How To Draw Noah's Ark

In eastern Turkey, on the Anatolian coast, near the borders with Iran and Armenia, a mountain covered with eternal snow rises. Its height above sea level is only 5165 meters, which does not allow it to be among the highest mountains in the world, but it is one of the most famous peaks of the Earth. The name of this mountain is Ararat. In the clear air of the early morning, before the clouds cover the summit, and at dusk, when the clouds leave, revealing the mountain that appears against the background of the evening pink or purple sky in front of the eyes of people, many look out high on the mountain the outlines of a huge ship.

Mount Ararat, on the top of which Noah's ark should be located, is mentioned in the religious traditions of the Babylonian kingdom and the Sumerian state, in which the name Ut-Writehtim was given instead of Noah. In Islamic legends, Noah (in Arabic Nuh) and his huge ark-ship are also immortalized, but again without even indicating the place of his anchorage in the mountains, which is here called Al-Jud (peaks), they mean both Ararat and two other mountains in the Middle East. The Bible presents us with approximate information about the location of the ark: "... the ark rested on the Ararat mountains." Travelers who for centuries made voyages with caravans to Central Asia or back, repeatedly passed near Ararat and then told that they saw the ark near the top of the mountain, or mysteriously hinted at their intentions to find this ship-ark. They even claimed that amulets were made from the wreckage of the ark to protect against ailments, misfortunes, poisons and unrequited love.

Starting from about 1800, groups of mountain climbers with quadrants, altimeters, and later with cameras, climbed to Ararat. These expeditions did not find the original remains of the huge Noah's ark, but they found huge ship-like tracks - in the glaciers and near the very top of the mountain, they noticed massive columnar formations covered with ice, similar to wooden beams hewn by human hands. At the same time, the opinion was increasingly asserted that the ark gradually slid down the side of the mountain and fell apart into numerous fragments, which are now probably frozen into one of the glaciers covering Ararat. If we look at Ararat from the surrounding valleys and from the foothills, then, having a good imagination, in the folds of the mountainous relief it is not difficult to see the hull of a huge ship, and to notice some elongated oval object in the depths of the gorge or a not entirely clear dark rectangular spot in the ice of glaciers. However, many researchers, who claimed, especially in the last two centuries, that they saw a ship on Ararat, in some cases climbed high into the mountains and ended up, as they claimed, in the immediate vicinity of the ark, most of which was buried under the ice.

Legends about an unusually large wooden ship, which survived entire civilizations over millennia, do not seem to many to be absolutely believable. After all, wood, iron, copper, bricks and other building materials, with the exception of huge rock blocks, collapse over time, and how, then, can a wooden ship survive on the top? This question can be answered, apparently, only in this way: because this ship was frozen in the ice of the glacier. At the top of Ararat, in the glacier between the two peaks of the mountain, it is cold enough to preserve a ship built of thick logs, which, as it is mentioned in reports that came from the depths of millennia, "were thoroughly tarred inside and out". In the reports of mountain climbers and airplane pilots about their visual observations of a ship-like object, which they noticed on Ararat, they always rush about parts of the ship covered with a solid shell of ice, or about traces within the glacier that resemble the outline of a ship, corresponding to the dimensions of the ark given in the Bible. : "Three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high."

Thus, it can be argued that the preservation of the ark mainly depends on climatic conditions. Approximately every twenty years, exceptionally warm periods took place in the Ararat mountain range. In addition, every year in August and early September it is very hot, and it is during these periods that there are reports of traces of a large ship found on the mountain. So, when a ship is covered with ice, it cannot undergo weathering and rotting, like a number of specimens of extinct animals known to scientists: Siberian mammoths or saber-toothed tigers and other mammals from the Pleistocene era, found in Alaska and northern Canada. When removed from ice captivity, they were completely intact, even in the stomachs there was still undigested food.

Edward Hicks. "Noah's Ark"

Since certain parts of the surface of Ararat are covered with snow and ice for a whole year, the seekers of the remains of the large ship could not notice them. If this ship on the mountain is covered with snow and ice all the time, extensive special research is needed. But it is very difficult to carry them out, because the mountain peak conceals, according to the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, a danger for mountain climbers, which consists in the fact that supernatural forces are guarding Ararat from people's attempts to find Noah's ark. This "protection" manifests itself in various natural disasters: avalanches, sudden rockfalls, violent hurricanes in the immediate vicinity of the summit. Unexpected fogs deprive climbers of the ability to navigate, so that among snow and ice fields and deep gorges, they often find their graves in icy, snow-covered bottomless cracks. There are many venomous snakes in the prelgori, there are often wolf packs, very dangerous wild dogs, bears inhabiting large and small caves, in which climbers often try to make a halt, and, in addition, from time to time, Kurdish robber bands reappear. In addition, by the decision of the Turkish authorities, the approaches to the mountain were guarded for a long time by gendarmerie detachments.

Many historical evidence that something similar to a ship was noticed on Ararat belonged to those who visited nearby settlements and cities and admired Ararat from there. Other observations belong to those who, traveling with caravans to Persia, passed through the Anatolian plateau. Despite the fact that much of the evidence dates back to ancient times and the Middle Ages, some of them contained details that modern researchers noticed much later. Beroes, Babylonian chronicler, in 275 BC e. wrote: "... a ship that sank to the ground in Armenia," and, in addition, mentioned: "... the resin was scraped off the ship and amulets were made from it." Exactly the same information is given by the Jewish chronicler Josephus Flavius, who wrote his works in the first century after the conquest of Judea by the Romans. He presented a detailed account of Noah and the Flood and, in particular, wrote: "One part of the ship can still be found today in Armenia ... there people are gathering resin for making amulets." In the late Middle Ages, one of the legends says that the resin was ground into powder, dissolved in a liquid and this drug was drunk to protect against poisoning. The indications of these and other ancient writers on this ship pitch are interesting not only because they clearly correspond to certain places in the book of Genesis, but also because this huge ship turned out to be quite accessible centuries after the Flood, and because it gives a fairly realistic explanation of the fact that the wooden pillars and beams from which the ship was built were well preserved under a layer of eternal ice high on the mountain.

Josephus Flavius in his "History of the Jewish War" makes such an interesting remark: "The Armenians call this place" the pier ", where the ark remained to lie forever, and show the parts that have survived to this day." Nicholas from Damascus, who wrote "The Chronicles of the World" in the 1st century after the birth of Christ, called Mount Baris: "… in Armenia there is a high mountain called Baris, on which many fugitives were saved from the Flood. There, on the top of this mountain, one man stopped, who sailed in the ark, the fragments of which were preserved there for a long time. " Baris was another name for Mount Ararat, which in Armenia was also called Masis. One of the most famous travelers of the past, Marco Polo, in the last third of the 15th century, passed near Ararat on his way to China. In his book "Travels of the Venetian Marco Polo" there is a stunning message about the ark: moreover, the snow never melts, and new snowfalls complement the thickness of the snow cover. However, its lower layers thaw and the resulting streams and rivers, flowing into the valley, thoroughly moisten the surrounding area, on which a thick grass cover grows, attracting numerous herds of herbivorous large and small animals from all around in summer. "

This description of Mount Ararat remains relevant to this day, with the exception of the statement that no one can climb the mountain. His most interesting observation is that snow and ice melt the ground and water flows out from under the glacial ice. It is especially important to note that modern researchers have discovered wooden beams and racks, hand-crafted by human hands, in glacial cracks. At the beginning of the 16th century, the German traveler Adam Olearius visited Ararat and in his book Journey to Muscovy and Persia wrote: "The Armenians and Persians believe that the remnants of the ark are still on the mentioned mountain, which over time became hard and strong like a stone ".

Olearius' remark about the petrification of wood refers to the beams that were found above the border of the forest zone and are now located in the Echmiadzin Monastery; they are also similar to separate parts of the ark, which in our time were found by the French climber and explorer "Fernand Navarre and other travelers. The Franciscan monk Oderich, who reported to the Pope about his travels in Avignon in 1316, saw Mount Ararat and wrote about this: "The people living there told us that no one climbed the mountain, as it probably could not please To the Almighty ... "The legend that God does not allow people to climb Ararat is still alive. This taboo was broken only in 1829 by the Frenchman J. F. Parrot, who made the first ascent to the top of the mountain. The glacier on the northwestern slopes of the mountain is named after him. Half a century later, there began, in essence, a competition for the right to be the first to find the remains of Noah's ship. In 1856, "three atheist foreigners" hired two guides in Armenia and set out on a journey with the goal of "refuting the existence of the biblical ark." Only dozens of years before his death, one of the guides admitted that "to their surprise, they found the ark." At first they tried to destroy it, but they failed because it was too big. Then they swore that they would not tell anyone about their discovery, and they made their escorts do the same ...

In 1876, Lord Bryce, at 13,000 feet (4.3 kilometers), discovered and sampled a 4-foot (1.3 meters) long piece of treated log. In 1892, Archdeacon Nuri, along with five escorts, observed the "large wooden ship" near the summit. True, "his testimony remained unconfirmed. In 1916, during the First World War, the Russian pilot V. Roskovitsky reported in a report that he had observed a "lying large ship" on the slopes of Ararat from an airplane. Equipped with the Russian government, despite the war, the expedition began to search. Subsequently, the direct participants claimed that they had achieved the goal, photographed in detail and examined. Apparently, this was the first and last official expedition to the ark. But, by the way, its results were lost in Petrograd in 1917, and the territory of Greater Ararat was captured by Turkish troops.

In the summer of 1949, two groups of researchers went to the ark at once. The first, of four people led by North Carolina retired Dr. Smith, saw only one strange "vision" at the summit. But the second, consisting of the French, reported that "they saw Noah's ark ... but not on Mount Ararat", but on the neighboring summit of Jubel-Judy. In the same place, two Turkish journalists later allegedly saw a ship measuring 500 × 80 × 50 feet (165 × 25 × 15 meters) with the bones of marine animals. But three years later, Ricoeur's expedition found nothing of the kind. In 1955, Fernand Navarre managed to find an ancient ship among the ice, from under the ice he removed an L-shaped bar and several planks. 14 years later, he repeated his attempt with the help of the American organization "Search" and brought back a few more boards. In the USA, the radiocarbon method showed the age of the tree at 1400 years, in Bordeaux and Madrid, the result was different - 5000 years!

Following Navarro to Ararat went John Libi from San Francisco, shortly before that saw the exact location of the ark in a dream, and ... found nothing. Seventy-year-old "Poor Libi", as journalists dubbed him, made seven unsuccessful ascents in three years, during one of which he barely managed to escape from a bear throwing stones! One of the last to make five ascents was Tom Crotser. Returning with his trophy board, he exclaimed in front of the press: "Yes, there are 70 thousand tons of this tree, I swear on my head!" And again, radiocarbon analysis showed the age of the boards at 4000-5000 years ... The history of all expeditions (official, at least) ends in 1974. It was then that the Turkish government, having placed observation posts on the border line on Ararat, closed the area for any visits.

In parallel with the "land" expeditions, certificates of the ark come from the pilots. In 1943, two American pilots, during a flight over Ararat, tried to make out something similar to the outline of a large ship from a height of several thousand meters. Later they, flying along the same route, took a photographer with them, who took a picture, which later ended up in the American Air Force newspaper Stars and Stripes. In the summer of 1953, the American oilman George Jefferson Green, flying in a helicopter in the same area, from a height of 30 meters took six very clear photographs of a large ship, half sunk into the rocks and sliding off a mountain ledge of ice. Green subsequently failed to equip an expedition to this place, and when he died nine years later, all the originals of his photographs disappeared.

(Photo of Durupinar, taken by a Turkish pilot in 1957, published by: * American Journal en: Life magazine: Life in 1957 *

In late spring or even summer 1960, the American pilot of the 428th tactical aviation squadron, stationed near Hell) in Turkey and under the auspices of NATO, noticed some kind of ship-like structure on the western spur of Ararat. About this flight am (the Rican captain Schwinghammer wrote in 1981: "A huge cargo cart or rectangular boat in a crevice filled with water, high above the mountain, was clearly visible." Moreover, he argued that the object was slowly sliding down the slope and should have gotten stuck among mountain ledges and boulders. In 1974, the American organization "Earth Research Technikal Satellite" (ERTS) photographed the mountain spurs of Ararat from a height of 4600 meters. from the crevices of the mountain, "very similar in shape and size to the ark."

Noah's Ark on the state emblem of Armenia

In addition, the same area was photographed from heights of 7,500 and 8,000 meters, and the resulting images of the glacial formations were quite consistent with what the pilots saw earlier, who spoke of the ark or other unusual object they had noticed. However, not a single object recorded from such a height, even at high magnification, can be quite confidently identified with the ark, because it is more than half hidden under the snow or is in the shadow of rocky ledges. In 1985, T. McNellis, an American entrepreneur living in Germany, traveled to the northwestern and northeastern foothills of Ararat and talked a lot with local residents, most often - old Turkish officers who received military education in Germany at one time, and young Turks working part-time in Germany in recent years. Many of them are firmly convinced that the ark can be easily found: "Go left along the edge of the Aorian abyss up the slope, then turn left again and after a while along this path you will reach the ark." It was explained to him that the ark was not visible from the lower ledges, since this ship, which had been sliding down from the top of the mountain for thousands of years, now lies quietly under the dense ice cover of a huge glacier.

So, there is a lot of evidence of the existence of the ark. But in order for them to become reliable, it is necessary to find the ark itself. Maybe now, due to the general warming of the international climate, expeditions to Ararat will resume? In the meantime, we can only hope that the ancient ship preserved in the ice will not crumble in anticipation of the researchers.

Let's continue the theme of biblical subjects in the visual arts. This part is dedicated to one of the most important plots of the Book of Genesis - the Great Flood and its characters - Patriarch Noah and his sons: Shem, Ham and Afet.
Noah was a descendant of Adam and Eve through one of their sons, Seth. By the way, to the question of whether all of humanity is the descendants of the killer Cain. As you can see, no. This is evident primarily from the history of the Flood.
Usually Noah was portrayed as a white-bearded old man. Being the first after Adam among the Old Testament patriarchs, Noah, according to theological constructions, is one of the patriarchal "types" of Christ. And the Flood was likened to the sacrament of Christian baptism by the early Church Fathers and apologists. Noah's Ark has been a frequent feature in Christian art from the earliest times. So, in the Roman catacombs, he personified a new Christian concept of the Resurrection, since the converts were already, perhaps, familiar - through Greek and Egyptian mythology - with its idea of the travel of the dead on a ship to another world. And soon the ship itself became a generally accepted symbol of the Christian Church itself. For example, a part of a Christian church intended for parishioners is called the "nave", that is, "ship".

In the story of Noah and the Flood, one can distinguish four main storylines:
- Construction of the Ark;
- Great Flood;
- Sacrifice But I;
- Noah's drunkenness.

Building the Ark (Genesis 6: 14-22)

Seeing the immorality of the human race, God decided to destroy it and save only the righteous man Noah and his family, ordering him to build the Ark and take on board "a pair of each creature." Typically, artists ignored the technical details of the Ark's construction found in Genesis. In early Christian painting in the Roman catacombs, the Ark is simply a box that looks like a coffin. In the art of the Middle Ages, the Ark is a kind of floating house, and in the art of the Renaissance it becomes a real ship, and the sons of Noah are portrayed as constructing it under the supervision of the patriarch. And when the Ark is shown ready, Noah drives a couple of animals on board.

Great Flood (Gen. 7: 8-19)

According to the Bible, at the beginning of the Flood, it rained continuously for forty days and forty nights, until even the mountains were hidden under water. The Flood itself lasted 150 days. When the water began to subside, the Ark landed on Mount Ararat. To find out if this land was suitable for habitation, Noah released a raven, which did not return. Then he sent a pigeon twice, which returned a second time with an olive leaf in its beak. Sent a third time, the pigeon did not return. After that, Noah brought out his family and animals to "fruit and multiply on the earth."
In this plot, wicked people, doomed by God to destruction, are portrayed by artists running from the rising water, trying to escape from inevitable death in trees and hills. The Ark - floating among endless waters.

Noah's sacrifice (Gen. 8: 20-22; 9: 1-17)

As a token of gratitude to God for his salvation, Noah built an altar and made a sacrifice. This sacrifice was accepted by God, and He said: "And there will be a rainbow in the cloud, and I will see it, and I will remember the eternal covenant between God and between every living soul in all flesh that is on earth."
In this plot, as a rule, a rainbow is depicted, meaning a sign of God's promise not to make more floods.

Drunkenness of Noah (Gen. 9: 20-27)

On the newly found land, Noah cultivated the land and took up viticulture. Having drunk too much wine once, he fell asleep in his tent, naked and drunk. This is how Ham saw him, laughed at his father and informed his brothers - Sim and Afet. These two sons of Noah came with robes, approached their father so as not to see him naked and covered his nakedness.
"Noah slept over his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him; and he said: Cursed is Canaan; he will be a slave of his servants to his brothers."
Sometimes Noah is depicted planting his grapes, but the most common version shows him lying in a state of intoxication next to a cup of wine. Next to him are his sons: Ham, who mocks his father, and his two brothers, covering Noah with a cloak.

A number of Christian theologians saw in the mockery of Noah a prototype of the mockery of the crucified Christ. And Jewish commentators argue that Ham not only laughed at his naked father, but also castrated him. They argue that this point was deliberately omitted from Genesis.

To be continued.

Thank you for attention.

Sergey Vorobyov.

Recently, we have drawn fairy-tale characters and made pedagogical conclusions from fairy-tale plots, sometimes unexpected, sometimes lying on the surface. But now, when Great Lent has come, I have a desire to talk about things more serious than simple fairy tales. And at the same time, the fear arose that the reader might put the stories of Scripture on the same level with human fiction, thus lowering the meaning and meaning of inspired words. Therefore, I consider it my duty to warn you in advance against this oversight.

So, everyone knows that the ship to rescue from the Flood was built not by a professional, but by an amateur. It was impossible to call him an amateur either, since Noah (and today we will talk about him) had never thought about large-scale shipbuilding before. But he was not in the habit of arguing with the Creator, so he submitted and believed the threat that was unfounded from a human point of view (after all, people at that time had never seen rain).

Time in those days passed measuredly, the weather was favorable, and the dew washed away the fields rich in crops every morning. People were sociable and, in the absence of remote communication methods, quickly learned from each other both good and bad.

But, as we know, bad traditions are much more stable than good thoughts. Unfortunately, on a land already defiled by fratricide by that time, human habits soon became unbearable for a heart that retained its virtues. Fortunately, Noah had a reliable rear - his wife and three married sons. In total, eight people lived in his house, including Noah himself.

Before the flood, people lived for a long time, so the construction proceeded slowly - more than a hundred years. And although Noah directly answered the questions of his neighbors, without hiding anything or adding to the words of the Lord, there was a lot of misinterpretation. And how much ridicule the pious family endured! More than once or twice the women of Noah's house washed themselves with tears from caustic human comments and from fear of the future. Fortunately, although babies were not born during the construction.

So, while the men were doing carpentry, the women were preparing provisions for the impressive "crew" of the floating abode. After all, besides people, they had to climb onto the ark, crawl in, fly in and jump on a couple of every creature on the earth. To be more precise, it should be mentioned that the so-called pure - suitable for sacrifice - cattle had to arrive in sevens, male and female. So the Lord commanded.

At the appointed hour, people and animals settled in the womb of the ship. For seven days nothing happened. The women looked inquiringly at their husbands. Noah prayed. Finally the waters of the flood came to earth. The skies darkened, and they seemed to have opened windows for rain streams. Noah wanted to save one of the neighbors, but God closed the doors of the ark. It is not for you, man, to know the judgments of God.

It rained for forty days and forty nights, people and animals fell asleep and woke up to the sound of a noisy element. For another hundred and fifty days, the water came to hide even the highest mountains. And only inside the ark life glimmered: people talked, animals chewed their gum, birds sang in every way. Lizards rustled, grasshoppers chirped. Flies buzzed, flexing their wings. The ship existed as a complexly organized system, as a great biogeocenosis, as a seed of the earth, waiting for a favorable time to open up, release life and again spread it over the face of the planet ...

So, let's portray Noah's ark!

We need:

- The base is a sheet of Whatman paper or tinted paper for working with pastels (sold in stores for artists);
- Packing cardboard (3-4 pieces of about A4 size);
- White paper for drawing figures of animals and people;
- Colour pencils;
- Scissors, glue stick, double-sided tape.

First of all, we release the cardboard from the top layer so that our "building material" resembles a tree. We cut out the parts of the ark. As we know from the Bible, this ship had three "floors". It is rather difficult to glue the packing cardboard to the base with any glue, so it is better to use double-sided tape at the stage of assembling the composition.

Then we draw different animals - which ones work best. We represent the family of Noah. Cut out the resulting figures and place them on the ark. Everything, you can decorate the nursery with a new picture!

The house in which early childhood passes is always imprinted as something sacred, resistant to external storms. Memories of everyday troubles, disorders in the life of parents are often smoothed out, and I want to keep some bright, kind moments in my memory. As you sit on your dad's lap. Or how mom reads a fairy tale, and grandma fries pancakes. How a grandfather brings home a live rabbit or sets up a tree. Everyone, I'm sure, can remember such heart-warming episodes.

When I told the parable of the prodigal son in Sunday school, I wanted to say: "Children, always remember that your parents will accept your requests for forgiveness. Do not be afraid to confess your misdeeds to us! " I wanted to, but my tongue did not turn, and we bypassed this moment. Unfortunately, I cannot promise this even to my children. The habits of communicating on the go, asking more rather than giving, looking strictly, being ashamed of the fruits of your upbringing in front of people do not give you the opportunity to fully understand and accept children. Yes, the kids are noisy, clumsy, they make a mess and a hole in the wallet. They don't give us privacy. They are our mirror, and the more ashamed to look into it.

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The Ararat anomaly is the first Noah's Ark at an altitude of 4275 meters (according to some sources - 4725 meters). Now let's get back to earth again. The second ark was unexpectedly found on the ground - at an altitude of about 2000 meters and about 20 km south of the "Anomaly".

In 1959, Turkish pilot Curtis took an unusual picture of a ship-like object. Its length is about 160 meters, width - 59 meters, height - 15 meters. These dimensions almost coincide with the dimensions indicated in biblical traditions (in the Bible, the length was 300 Egyptian cubits or 515 feet (156.97 m), the width is 59 cubits or 30.87 m, the height is 20 cubits or 10.46 m).

American Ron White, having studied the photographs, suggested that these were the legendary remains of the ark, and in 1977 he went on an expedition to this place. The expedition used metal detectors, an underground radar scanner with recorders and chemical analyzes, all of which yielded amazing results.

On the right side, in the stern area, vertical protrusions are visible protruding from the clay, then these protrusions are located at equal distances. Chemical analysis showed that the organic matter of the wood was replaced by mineral substances, but the shape and internal structure of the tree was preserved, although outwardly it looks like a stone (fossilized trees are found all over the globe, so this could well have happened with the ark).

The expedition geologists believe that the object is now about a mile below its original location, as it was carried away by a mudflow during the 1948 earthquake, which is confirmed by local residents. They say that the ark "miraculously" appeared around this time, before they knew about the existence of the ark, but did not notice it.

It is assumed that all of the ship's superstructures collapsed into the hull and eventually turned into petrified debris. When scanning with a radar, its internal structure was revealed, symmetrical linear formations (partitions?) Were found. With the help of a drill, White obtained "samples from the hold." The GalbraithLabs laboratory, where they were sent, showed the presence of manure, pieces of horn and animal hair (?) In them. When examining the petrified wood, it was found that some of the samples consisted of glued three-layer boards, as in the production of plywood, and the outside of the boards were once covered with bitumen.

There were also found rods driven into petrified wood (?), Which turned out to be made of iron! The metal detector also found strange rivets that contained iron, aluminum and titanium. This alloy forms a thin film of aluminum oxide that protects against corrosion, and titanium gives strength - and this is technology of the Stone Age?

A few kilometers from the ark, White discovered huge anchor stones with holes drilled in them, through which they are tied to the ship with a hemp rope - a common practice of sailors in ancient times. On the stones, images of eight crosses were found, allegedly symbolizing eight people who escaped from the flood, as well as a destroyed stone block, which depicted 8 people sailing in a boat (there are suggestions that the engraving was done by pilgrims). The stone was approximately 5,000 years old.

All these discoveries left archaeologists indifferent. Nevertheless, enterprising residents of the nearby town with the ancient name of Nasar in 1987 opened a tourist center near the ark found by Watom - come and see!

American explorer Richard Bright, who has undertaken a number of expeditions to Ararat since 1984, even made a drawing of Noah's ark from the recollections of those who, according to them, saw it, although high-quality photographs would have been more convincing. Most likely, this is a drawing of an ark from the Ararat anomaly.

In 1985, the American businessman T. McNellis, a resident of Germany, traveled along the foothills of Ararat and talked with local residents. Many of them are convinced that the ark can be easily found. "Go left along the edge of the Aorian abyss up the slope, then turn left again and after a while along this path you will reach the ark." How simple it is! It was explained to him that the ark was not visible from the lower ledges, since this ship, which had been sliding down from the top of the mountain for thousands of years, and now it calmly lies under the dense ice cover of a huge glacier. Another ark?

American astronaut James Irwin was also fascinated by the search for the ark. In 1989, during a regular expedition to Ararat, he filmed an unusual brown object resembling a large box on videotape. After watching the tape, some Western scholars suggested that it really was an ark, but the skeptics were still not silent. Anomaly again?

In 2004, the Russian team "Kosmopoisk" undertook an expedition to both arks and recognized the ark at an altitude of 2000 meters as a "natural formation", while the ark in the Ararat "anomaly" is a real one. Then, in 2004, autumn turned out to be the hottest, at least in the last half century. Local old-timers then for the first time in their lives saw from afar, from the foot, on the top of Ararat the very object that the Cosmopoisk expedition saw for the first time in the same September (first also from the foot, then near).

But couldn't there have been several arks? It is foolish to suppose that all antediluvian mankind built only one ark and only one Noah was saved, and in Blavatsky's work we find a mention of "vars", on which many people were saved.

In 2009, Chinese archaeologists together with Turkish archaeologists (a group of 15 people) arrived on an expedition to Ararat, and on April 27, 2010 announced the legendary find to the Agence France-Presse. The researchers claimed that they not only found the remains of Noah's ark, but also went inside. Near the top of Ararat, the researchers found seven wooden compartments buried under the snow, in which various species of animals were supposedly housed. According to the Chinese, the sections they found were knocked together from cypress planks, each 20 cm wide, and the planks were fastened together with thorns. The structures are 4,800 years old, based on radiocarbon analysis carried out in Iran. They captured all this in photos and videos. True, they do not disclose the exact location of the find. The fact that the dimensions of their ark are only 12 mx 5 m, which is somewhat small for an ark, inspires suspicion. The researchers exclude the version that the found structure could have been a destroyed dwelling on the grounds that "this place is uninhabited."

As the newspaper "Hurriyet" reported with reference to the administration of the Agra province, the Turkish authorities did not confirm the statement about the discovery of the remains of Noah's ark on Mount Ararat (a high-ranking official of the administration of the Turkish province said: "Chinese scientists allegedly carried out research here in 2007 and in 2009, but there is no evidence of this! ").

One way or another, but humanity does not want to do without an ark, and in Hong Kong, Chinese millionaire evangelists, in compliance with all biblical proportions, built Noah's ark. The Kwok brothers are representatives of SHKP, the largest construction company in Hong Kong. They built a 137m long ark and created 67 pairs of fiberglass sculptures depicting animals. The ark with an area of 27 thousand square meters is located on Ma-Wan Island, on the floors of the ark there is a restaurant, an exhibition hall, a hotel, a theater, a cinema, a theme park and other delights.

Another ark was built in 2007 on Mount Ararat by Greenpeace. Its appearance was supposed to draw public attention to negative climate change.

The last life-size ark is being built by the Scandinavians for the 2012 Olympics in London. We'll see.