The Ark Before Noah written on a clay tablet 4000 years ago... Think "round"

LONDON (AP) -- It was a vast boat that saved two of each animal and a handful of humans from a catastrophic flood.

But forget all those images of a long vessel with a pointy bow - the original Noah's Ark, new research suggests, was round.

A recently deciphered 4,000-year-old clay tablet from ancient Mesopotamia - modern-day Iraq - reveals striking new details about the roots of the Old Testament tale of Noah. It tells a similar story, complete with detailed instructions for building a giant round vessel known as a coracle - as well as the key instruction that animals should enter "two by two."

Elizabeth Stone, an expert on the antiquities of ancient Mesopotamia at New York's Stony Brook University, said it made sense that ancient Mesopotamians would depict their mythological ark as round.

"People are going to envision the boat however people envision boats where they are," she said. "Coracles are not unusual things to have had in Mesopotamia."

hosted.ap.org...

Many many tales of a great flood from different widely dispersed ancient societies.. Two by two with the animals would have been a problem no matter how you cut it...

The tablet records a Mesopotamian god's instructions for building a giant vessel - two-thirds the size of a soccer field in area - made of rope, reinforced with wooden ribs and coated in bitumen.

"The idea that floods are caused by sin is happily still alive among us," he added, pointing out a local councilor in England who made headlines recently for saying Britain's recent storms were caused by the legalization of gay marriage.

reply to post by 727Sky


In the so-called Old Testament "God" (or some type of fungus) gives an exact description of how to build the ark, and in that telling it is far from round. And lo and don't behold, this news comes out just in time for the movie promos making the "rounds".

And has anyone yet answered how all of those animals survived without being eaten by their loving neighbors? And if any female animals died, then the males eventually died off the last of its species. So that's what happened to the unicorn and giant Glagosophous.

The most aqua-dynamic and versatile object that exists, that cannot sink (unless punctured) and even when half full of liquid the level of liquid remains "level" (think LNG tankers and their cargo "Domes") is........

A ping-pong ball.

That was the first bit of maritime reality we were taught at the Maritime College.

Round (with positive buoyancy) is water friendly...very friendly.

Unfortunately, the propulsion method is yet to be mastered but Azimuth thruster technology may some day bridge that gap.

S&F Felix.

I have a different theory on 'god' than most, and it gets me some strange looks from the mainstream theologist. With unimaginable reach, a need to flood a planet, and the ability to do so, you would be able to control the animal's instincs and increase their chance of survival. You could produce food and dispose or control waste, unlimited power and tech gives you unlimited results far beyond standard thinking, and creates almost limitless boundries.... there is evidence of this on this planet, just open your eyes...

For anyone that is wondering what a coracle could look like





So just imagine that; but much. much. larger.



Hmm.


There are other styles too.

Interesting thread. Loved the OP. I'm trying to imagine it, but all I can think of is the tilt-a-whirl ride at the fair and enduring that wave and water action that would spin a round container for more than several minutes would spin and kill anyone or thing that had to endure it for umpteen days. It just doesn't seem plausible to me. Feel free to disagree with me, but please explain how it would be possible?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

The story is the ultimate classic 'telephone' game, with each retelling it gets bigger and more distorted. To the Sumerians living in the southern plains of Sumer (where the flood occurred circa 2450 BC) it was a great flood - that is, greater than usual. They were accustomed to floods once every few months, it's part of what led them to occupy the southern plains between the two rivers to begin with. The northern cities of Sumer (which were more Akkadian than Sumerian) the flood was little more than a typical flood.

Ziusudra had to legitimize his post-flood land claims - the courts of the southern cities were wiped out, the records were kept in Sumerian cuneiform script, and the Sumerian language - believe it or not - was already a DEAD language. Everyone, including Sumerians, spoke and wrote Akkadian at the time of the flood. Only the record keepers - the court scribes and priests - kept the Sumerian script alive, much like Latin during the middle ages. So what was Ziusudra to do, he survived the flood, the but land claims, the records, the courts, were all gone. So he "legitimizes" his claim with a tale of being granted his survivorship, and subsequent kingdom, by an old form of argument, the "appeal to authority", it was God who granted him these things. God told him how to survive, all surviving animal stocks flowed from him, he and his heirs now rule all the post-flood lands. I suppose some of the tale owed to the Sumerian persnickety idea of legality in land claims. But with those claims buried under mud, he used his tale as a device to trump those pre-flood claims.

All the clay tablets that speak of the tale were Babylonian or Akkadian, none have ever been recovered written in Sumerian, even though it's well understood to be a Sumerian tale. The Sumerian language had to be re-introduced to the southern Sumerian cities from the north. Scribes and Priests must have been fetched from those cities, but Sumer was never a truly 'united' civilization, it was most of the time like Pericles' Greece, cities vying with one another for rule of the land. It is a testament to the enduring quality of the tale that it was passed down between different languages and cultures over many centuries, before a Semitic resident of Ur incorporated them in his people's heritage.

reply to post by NerdGoddess


Love your glasses nerds girl lol. Also thanks for the cool pictures. Looks really sturdy and unlike the belief the round does not mean it is going in circles, currents very rarely work like that. This design is actually easier to steer and is much more stable. Stabilizing or steering is easy and oar can be put in from anywhere.

Great work girl..

The Bot

Funnily enough i was watching one of those religious channels today on Sky, it was an animated story teller explaining the story of Noah. They were talking about it being the typical boat shape (like on Evan Almighty), and being the size of a battleship. Just Noah and his sons were to make it.

Not being a religious man, i struggle with the story anyway, however my eyebrows were raised over the back of my head when it was said that not only was it going to take Noah 120 years to build the ark, but he was 500 years old when he built it!!

Just not enough time for all the questions i have right now. No offense meant but come on. Is this the official story because i'm sure i never heard that bit before.

If he was supposed to be that old, plus add on another 120 years for build time....making him over 600 years old....i have a few more concerns than what shape the boat was!

CX.

Aleister
reply to post by 727Sky

 

And if any female animals died, then the males eventually died off the last of its species. So that's what happened to the unicorn and giant

to me two by two is 2x2=4

Love and harmony
Whateva

Important points to note:

1. The story of the flood and the Ark is much older than the Bible. It originated (as far as we know) in Mesopotamia.
   
   
2. We know this because versions of the story engraved on cuneiform tablets were unearthed in Mesopotamia quite a long time ago. Until now, the oldest of these tablets dated to about 1630BC.
   
   
3. This recently-deciphered tablet is a few hundred years older than that, and describes the ark as being round, like a coracle.
   
   
4. A coracle is one of the oldest and most primitive forms of water transport known to man, so ancient Mesopotamians would certainly have been familiar with it.
   
   
5. The engravings on this tablet do not help substantiate the Noah's Ark story.

reply to post by 727Sky


According to this story the ark was round and the size of a country 3600 square-meters. Noah, Utnapishtim etc was the Saviour of the Middle-East a few thousand years before Christ, and his story was the best story ever told. Just like with Jesus, or King Arthur or Chuck Norris, loads of people spun up one story more amazing than the others to satisfy the really huge audience. There were no TV or newspapers back then, so travelling storytellers would come by from time to time and tell their versions of how the world was made and what the given Saviour had done and said. I believe this pocket tablet to have been such a storyteller's notebook.

Anyway, good find s&f

Has anyone looked in the bottom of that coracle? Who gonna clean up that mess? The dung alone would have sunk them.

Seeing the size of the Ark and it's shape, I suppose it could have been a coral reef of some sort? Nah. Is the storyteller mixing in cosmology hinting to the shape of the Earth, only with inferior dimentions? Is the Ark really the Earth? Or a spaceship?

To the ancients space was mostly composed of water, hence the similarity between the Hebrew words Shamayim (Heavens) and Mayim (waters, the Flood). Is the Noah story about some guy travelling through space with a bunch of interstellar refugees of war in a disc-shaped ark-spaceship to Earth where they terraformed the planet and let life loose?

727Sky

...the key instruction that animals should enter "two by two."

Key instruction? It's interesting how this detail has entered common consciousness when it's not what the bible actually says. These lines from Genesis are pretty clear:

[7:2] Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that [are] not clean by two, the male and his female.
[7:3] Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

It just goes to show the importance of checking your sources.

reply to post by 727Sky

The ark is a huge circular coracle, 3,600 square metres in dimension or two-thirds the size of a football pitch, made like a giant rope basket strengthened with wooden ribs, and waterproofed with bitumen inside and out. This was a giant version of a craft which the Babylonians knew very well, Finkel pointed out, in daily use up to the late 20th century to transport people and animals across rivers.

Its people-and-animal-carrying abilities will soon be put to the test: the production company Blink is making a Channel 4 documentary based on his research, including building a circular ark.

www.theguardian.com...

There are acvtually people attempting to build the thing and turn the project into a TV special.