This is actually
important. Recall that we have long
since made the conjecture that the story of the Ark was a Babylonian
translation of a much older text from an age of superior technology. That in fact, what was been described was a
Magnetic Field Exclusion Vessel similar to observed UFO’s worldwide. Such a craft would have a graphene skin in
order to manage powerful magnetic fields.
Graphene is a form of carbon and describing it in the language of
Babylon leaves you scant options.
Now we have specific
knowledge that the shape of the ARK is circular. This conforms completely with our conjecture.
The coracle
option extends the water option a bit, but the size involved for a vessel
completely unmanageable appears extremely difficult although something like it
could be built. I am sure that the
translators simply spun what they knew.
Simple wave action should tear a ship like this apart through
application of variable strain throughout the hull.
Ancient tablet
reveals new details about Noah's Ark prototype
Published January 24, 2014
Associated Press
It was a vast boat that saved two of each animal and
a handful of humans from a catastrophic flood.
But forget all those images of a long vessel with a
pointy bow -- the original Noah's Ark, new research suggests, was round.
A recently deciphered 4,000-year-old clay tablet
from ancient Mesopotamia -- modern-day Iraq -- reveals striking new details
about the roots of the Old Testament tale of Noah. It tells a similar story,
complete with
detailed instructions for building a giant round vessel known as a coracle -- as well as the key
instruction that animals should enter "two by two."
The tablet went on display at the British Museum on
Friday, and soon engineers will follow the ancient instructions to see whether
the vessel could actually have sailed.
It's also the subject of a new book, "The Ark
Before Noah," by Irving Finkel, the museum's assistant keeper of the
Middle East and the man who translated the tablet.
Finkel got hold of it a few years ago, when a man
brought in a damaged tablet his father had acquired in the Middle East after
World War II. It was light brown, about the size of a mobile phone and covered
in the jagged cuneiform script of the ancient Mesopotamians.
It turned out, Finkel said Friday, to be "one
of the most important human documents ever discovered."
"It was really a heart-stopping moment -- the
discovery that the boat was to be a round boat," said Finkel, who sports a
long gray beard, a ponytail and boundless enthusiasm for his subject.
"That was a real surprise."
And yet, Finkel said, a round boat makes sense.
Coracles were widely used as river taxis in ancient Iraq and are perfectly
designed to bob along on raging floodwaters.
"It's a perfect thing," Finkel said.
"It never sinks, it's light to carry."
Other experts said Finkel wasn't simply indulging in
book-promotion hype. David Owen, professor of ancient Near Eastern studies at Cornell University, said the British Museum curator had made "an
extraordinary discovery."
Elizabeth Stone, an expert on the antiquities of
ancient Mesopotamia at New York's Stony Brook University, said it made sense
that ancient Mesopotamians would depict their mythological ark as round.
"People are going to envision the boat however
people envision boats where they are," she said. "Coracles are not
unusual things to have had in Mesopotamia."
The tablet records a Mesopotamian god's instructions for building a giant vessel --
two-thirds the size of a soccer field in area -- made of rope, reinforced with
wooden ribs and coated in bitumen.
Finkel said that on paper (or stone) the
boat-building orders appear sound, but he doesn't yet know whether it would
have floated. A television documentary due to be broadcast later this year will
follow attempts to build the ark according to the ancient manual.
The flood story recurs in later Mesopotamian
writings including the "Epic of Gilgamesh." These versions lack the
technical instructions -- cut out, Finkel believes, because they got in the way
of the storytelling.
"It would be like a Bond movie where instead of
having this great sexy red car that comes on, somebody starts to tell you about
how many horsepower it's got and the pressure of the tires and
the capacity of the boot (trunk)," he said. "No one cares about that.
They want the car chase."
Finkel is aware his discovery may cause consternation
among believers in the Biblical story. When 19th-century British Museum
scholars first learned from cuneiform tablets that the Babylonians had a flood
myth, they were disturbed by its striking similarities to the story of Noah.
"Already in 1872 people were writing about it
in a worried way -- What does it mean that Holy Writ appears on this piece of
Weetabix?" he joked, referring to a cereal similar in shape to the tablet.
Finkel has no doubts.
"I'm sure the story of the flood and a boat to
rescue life is a Babylonian invention," he said.
He believes the tale was likely passed on to the
Jews during their exile in Babylon in the 6th century B.C. And he doesn't think
the tablet provides evidence the ark described in the Bible existed. He said
it's more likely that a devastating real flood made its way into folk memory,
and has remained there ever since.
"I don't think the ark existed -- but a lot of
people do," he said. "It doesn't really matter. The Biblical version
is a thing of itself and it has a vitality forever.
"The idea that floods are caused by sin is
happily still alive among us," he added, pointing out a local councilor in
England who made headlines recently for saying Britain's recent storms were
caused by the legalization of gay marriage.
"Had I known it, it would have gone in the
preface of the book," Finkel said.
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