YesScientists have deciphered the oldest map of the world engraved on a clay tablet about 3,000 years ago and have discovered that the drawings include the location of “Noah’s Ark.”
The Babylonian artifact, known as the Imago Mundi, shows a circular diagram with a writing system that used wedge-shaped symbols to describe the early creation of the world.
Researchers at the British Museum, where the tablet is located, revealed what they had deciphered last month, but further analysis of their work uncovered the biblical reference within the ancient language.
The back of the tablet acts as a key, describing what a traveler will see on their journey, and one part says that they must pass “seven leagues… (to) see something that is thick as a parsiktu vessel.”
The word “parsiktu” has been found in other ancient Babylonian tablets, specifically to explain the size of a ship needed to survive the Great Flood.
The researchers followed the instructions and found a path to ‘Urartu’, where an ancient Mesopotamian poem claims that a man and his family landed in an ark to preserve life.
The location is the Assyrian equivalent of ‘Ararat’, the Hebrew word for the mountain on which Noah crashed the biblical ship that was built for the same purpose.
Dr Irving Finkel, curator of the British Museum, said: “This shows that the story was the same and, of course, that one led to the other, but also that, from the Babylonian point of view, this was a matter of made”.
“That if you took this trip you would see the remains of this historic ship.”
The Imago Mundi, also called the Babylonian Map of the World, was discovered in 1882 by renowned archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam in Sippar, an ancient Babylonian city in what is now Iraq.
The Imago Mundi has baffled researchers since it was found in 1882 in what is now known as Iraq.
The ancient text, written in cuneiform, was only used by the Babylonians, who recorded astronomical events, future predictions, and a map that was thought to represent the entire “known world” at the time.
At the bottom center of the map is Mesopotamia, surrounded by a circle representing a “bitter river” that was believed to surround the entire world.
The tablet has since been damaged, but it once featured eight triangles that researchers determined meant mountains matching the descriptions on the back.
‘NORTHThe number four says “To the fourth, to which you must travel seven leagues,” Dr. Finkel said in a YouTube video.
He went on to explain that the passage goes on to explain how a traveler will eventually encounter a giant ship.
‘This parsiktu measurement is something that makes an Assyriologist’s ears prick up and the fact is that it is only known once from cuneiform tablets and it is also a quite interesting cuneiform tablet,’ said Dr Finkel.
“Because it is the description of the Ark that was built, theoretically, by the Babylonian version of Noah.”
The back of the tablet provides instructions on how to read the map. One passage tells the traveler to cross the sea and he will reach ‘Urartu’, where an ancient Mesopotamian poem claims that a man and his family landed an ark to preserve life.
The location is the Assyrian equivalent of ‘Ararat’, the Hebrew word for the mountain on which Noah crashed the biblical ship that was built for the same purpose.
The Babylonian version of the story says that the god Ea sent a flood that wiped out all of humanity except Utnapishtim and his family, who built an ark at the god’s command and filled it with animals.
‘In this account, the details are given and God says ‘You have to do this, this and this’ and then the Babylonian Noah says ‘I did this, this and this.’ I’ve done it! And I made these structures like a thick parsiktu vessel,” Dr. Finkel.
The story of the Gilgamesh Flood is known from clay tablets dating back about 3,000 years; The Biblical Flood occurred about 5,000 years ago.
Dr. Finkle explained that anyone traveling along the road to Urartu would, in theory, see the ship’s wooden ribs on the mountain “like those in the Bible.”
The Bible states that the ark came to rest in the “mountains of Ararat” in Turkey after a 150-day flood that drowned the Earth and every living thing on it that was not housed inside the wooden ship.
And the mountain in question It features a beak that matches the shape and dimensions of Noah’s Ark.
The vessel was said to measure “300 cubits, 50 cubits, by 30 cubits,” which translates to up to 515 feet long, 86 feet wide, and 52 feet high.
The idea that the ark landed on Ararat has been surrounded by controversy, with some scientists claiming the formation was formed by nature and others being sure it came from a higher power.
A team of experts led by Istanbul Technical University has been excavating the mountain for years and revealed in 2023 that they found clay, marine materials and shellfish that placed humans at the site between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago.
However, Dr. Andrew Snelling, a young Earth creationist with a Ph.D. of the University of Sydney, had previously said that Mount Ararat could not be the site of the ark because the mountain did not form until the flood waters receded.
Although it is considered a historical event, most scholars and archaeologists do not believe in the literal interpretation of the Ark story.