Ancient Tablet Says ‘Noah’s Ark’ Was Round

The tablet’s ark is a huge circular coracle or round boat, 38,750 square feet in dimension and was supposed to be made “like a giant rope basket strengthened with wooden ribs, and waterproofed with bitumen inside and out” – a giant version of a normally tiny boat that was in daily use until the late 20th to ferry people and livestock across rivers.

Dr. Irving Finkel

Ancient Tablet Says ‘Noah’s Ark’ Was Round
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Was Noah’s Ark round?

If a 3,700-year-old Babylonian clay tablet is accurate, it was.

But it was almost certainly never built, a British Museum expert declared – despite holding in his hand  instructions on exactly how to construct one.

"I am 107% convinced the ark never existed," Irving Finkel reportedly said. Finkel has written a new book, The Ark Before Noah, about the ancient clay tablet, which was given to him by Douglas Simmons. Simmons’ father Leonard brought the tablet back to England after serving in the Middle East with the RAF in WW2. Finkel is one of the few scholars in the world – if not the only one – who could decipher it.

Finkel is convinced the tablet gives the original version of the story we now know as the biblical Noah’s Ark.

The tablet’s ark is a huge circular coracle or round boat, 38,750 square feet in dimension and was supposed to be made “like a giant rope basket strengthened with wooden ribs, and waterproofed with bitumen inside and out,” the Guardian reported – a giant version of a normally tiny boat that was in daily use until the late 20th to ferry people and livestock across rivers.

A British production company is making a TV documentary based on Finkel’s research – which will reportedly include building the circular ark.

Scholars believe the tablet is but another example of the Biblical authors taking well-known stories of the region and incorporating them into their own text – something that appears to have been a common occurance.

Although ancient tablets pre-dating the  Bible that containing stories of the flood have been known to scholars and the West since the late 1800s, Finkel’s tablet is unique because it is reportedly the only such tablet that contains precise instructions on how to build the ark.

Finkel reportedly says the tablet is "one of the most important human documents ever discovered.”

Simmons loaned the tablet to the British Museum in London, where it will be on display next to a tablet from the museum's collection with the earliest map of the world, also from ancient Babylon.

Finkel’s tablet helped explain details of that map, “which shows islands beyond the river marking the edge of the known world, with the text on the back explaining that on one are the remains of the ark,” the paper reported.

Finkel pointed out that ark hunters who comb Mount Ararat and similar locations looking for the remains of the ancient ark of Noah are looking in the wrong place – the map shows the ark landed far beyond Mount Ararat. But no matter, Finkel says – Noah’s Ark and his tablet’s ark never existed anyway.

[Hat Tip: APC.]

Comments

[bendinai]

Since he is "107% convinced" I have to believe him...had he only been 106%, no way. Okay, time to start eating pork.

[Office of the Chief Rabbi]

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, it's a cube (like a Borg vessel).

[Yochanan Lavie]

OCR: Resistance is gentile!

[David]

Meanwhile, there is interesting new evidence about the historicity of Exodus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9DDA72yXAw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[ah-pee-chorus]

David | -

is that the one produced by the discovery institute?

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2008/05/coming-this-fall-exodus-conspiracy-dr.html

[zachw]

"new evidence"? WTF are you talking about? The video - put out by a fundamentalist Christian movie company - is over 10 years old. Among other things, it relies on faked evidence planted by Ron Wyatt like the "gilded wheel" (just look up the association of Viveka Ponten and Lennart Moller with scam artist Wyatt).

[JekyllJacobson]

Bendinai
Ha ha...
But no, it's not the pork they crave; it's all about sex and being free to do as they please...

[JekyllJacobson]

Zachw
Scientists too have been known to 'plant evidence' and to suppressing evidence contradicting their 'findings'.

[JekyllJacobson]

Global warming anyone???

[zachw]

JekyllJacobson - your response is irrelevant and has nothing to do with my statement regarding this video.

[jancsibacsi]

JekyllJacobson---Scientists too have been known to 'plant evidence' and to suppressing evidence contradicting their 'findings'.
Thats the exeption not the rule,asi wrote before we are were we are today because of all the knowledged gathers in hundreds if not thousands of years in studyting nature the internet medicined transportaqtion all due to hard science which is indesputable.

[jancsibacsi]

meant to write indisputable.

[ah-pee-chorus]

++Scientists too have been known to 'plant evidence' and to suppressing evidence contradicting their 'findings'.

Posted by: JekyllJacobson +++

and when that fairly rarely happens, the same scientific community catches the errors, dismisses the findings and banishes the offenders to permanent irrelevance and shame.
OTOH when the torah is found to be laughably wrong and dishonest guys like you keep defending it since youre too infantile and scared to face reality.

[ah-pee-chorus]

+++Global warming anyone???+++

denying the reality and effects of climate change won't solve the problem.

[Broadway Ali]

I guess this answers the question why there is no historical record of an ancient Israeli navy. Round matzah, maybe, but round boats? I suppose the Haredi interpretation is, ya know, don't make them too pointy, it's a very suggestive shape. Round is more modest.

[JekyllJacobson]

APC
Right; uhuh... Like the study that disproved global warming...

[JekyllJacobson]

Jancsi
Huge skyscrapers and super-smart computers or even satellites and the space program are great scientific achievements based on many many years of studies in physics, math and scientific evolution. I know and respect that.
Have we had this conversation in the 40's you would have said the same. Yet look where we are today...
The point I am arguing is the 'proof' about 15,000,000 years ago and the desperate attempt to debunk Christianity, Judaism and all other religious beliefs. All 'the evidence' is not in YET.

[Rodin]

Doesn't Dr. Finkel look like the iconic image of Jesus Christ? Look at that pained and martyred expression. Who the f@#$#% gives a rat's ass as to what shape an object that never ever existed was?

[R Nash]

The headline is misleading. What he seems to say is that, if Noah's Ark was based on this tablet's story, and if it existed (which he is certain it did not, then it WOULD have been round. That is a far cry from declaring it round, which would imply that he believes that a) it existed (he does not believe so)
b) it did not look like the Biblical description (that is only true if the tablet version is the source, which it may or may not be)