Table of Contents
Mount Ararat is a dormant volcano in eastern Türkiye, near the borders with Armenia and Iran. It has two peaks, Greater Ararat and Lesser Ararat. Greater Ararat rises to (16,854 feet) and is the highest peak in Türkiye.
Biblical significance
Mount Ararat is best known as the place where Noah’s Ark came to rest after the great flood. The story is in the Book of Genesis, see Genesis 8.
Genesis does not name one peak. It speaks of the “mountains of Ararat”. Ararat is the Biblical Hebrew name of the Iron Age kingdom of Urartu, and the mountain only came to be identified with the Biblical mountains in the Middle Ages.
The ark comes to rest
The ark rests on the mountains of Ararat, in the seventh month.
And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.
Genesis 8:4, KJV
This verse marks the end of the flood’s destruction. It shows God’s control over the elements and his covenant with Noah, a new beginning for humanity. See also Noah’s family.
The mountain tops appear
In the tenth month the mountain tops are seen again.
And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.
Genesis 8:5, KJV
After the ark rested, the waters kept going down until the peaks were bare. The earth slowly became fit to live on again.
Ararat and Atlantis
Donnelly reads Ararat as a flood memory carried from Atlantis to a new mountain home.
Here too is Mount Ararat, where it is said the ark rested--another identification with the Flood regions, as it represents the usual transfer of the Atlantis legend by an Atlantean people to a high mountain in their new home.
Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882), Part V, Ch. X
Donnelly places Ararat in Armenia, the centre of the Aryan migrations, see The Aryan and Japhetic Colonies.
For other flood heroes, see Utnapishtim, Ziusudra and Noah and Prophet Nuh (Noah) in the Quran.
