a special edition of New Eden, one of several booklets published in Los Angeles by Floyd M. Gurley. The article was credited to "Vladimir Roskovitsky", and contained his account of discovering Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat circa 1917, "just before the Russian revolution." References to parachutes, oxygen cans, and superchargers in aircraft are anachronistic for the given timeframe. Nevertheless, the story became very popular and was widely reprinted. By 1942, however, at least two publications had retracted the story. Aaron J. Smith In November 1948, Edwin Greenwald reported for the Associated Press that Kurdish villagers had discovered a large, petrified wooden ship on Mount Ararat. When Sykes was unable to proceed due to a lack of funding, Smith went on without him. Haji Yearam Harold Williams, a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor, related the story of Haji Yearam in a 1952 letter to Ark researcher Eryl Cummings. Williams is the sole source for a story he considered to be very important in 1920, yet he made no effort to share it before the destruction of his evidence twenty years later, and no effort to publish it until the 1950s. Fernand Navarra French industrialist Fernand Navarra claimed to have located Noah's Ark in his 1956 book ''J'ai Trouvé l'Arche de Noé''. According to Navarra, he was inspired to search for the ship in 1937, after listening to an Armenian friend describe the legends his grandfather had told him in 1920. However, Navarra would later claim that, while alone, he sighted a large, dark mass that he said could only be the Ark. Since he could not reach this object or provide proof for its existence, he decided not to reveal his discovery until he could return. However, these methodologies for dating wood are unreliable, and rejected by most scientists. Such a precise figure is not possible to obtain from radiocarbon dating, and does not correspond to any biblical chronology except that of Navarra, who wrote in 1955 that the Flood occurred "4,484 years ago." In negotiations for him to personally lead ARF to the site, Navarra demanded considerable financial compensation and royalties from whatever the team might find. The two sides came to an agreement for a 1968 mission, in which Navarra arrived late and injured his foot while attempting to catch up. In 1984, Navarra gave another piece of wood to James Irwin, who submitted it for another round of tests. Irwin's sample was found to be about 1500 years old, with evidence that the pitch coating was of far more recent origin, and applied using modern technology. Several allegations have cast doubt on Navarra's credibility. The size and shape of the object resemble a boat approximately long and wide, inviting speculation that it could be Noah's Ark. Based on Wyatt's promotion of his research, the Turkish government declared the site a national park in 1986. Georgie Hagopian In 1970, Armenian-American Georgie Hagopian reported that his uncle took him to see Noah's Ark twice during his childhood. Different accounts of his story place the first sighting in 1902, 1906, or 1908, with the second incident occurring about two years later. According to this account, the moss-covered Ark lay on the edge of a cliff, so that only one side was accessible. By Hagopian's estimate, the Ark was over long, wide, and over high. To reconcile this estimate with traditional interpretations of the Ark's size, John Warwick Montgomery suggested that "Dimensions regularly appear greater than they actually are to small children." During his outreach work, Irwin met Eryl Cummings in 1976 and expressed interest in joining one of his expeditions in search of Noah's Ark. At the time, Turkish policy had closed off Mount Ararat to explorers, and Irwin was denied a permit in 1977. However, following the 1980 coup Irwin's celebrity allowed him to establish a rapport with President Kenan Evren, who invited him to lead an expedition in 1982. Irwin's 1982 mission ended in disaster when he left the group, in search of a shortcut to the summit, and fell off the trail. He had no memory of what caused the fall, but later speculated that he'd been caught in a rockslide and struck by a rock. He awoke hours later, badly wounded, and crawled into his sleeping bag to survive the night. Undeterred, Irwin returned to Ararat a month later, this time with his wife and son. They chartered an airplane to survey Ararat, and led a 22-member expedition, including Eryl Cummings and several members of Irwin's family. "It's easier to walk on the moon," Irwin said, regarding the difficulties in climbing Ararat. "I've done all I possibly can, but the ark continues to elude us." By the time Irwin could begin his climb on 24 August, only five of his 22-member party were allowed to accompany him, and the expedition was escorted by thirty Turkish soldiers. Just as the team reached the summit, Turkish officials ordered them to descend. By the time the party received permission to resume the mission, they were too exhausted to continue. According to the US Ambassador to Turkey, Robert Strausz-Hupé, the government was reacting to Soviet maneuvers near the border, and concern that Irwin would become a high value target for terrorists. Irwin planned to make a sixth trip to Ararat in July 1986, with a smaller team. These plans were disrupted when he suffered arrhythmia on 6 June. By July, however, he had resumed plans for the expedition. "My doctor is against my traveling, and he said that I cannot go over 10,000 feet," Irwin said. "But the Lord willing, I will be there." After completing an aerial survey of Ararat, Irwin's team was detained at their hotel, under accusations of violating Soviet and Iranian airspace. The party was released once local officials confirmed Irwin's flight had been authorized. A 1987 heat wave in Turkey convinced Irwin to change his mind and return for his seventh expedition to Mount Ararat. He believed the warm temperatures might have melted enough of the mountain's glaciers to make Noah's Ark easier to spot from the air. Irwin's High Flight Foundation teamed with the Institute for Creation Research, Evangelische Omroep, and International Exploration, Inc. for a joint operation. According to ICR's John D. Morris, the Turkish government had banned exploration of Ararat earlier in the year, and only approved this expedition on the condition that the team also evaluate the Durupınar site. Permits to explore Ararat itself were revoked before the party could begin its intended mission. Ultimately the expedition was only able to arrange a high-altitude aerial survey, staying no less than from Soviet and Iranian airspace. The 1987 expedition would be Irwin's last, as doctors ordered him to give up the search. When the High Flight Foundation organized another trip in 1988, Bob Cornuke led the party while Irwin stayed home. Shockey invited Davis to speak at an "ark-a-thon" convention he organized in 1986 at Farmington, New Mexico. According to Davis, during this assignment he befriended a local driver named Badi, and his father Abas-Abas, who claimed to have visited Noah's Ark atop the mountain near their village. Around 1 July, Abas-Abas invited Davis to join them in one such visit, saying that enough snow and ice had melted to partially expose the ship. Upon reaching "Doomsday Point", Davis said he saw the Ark, which "first appeared as a huge rock formation covered by fog." It was lying in a cove lake, within a canyon below his position, and broken into two portions. Abas-Abas claimed that the Ark had been whole in his youth, and had only broken apart within his lifetime. The first published version of his account describes Badi and Abas-Abas as Kurds, which is consistent with a story about visiting a village in Ağrı. ICR's John D. Morris responded to Jammal in 1986, seeking to arrange an interview. Jammal prepared by studying books about the search for the Ark, as well as the 1976 Sun Classic Pictures film ''In Search of Noah's Ark''. During the interview, Jammal used cold reading techniques to elicit information from Morris that would determine Jammal's answers to Morris's questions. Years later, when Sun began work on a follow-up to ''In Search of Noah's Ark'', Morris shared his information on Jammal. David Balsiger, researching the story for Sun, was advised by Ark researchers David Fasold and Bill Crouse that Jammal's account was not credible. Unsure whether to perpetuate the hoax, Jammal contacted noted skeptic Gerald A. Larue, who described how he felt misrepresented by Sun's 1992 TV-movie Ancient Secrets of the Bible. The wood he presented on-screen had in fact been pine found near some railroad tracks in Long Beach, California, which he boiled with spices and baked in an oven. Jammal was critical of Sun's failure to verify his story. "I even gave the production company a piece of the wood to test," he wrote, "but they obviously weren't interested in truth; all they wanted was a good performance. If they had actually been concerned about truth, they should have asked me why Noah's Ark smelled like teriyaki sauce!" A representative for Sun stated that Jammal's segment would be edited from future releases of ''The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark''. ==21st century==

Daniel McGivern Honolulu businessman Daniel McGivern began investigating the search for Noah's Ark in 1995, and eventually financed commercial satellite photos of Mount Ararat. According to his research, a 2003 heat wave melted enough ice and snow on the northwestern slope to reveal a dark patch, which he interpreted as resembling three beams and a crossbeam. In April 2004, McGivern and Turkish mountaineer Ahmet Ali Arslan announced plans for an expedition to the site in July. A Guardian article associated McGivern's site with the Ararat anomaly, a similar phenomenon observed in surveillance photos of Mount Ararat declassified by the US government in the 1990s. Although McGivern hoped to begin the expedition by 15 July, he instead spent the entire summer trying to obtain approval from the Turkish government. His request was finally declined in September. Critics suggested that McGivern announced the expedition before obtaining permission as a publicity stunt to persuade Turkey to authorize it. The choice of Arslan, who claimed in 1989 to have photographed Noah's Ark, to lead the mission was also questioned. "Ahmet is a big talker," according to an ark researcher commenting to National Geographic. "In one conversation he will say that he has 3,000 photos, and in another conversation ten minutes later 5,000 photos." Bob Cornuke , in what is now western Iran During an unsuccessful expedition in 1988, Bob Cornuke became convinced that Noah's Ark could not be on Mount Ararat. He gave up the search, forming the Bible Archeology Search and Exploration Institute in 1992 to seek out other biblical locations and artifacts. However, in 1998 Cornuke learned of the idea that places the Ark's landing site east of Shinar. The object, located above sea level, was reported to be similar in size to estimates for the Ark. "I think we've found something that deserves a lot more research," Cornuke said. "It has a distinct possibility that it could be something like the ark." Critics of the announcement objected to the lack of peer review on Cornuke's findings. Looking at the expedition's photos, experts in geology and ancient timber disputed the possibility that the object was petrified wood. Cornuke's interpretation of scripture was also criticized, as Genesis does not indicate whether Noah's descendants migrated to Shinar directly from Ararat, or from some unnamed intermediate location. Moreover, Genesis 11:2 can be plausibly translated to indicate that the clan migrated eastward, suggesting a point of origin west of Shinar. By 2010, Cornuke had stopped looking for Noah's Ark, saying "I came down (from the mountain) with all this evidence for Noah’s Ark, and nobody cared." In 2012 he wrote "In all my 25 years of searching for the ark I have never seen the old boat." Noah's Ark Ministries International in Hong Kong In 2004, Media Evangelism founder Andrew Yuen Man-fai and pastor Boaz Li Chi-kwong announced the discovery of parts of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat. They reported that their team found a large wooden structure at an elevation of during their fourth trip to the mountain. According to an exhibit at Hong Kong's Noah's Ark theme park, the search team had been exploring Ararat as Noah's Ark Ministries International (NAMI) since 2003. Yuen and Li had no evidence of their claim beyond blurred images, as they said a "mysterious force" disrupted their video footage. According to NAMI's website, Turkish mountaineer Ahmet Ertuğrul (nicknamed "Paraşut") submitted a sample of petrified wood to NAMI, which he claimed to have obtained in August 2006 from a second wooden structure, located up Mount Ararat. NAMI claimed that an expedition was sent in February 2007, which found that the 2004 site had collapsed due to an earthquake, and was prevented from examining the 2006 site due to weather conditions. An October 2007 press conference announced that a follow-up mission in August successfully recovered more petrified wood from the site Ertuğrul reported. In a press conference on 25 April 2010, NAMI announced that an October 2009 expedition had excavated and filmed the wood structure discovered by Ertuğrul. Although NAMI's website claimed Ertuğrul discovered the site in August 2006, he stated at the press conference that he learned of it in June 2008. Footage of the interior of the structure was released on NAMI's YouTube account. NAMI said that Turkey would submit the location for designation as a World Heritage Site; however, when reached for comment a spokesperson for UNESCO said that the organization had not received such a request. Mainstream scientists objected to the lack of professional archaeologists involved with the research, and the decision to reveal the findings via a media event rather than publishing a peer-reviewed study. Creationists also expressed concern about the lack of data available for independent corroboration. Andrew A. Snelling later said that NAMI supplied him with their radiocarbon dating report, which showed that only one test of one sample had produced the publicized result of 4800 BP. Moreover, Snelling rejected the 4800 BP result as evidence for Noah's Ark, based on creationist beliefs about carbon-14 levels in antediluvian wood. Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism expressed doubt that NAMI secured permission to conduct their expeditions, and began an investigation as to how NAMI transported its wood samples from Turkey to China. Within days of the announcement, Randall Price, who had consulted with NAMI in 2008, came forward with allegations that Ertuğrul hired Kurdish workers to construct the site using wood from an old structure near the Black Sea. NAMI issued a statement saying that its relationship with Price ended in October 2008, and he was therefore unfamiliar with findings made after that time. Defending NAMI's claims, team members argued that it would not be possible to haul enough materials up Mount Ararat to build the structure that they had described. In rebuttal, Price and his colleague Don Patton cited the use of heavy equipment in other Ararat expeditions, as well as a 2007 publicity stunt in which Greenpeace built a replica of Noah's Ark on the mountain. After promoting the release of the 2011 film The Days of Noah 2: Apocalypse, the NAMI website NoahsArkSearch.net was no longer updated. Support for NAMI's claims was later taken up by Norman Geisler, who invited Ertuğrul to speak at an apologetics conference organized by Southern Evangelical Seminary in October 2015. Joel Klenck, formerly associated with NAMI, has continued to promote NAMI's claims as recently as December 2020. NAMI and Ertuğrul never disclosed the location of the site they reported, although Price and Patton claimed in 2010 to have independently located it. ==Conflicting opinions==

Modern organized searches for the ark tend to originate in American evangelical circles. According to Larry Eskridge, An interesting phenomenon that has arisen within twentieth-century conservative American evangelism – the widespread conviction that the ancient Ark of Noah is embedded in ice high atop Mount Ararat, waiting to be found. It is a story that has combined earnest faith with the lure of adventure, questionable evidence with startling claims. The hunt for the ark, like evangelism itself, is a complex blend of the rational and the supernatural, the modern and the premodern. While it acknowledges a debt to pure faith in a literal reading of the Scriptures and centuries of legend, the conviction that the Ark literally lies on Ararat is a recent one, backed by a largely twentieth-century canon of evidence that includes stories of shadowy eyewitnesses, tales of mysterious missing photographs, rumors of atheistic conspiracy, and pieces of questionable "ark wood" from the mountain. (...) Moreover, it skirts the domain of pop pseudoscience and the paranormal, making the attempt to find the ark the evangelical equivalent of the search for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. In all these ways, it reveals much about evangelicals' distrust of mainstream science and the motivations and modus operandi of the scientific elite. Ark-seeker Richard Carl Bright considers the search for the ark a religious quest, dependent on God's blessing for its success. Bright is also confident that there is a multinational government conspiracy to hide the "truth" about the ark: I firmly believe that the governments of Turkey, Russia, and the United States know exactly where the ark sits. They suppress the information, but (...) God is in charge. The structure will be revealed in its time. We climb the mountain and search, hoping it is, in fact, God's time as we climb. Use us, O Lord, is our prayer. ==See also==