Many people besides Josephus wrote about the Ark, that it could be seen on the mountains of Ararat.

St. Theophilus of Antioch wrote in 180 A. D. about the flood and said only eight people were saved and the remains of the Ark can be seen in the (then) Arabian mountains.

Encyclopaedists’ of the early Middle Ages mention the Ark.

Brother Jehan Haithon, a Prince of Armenia (13th century) who became a monk in France said that in the snow of Mt. Ararat a black spot can be seen—Noah’s Ark, which he himself saw in 1254.

Marco Polo (1234–1324 AD) mentions in his book: The Travels: “…in this land of Armenia, the Ark of Noah still rests on top of a great mountain, where the snow stays so long and never melts and by every snowfall gets thicker that no one can climb it.”

An ancient legend developed shrouding the mountain in mystery, probably from claiming that climbing Mt. Ararat would be displeasing to God, because of the several fatal outcomes trying to find the Ark (as well of the great difficulties, and facing sudden severe weather changes, etc.).

Another problem for any expedition have been the Kurds living in that area. They are unreliable porters and guides, because of fear and superstition. After a certain elevation they refuse to go any further. Nothing can persuade them to continue and the men or groups are left to themselves.

During the last 200 years many perished because the Kurds left them in the night at the lower snow levels.

In 1829 a Russian-born German physician Dr. J.J. Friedrich W. Parrot, was the first known explorer to reach Mt. Ararat’s summit.

Other climbers came hoping to bring back evidence that the Ark existed. In 1835, and 1845, two more explorers reached the summit, seeing the cross planted by Parrot.

In 1850 a Colonel of the Russian Army Khodzko came with a 60-person well-organized expedition and in full cooperation with the local authorities. They intended a long-term operation on the peak, to make a thorough search for the Ark. But extreme winds, severe storms, blizzards, hail, and ice defeated their aim.

In 1856 an English man Major Robert Stuart, reached the summit with his expedition, experiencing similar difficulties like Khodzko. In his private journal he refers to the Ark as deeply buried out of sight.

Scientists try to destroy the Ark

There is a story told by Haji Yearam, an Armenian, who spent his last years in the US. Harold H. Williams, minister in 1952 at the SDA Church in Logansport, Indiana, recounts Haji’s life; who lived at the foot of Big Ararat, Armenia. His people were descendants of those who came out of the Ark and never moved away from that country. For several centuries after the Deluge, his forefathers made yearly pilgrimages up to the Ark for worship and sacrifices.

There was a good trail and steps at the steep places. But enemies of God attempted to go up to Ararat to destroy the Ark. But near their goal suddenly a terrible storm washed away the trail, and lightings blasted the rocks. From this time forth pilgrimages ceased, fearing God’s wrath.

As a youth, one day strangers came to his home. Three scientists, not believing in God, nor the Bible, were on a quest to specifically prove that the legend of Noah’s Ark was nothing but a fake and a tale.

They hired his father and Haji as guides. That summer was unusually hot, so that the ice and snow on Ararat melted more than usual. The climb was treacherous and difficult. But they made it up to a little valley way up on Big Ararat, not on top, but some distance from the summit. There were some little peaks in that valley. The Ark came to rest in (now) a little lake, and the peaks protected the Ark from the tidal waves rushing back and forth as the waters of the flood subsided.

On one side of the valley, melting snow and glacier water run in a little river running down the mountain. At that spot the men saw the prow of a giant ship protruding out of the ice.

Scientists enter the Ark

They went inside exploring all around. The whole vessel was covered with a varnish-like substance (bitumen) very thick, inside and out. The vessel was built like a big house on the hull of the ship but had no windows. There was a huge opening, but the door was missing.

The scientists were enraged and stunned by what they now saw they had hoped to prove did not exist. They were so furious that they said they would destroy the ship. But the wood was like stone. They did not have the equipment to even be able to make a destructive blow. They tore out some timbers to burn them, but it was so hard, almost impossible to burn.

These men took a solemn death oath, that anyone who would ever mention one word of that encounter there, would be tortured and murdered. For fear of this oath, Haji and his father never told what they found, not even to their closest relatives.

Deathbed Confession

Haji’s story was confirmed by an elderly scientist in London, Williams said. The report goes like this: “One evening at home somewhere in 1918 reading the daily paper, I suddenly saw in a small print a short story of a dying man’s confession. An elderly man in London was afraid to die without making a terrible confession.” He gave the exact date and facts that Haji Yearam related to us in his story.

“Haji Yearam died in my parent’s home in Oakland, California, just about at the same time the old scientist in London died. We had never doubted Haji’s story but this confession in the London paper confirmed its truth in every detail.”

A Boy Climbs the Ark

A most significant account of Noah’s Ark was given by George Hagopian, a 80 year old Armenian, taped in Easton Maryland in 1970 by Ark researchers Elfred Lee and Eryl Cummings: “My grandfather was a minister in the big Armenian Orthodox Church in Van (near the Lake Van) and loved to tell about the holy ship on the holy mountain. Then one day my uncle said to me he wants to take me up to show me the Ark…

“With a donkey and supplies we climbed and climbed. I was then 10 years old. It was a year without much snow—that occurs about every 20 years.

“We got to the Ark. It was getting dark and misty, then my uncle and I began piling stones against the side of the Ark. Then my uncle grabbed me and lifted me on his shoulders and together climbed the pile of stones. Reaching the top my uncle took me by the ankles and pushed me up, saying: ’Reach the top and clutch the edge and pull yourself up.’ I stood up and looked all over the ship, it was very long and about 40 feet high. My uncle yelled up to me to look for holes and for the big one and what I can see inside.

“I shivered from the cold and was also frightened. Yes, there was a huge black hole but saw nothing. There was a thin layer of fresh snow on the Ark, and I pushed some away and saw green moss on top of the ship. I pulled a piece of wood off, the green moss made the Ark feel soft and mouldy. On the roof beside the big hole, I noticed small holes all the way from the front to the back. My uncle said these holes were for air. He then shot a bullet into the side of the Ark, but it would not penetrate the wood. Then he took his hunting knife to chip off a piece of the Ark. Then we returned as it was already getting quite dark.

“I saw the Ark again two years later, it was 1904. The Ark still looked the same, but I did not climb to the top but investigated the sides. The Ark rested on the steep ledge of a bluish-green rock about 3000 feet wide. I did not see any nails at all. It looked like the Ark was made of one piece of petrified wood. The door was gone, there was no other opening. The sides were slanting upward to the top, the front was flat. There were no real curves. It looked like a flat-bottomed barge.”

The Ark seen from the Air

Then there is the story of Russian Vladimir Roskovitsky, a pilot. He, with his aviator colleagues were to make a high altitude test from their station 25 miles northeast of Mt. Ararat.

Flying over the Ararat area they sighted a lake at the 14000 foot mark, and something like a submarine, large as a city block, with about one fourth of the hull submerged. On one side near the front it was partly dismantled, the other side had a doorway almost 24 feet square but no door. Roskovitsky reported this discovery to the captain who was flown to the site and said that this strange craft was Noah’s Ark, sitting there for 5000 years and most of the time frozen in. Roskovitsky had made the most significant discovery of the age!

This aroused great interest to the Czar, who sent a special expedition of soldiers to climb Ararat to take measurements, and photographs. The Ark had hundreds of small rooms, some had very high ceilings, some rooms unusually large with fences of great timbers across, two feet thick to hold animals ten times the size of elephants. Other rooms were lined with cages with metal bars across the front, like for chickens, fowls, etc.

The vessel was heavily coated looking like shellac (bitumen), and its workmanship testified of a highly sophisticated civilization. The wood was similar to cypress, a wood that never rots.

But just a few days after the Czar received the report and photographs, the Bolshevik Revolution overthrew the Russian Government. The records were never made public, probably destroyed, for Bolshevism discredited all belief in the Bible.

Many more expeditions have been undertaken, but this here should suffice.

Unfortunately, later on, the situation at Ararat changed as military stations were set up, to protect the land from Russian spy planes. The government was against further expeditions, though there were some exceptions made.

The book is available at Thriftbooks, and Amazon, new and used.

Edda Tedford, Canada