GORDON TAYLOR: THE NOAH MYTH

History News Network

F eb 16 2009
WA

[Mr. Taylor, Ph.D., is a former teacher in Turkey and the author
of Fever and Thirst: An American Doctor Among the Tribes of
Kurdistan. Academy Chicago Publishers, 2005.]

People never seem to tire of the Noah myth. It has it all: the
hopeless depravity of mankind (always a popular theme) complemented
by the contrasting goodness of Noah complete with flowing white locks
and beard; the "I’m-fed-up-with-all-this-fornicating" pronouncement
from God; the mighty cubit-stretching labor on the big round boat;
then the parade of all those darling animal couples, plus the
Flood itself. And ending it all, we get not a bang, not a whimper,
but a wonderfully satisfying crunch as the Ark comes to rest on
"Mt. Ararat," after which the survivors get to go forth, procreate,
and become sinful all over again.

There must be something magical about this tale; why else would so
many people spend so many years searching, wrinkling their brows, and
stroking their chins in perplexity over the "Legend of the Lost Ark,"
the "Mysteries of the Great Ararat," or whatever. Other traditions,
Jewish and Islamic, also tell Noah’s story, but only American
Christians, it seems, are so keen on it that, every few years, some
well-heeled evangelical businessman (or, once, an ex-astronaut) will
open up his wallet and mount a pseudo-scientific expedition to that
heap of Kurdo-Armenian rock known as "Mt Ararat." The Ark enthusiasts
never quit. They are, after all, not that far theologically from the
people who find Jesus on the scorched exteriors of carbohydrates. They
have seen–they say–images of the Ark in aerial photographs. They’ve
analyzed fragments of wood. They’ve done carbon-dating and
spectography. They’ve puzzled and pondered and pretty much done
everything they could to find an answer. They are, dare I say it,
just a little bit of cuckoo. As Dave Barry has noted, there is a very
fine line between the words "hobby" and "mental illness."

The shares of Cuckoo Inc., however, are always in a bull market,
and the Noah business will never go out of style. Readers who want
to confirm this can find a nicely-done history of Ark searches
at Wikipedia. My favorites (of course) are the hoaxers, especially
George Jammal, a guy in California whose splinter from the Ark turned
out to be wood he found on a rail-bed, then aged at home in his oven
using various sauces. The image this evokes, that of museum graybeards
closely inspecting the artifact, wondering why it would smell faintly
of teriyaki, never fails to brighten my day. If, however, you’re
educated (i.e., an elitist liberal humanist snob), you know that the
Genesis flood myth is just one of many in the world, the most famous
being that of Gilgamesh. And you know that the "Mt. Ararat" of eastern
Turkey has nothing to do with a Mesopotamian flood story. That, and the
"Real Honest-to-God Landing Place," are what this piece is all about.

First, let me assure you: it will not be extensive. All I have is a few
pictures of the Genuine Article–one taken by a dead Englishwoman, two
others by Kurdish outlaws. What "Genuine Article"? A fair question. To
answer it, I’ll start off by raiding my own cupboard. The following
passage is taken from the Notes (p.336) at the end of Fever and Thirst:

Here it must be said that few knowledgeable travelers take seriously
the claims of "Mt. Ararat" in Turkey to be the resting place of Noah’s
Ark. In the Middle East, only the Armenians regard the "mountains of
Ararat" (Genesis 8:4) to be this particular peak. The name "Ararat"
in the Old Testament clearly denotes a country or geographical area,
not a specific mountain, and the three A’s in the name are an important
indicator. During the early Christian era, when scholars were trying
to translate Biblical texts in Aramaic, which does not have vowels,
into Byzantine Greek, which does, they ran into problems with unknown
words. When dealing with the story of Noah’s Ark, they came upon
a name they did not recognize: a place denoted by the symbols for
-R-R-T. In the absence of a clear answer, they gave up and inserted
-A- in the three slots indicated. Thus "Ararat" was produced. We
now know this ancient country by its more accurate name: Urartu,
a kingdom centered upon Lake Van which was a rival to Assyria. Thus,
an accurate translation of Genesis would say that Noah’s Ark landed
on the "mountains of Urartu," which is no more specific than saying
"the mountains of Switzerland." (Additional note: the Peshitta, the
ancient version of the Bible used by the East Syrian Church, states
that Noah’s Ark landed on the "Ture Kardu"; i.e., the mountains of
the Kurds.)

But, you may object, the mountain in question is still called
"Ararat." Why is it called that if it isn’t the right one? Because
that isn’t the mountain’s correct name. In fact, it was a European,
William of Rubruck, who first stuck that label on it in the 13th
century A.D., and it was Europeans thereafter who perpetuated the
mistake. The Armenians, then and now, called it Massis, even though,
after they became the first officially Christian nation, in 301 A.D.,
they adopted this imposing peak as the landing-place of Noah. Still,
to them it is Massis. This is why, when you drive the streets of south
Glendale, California, through the largest concentration of Armenians
in the U.S., you see signs on the storefronts saying things like
"Massis Laundry," "Massis Bakery," or "Massis Armenian Grocery." A
mountain as imposing as this one (photo above) needs no Ark legend
to justify its status as a national symbol.

Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was far too intelligent to take the King
James Version at face value. In the spring of 1909 the great explorer
found herself at Judi Dagh (Cudi Dagi) near the town of Cizre, just
east of the Tigris in southeast Turkey. On 14 May she wrote to her
mother in County Durham:

On the first [day here at Judi Dagh] I climbed up into the hills and
saw a very ancient fortress on a crag – Assyrian I suspect for there
was an Assyrian stele below it. My guides were the Protestant priest,
Kas Mattai, and his brother Shim’an…I walked through the oak woods
on the mountain sides all the morning with Kas Mattai and it was so
wonderfully beautiful that I determined to have another day of it
and go to a summit.

Even in May, the Tigris valley heat is merciless, and Miss Bell could
not resist the idea of making for the summit:

So yesterday we set off at 4 and climbed through the oak woods for
2 hours and then we came out onto the mountain tops where the snow
was still lying in great wreaths and the high mountain flowers were
in bloom. There were few of the real alpines – perhaps I wasn’t high
enough up for them – but the great beauty was the bulbs.

Gertrude Bell was English, and like any English writer worthy of the
name she could not resist a thorough (and tedious) identification of
every flower that she encountered. At last, however:

But I forgot to tell you what it was I came out to see – I wasn’t
just taking the air in the mountains, I went up to look at – the Ark.

That’s right: the Ark. She had climbed up Judi Dagh to find "Noah’s
Ark." Gertrude, in her rambling way, goes on to explain:

There is a large body of opinion in favour of this [Judi Dagh]
having been the place where it alighted and I also belong to this
school of thought partly because, you see, I have seen the Ark there
and partly because, since the Flood legends are Babylonian, it’s far
more likely that they chose for their mountain the first high mountain
that they knew (which is this Judi Dagh) rather than a place far away
in remote Armenia.

Right. In other words, the people who set down these legends lived in
the plains of Mesopotamia. The present-day "Mt Ararat" of eastern
Turkey was located far away from any that they knew. They did,
however, know those sizable ranges which hemmed in the north reaches
of the Tigris. And the first and most visible of these was Judi Dagh,
Mt. Judi, crowding in against the left bank of the great river. That is
why, of the ancient sources, one (the Koran) specifically identifies
Judi as the landing place of the Ark, and two others call it "the
mountains of the Kardu" and "the mountains of Urartu," which amounts
to the same thing.

We got up to the Ark about 9 – it was a most wonderful place from
which you could see the whole world, though I must confess there
isn’t much of the Ark left.

An understatement, as we can see from Miss Bell’s photograph
(above). Obviously this is not the Ark per se, merely a ziyaret,
a place of pilgrimage, for those who come to pay homage to Nebi
Nuh, the Prophet Noah. It was periodically used as a monastery for
solitary anchorites who came to read the Scriptures and meditate. By
Gertrude Bell’s time it was abandoned and open to the sky. Until modern
times, accounts tell us, this was the place where people of the three
monotheistic faiths, Christian, Muslim, and Jew, met for a sacrificial
feast every September to honor Noah. Modern wars and frontiers have
put an end to that tradition. Gertrude’s idyll ended with a presage:

We stayed [at the Ark] many hours, lunched and slept and looked at
the view and breathed the delicious cold air. And at last reluctantly
we came down and walked back for a long way over the tops of the
hills. And here we had a little adventure. We met some Kurdish
shepherds who had brought their flocks up to the top of Judi Dagh in
order to avoid paying the sheep tax; and they took us for soldiers
and we had to explain the true situation amidst rifle shots.

Kurds with rifles, on the lookout for Turkish soldiers. How little has
changed. But now those Kurds are young men and women, often educated
people from the cities, and in their back pockets they carry digital
cameras:

This is Judi Dagh in the 21st century: the shrine of Nebi Nuh, the
prophet Noah, identified as such in the online photo galleries of the
"People’s Defense Forces," the HPG, the armed force usually known as
the PKK, which has been fighting the Turkish Army on these slopes
since the 1980s. Nothing in its shape resembles Gertrude Bell’s
"Ark," for indeed this is not the same place. Bell, as she notes
in her book "Amurath to Amurath," had no desire to leave the cool
summit and descend the southern slopes of the mountain to visit this
place. Inside, according to the PKK website, we find "Noah’s grave":

Like most such artifacts it is more impressive from a distance than up
close; and who would wish to go down on his knees, sift through the
grains of earth, and deliver a scientific judgment on its legend’s
authenticity? I can see why an archaeologist would find meaning and
excitement in such an endeavor. For me, the magic is in the distance;
the mystery is its own reward.

And that other mountain, the Five-thousand Meter Fantasy on the
Armenian border? Close up it is black rock and lava flows, useful only
for tour guides, hobbyists, guerrillas, and Kurds who have flocks to
graze. Me, I’m on Judi’s side.