Table of Contents
Irving Finkel’s lecture follows a cuneiform tablet that, on his reading, is a builder’s guide to an ark. This tablet orders Atra-hasis, a name he glosses as extremely intelligent, to leave his house, make a vessel, reject property, and save life. The god does not trust him with boats, so the amounts are written out like a kit. The hull is round, a coracle of a kind still built in the twentieth century. A mathematician checked the Babylonian measures and landed near the clay figure of about fourteen thousand sutu. A television crew later had traditional builders make a version in India, people above and animals below. Onlookers still called the round hull Noah’s boat, unlike the ship in European paintings. A Babylonian world map from about 600 BC, he argues, fits a round craft, and its mountain lies toward Urartu, Armenia. That is why, in his view, the biblical story rests the boat among the mountains of Ararat rather than on one named peak.
Key points
- Finkel reads one Old Babylonian tablet as building instructions for the flood hero Atra-hasis.
- The order is to abandon home and property, save life, and follow quantities supplied on the tablet.
- The hull in the text is round, a coracle, and the material totals come close to a modern recalculation.
- A later documentary built a version in India, with people above and animals below.
- The animal list is wild and domestic kinds, not every species known from television.
- A Babylonian world map of about 600 BC, with a mountain toward Urartu, is his explanation of the biblical landing among the mountains of Ararat.
Short quotes
Destroy your house, build a boat, spurn property, and save life." Well, not many letters begin that way.
Irving Finkel, Finkel on the ark before Noah
He reads the tablet’s opening as a blunt order to leave home and save living things. Watch at 2:31
So the first piece of information that came out of reading this tablet was that the boat was round.
Irving Finkel, Finkel on the ark before Noah
The first construction detail he got from the tablet was a circular hull. Watch at 9:43
There were wild animals and domestic animals, and in fact, the list isn't so great.
Irving Finkel, Finkel on the ark before Noah
The passenger list, he says, is modest and split between wild and tame creatures. Watch at 31:52
Acting on the assumption that if they didn't think it was round, they wouldn't have drawn it as round.
Irving Finkel, Finkel on the ark before Noah
A round drawing, on his view, means the makers thought the vessel itself was round. Watch at 50:51
Well, in my opinion, this is the explanation for the narrative in Bible, where Noah's Ark is supposed to land on Mount Ararat.
Irving Finkel, Finkel on the ark before Noah
He links the biblical landing place to Urartu on a Babylonian map, not to a single peak. Watch at 54:57
Video by The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures. Watch on YouTube.