Mt. Ararat

Mount Ararat 1999 - Courtesy Rob Michelson

Mount Ararat is located in Eastern Turkey on the borders of Iran, Armenia (formerly U.S.S.R.), and Nakchivan. This volcanic mountain rises 5,165 meters or 16,945 feet high, far above the plains that are at 2,000-3,000 feet high, and is the highest location in the ancient territory of Urartu, a region which covered tens of thousands of square miles with hundreds of mountains. Ararat is the newer Armenian name of Urartu from the Hebrew Torahwritten by Moses (c. 1400 BC), which only included the consonants “rrt”. However, the translators of the Bible replaced the “rrt” with the later name, “Ararat” or “Armenia.” The Assyrian kings wrote about battles against the Urartian tribes from the thirteenth century BC (c. 1286 BC) until the sixth century BC when Urartu was destroyed by the Medes. The name Urartu then vanished from history (until archaeologists re-discovered it in the 1800s) and was replaced by Ararat and Armenia in the vicinity as well as in English Bible translations, maps, etc. As history went on in the first and second millenia AD, the mountain became known as Ararat and the region as Armenia.

Search for Noah’s Ark Presentation

Review & Critique of Bob Cornuke’s Search for Noah’s Ark Video in Adobe Acrobat PDF Format – or HTML Web Format by Gordon Franz, Bill Crouse, Rex Geissler

An Armenian Perspective on the Search for Noah’s Ark by Rick Lanser, M.Div.

Durupinar’s Great Telçeker Earthflow Geologic Formation by Murat Avci, Geologist

Ararat Cam

Corona Satellite Image

Expedition List

Explorers of Ararat Book

Explorers List

Eyewitness List

Photo Map

Scale of Ark

Wallpaper 

Mount Ararat may be the largest single-mass or volume mountain in the world as it is huge (one really has to see it in person to appreciate its immensity) and rises to 17,000 feet from the plains surrounding it at 2,000-3,000 feet while most other large mountains are in a mountain range with less differential and base circumference. Ararat has only a few native trees growing on it in Ahora village, shrubs around Korhan, and several small forests on Little Ararat. Views differ as to whether Ararat formed much of its size after the flood (post-flood) or partially during the flood with post-flood uplift and lava flows. Some geologists like Clifford Burdick have found pillow lava (lava spewed into water, ice, or snow) up to the 14,000-foot level where the 17-square mile ice cap typically begins. However, since pillow lava may be formed with ice or snow water, it is not a convincing argument for a flood-time mountain creation. Geologists believe that cylindrical and very steep mountains like Little Ararat show that it is most probably a post-flood mountain. There are also claims of fossils and sedimentary layers on Greater Ararat but these claims have not been backed up with concrete evidence as of this date although there are evidence of fossils in the Ararat valley limestones from both the Geologist Abich and the explorers.

From 14,000 feet to 17,000 feet, much of the lava is covered by an ice cap which is about 17 square miles in size and is up to 350 feet deep. As computed by ArcImaging, the coordinates that cover the ice cap area on Mount Ararat are N 39 degrees 41′ to N 39 degrees 44′, E 44 degrees 15′ 30″ to E 44 degrees 19′ 30″. The area of this rectangle is about 31.6 square kilometers.

The Mount Ararat region along with the Araxes river valley constitutes a possible beginning location for the archaeology of the Early Transcaucasian culture with its distinctive red-black burnished ware. There are a number of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age archaeological sites around Mount Ararat in Turkey, Armenia, and Nakchivan. Archaeologists would like to research this area more but the border region is difficult to get permission to research as well as the border breaks up the research area into separate nations… However, ArcImaging was able to secure permission in 2001 for the first archaeological survey of Mount Ararat since the 1980s. The Mount Ararat Archaeological Survey co-authored by Ataturk University Archaeology Professors in Erzurum, Turkey and Rex Geissler of ArcImaging was published in the Summer 2008 Edition of Bible and Spade by Associates for Biblical Research (ABR).

Earliest Historical Reference to Noah’s Ark being on Mount Ararat

The earliest obvious historical reference to the geography surrounding Noah’s Ark landing on Mount Ararat is by the early church historian Philostorgius’s account around A.D. 425. The 2007 translation of Philostorgius was edited by Philip R. Amidon, originally from Joseph Bidez, except for the extracts from the Syriac chronicles. Amidon emphasizes how Philostorgius made great use of the immense library resources of Constantinople in his writings, which should give us more confidence in his geography.

How is it that Philostorgius even knows that the Ark landed on the Armenian Mount Ararat in ca. 425 AD if supposedly (as Bailey et al. contend) no one came up with that idea until medieval times and no one ever made such an identification until then?  Amidon states the following in the introduction about Philostorgius:

“The learned and fervently Eunomian layman Philostorgius, born in Cappadocia around 368, heartily detested such historiography as may be imagined [this reference is to the Council of Nicaea’s Nicene Creed supporters like Rufinus who translated and extended/massaged Eusebius of Caesarea writings into Latin to show support for Nicene Christianity]. The remnants of his writing show a lively intellectual curiosity encouraged by his sectarian creed, whose God is not the hidden deity of Gnosticism but one whose very substance can be known by human reason directed aright. He obviously drank deeply from the libraries, museums, and archives of Constantinople, his Dissimilarian spectacles bringing into focus a picture of the century preceding that was very unlike the one painted by Rufinus, with whom his own narrative, when he came to write it, was indeed in frequent argument… It appeared sometime between 425 and 433, in twelve books bound in two volumes, its proper period the years from 320 to 425… Philostorgius in fact groups into one ‘homoousian’ party all those Christians who opposed Eunomianism (in the same way as those of Nicene sympathies like to call ‘Arian’ anyone who rejected the term ‘consubstantial’ as used in the Creed of Nicaea)… Such is the central dram of our author’s history: the enduring contest between the true monotheistic faith of God’s people and the pagan forces arrayed against it. Gnosticism is always the silent partner in the debates between Nicene and Eunomian Christians, the real foe against whom Aetius fought the battle that nearly led to his death. And there is some evidence that this view comes from Eunomius himself. This being the tenor of Philostorgius’s history, it is not surprising that the government that championed the Nicene faith would seek to suppress it, seeing that it had previously ordered the burning of the works of Eunomius, one of the great heroes of his tale… He followed Herodotus’s lead in historiography, embroidering his narrative with learned excursions into geography and natural history and in general cultivating style that would recommend him to his readers. The style was no empty show. His immersion in the scholarly resources offered by Constantinople has preserved for us, even in the abridgement of its original work, traditions that are otherwise unknown or that add perspective to matters related elsewhere.”

Philostorgius stated the following about Noah’s Ark and Mount Ararat in Book 3 as epitomized by Photius who according to Amidon “is usually a careful, if hostile, epitomizer, and his editorial glosses can usually be detected”:

“The Persian Gulf, which is formed by the ocean as it enters there, is huge and is encircled by many nations. The Tigris is one fo the enormous rivers that empty their streams into it at its mouth. The Tigris seems to have its source in the east, south of the Caspian Sea in Corduena, and it flows past Syria, but when it arrives in the region of Susa, the Euphrates joins its current to it, and so it boils onward, swollen now to a great size. Hence they say it is called “Tigris” after the animal. But before it descends to the sea, it divides into two great rivers, and then it empties into the Persian Gulf from these two mouths at its end, which are divided from each other. It thus cuts off a considerable area of ground in between, making of it an island that is both of the river and of the sea; it is inhabited by a people called the Mesenes. As for the Euphrates River, it appears to take its rise in Armenia, where Mount Ararat is. The mountain is still called by that name by the Armenians. It is where, according to scripture, the ark came to rest, and they say that considerable remnants of its wood and nails are still preserved there. From there the Euphrates starts as a small stream at first, growing ever larger as it advances and sharing its name with the many rivers that empty into it. It makes its way through Greater and Lesser Armenian and then proceeds on, dividing first the Syria that is properly called Euphratensis and then also the rest of Syria. Having passed through this region, and the remaining part [of Syria], and having broken up the lands through which it passes into a series of convolutions of every sort with its crooked course, it draws near to Arabia. There its way takes it in a circle opposite the Red Sea as it loops around a wide region, after which it turns toward the Caecias wind, midway between north and east. It then heads toward the Tigris River, although it cannot join its whole self to it, but wasting part of itself on the way, it empties the remained of itself into the Tigris quite near Susa, this remainder being a mighty stream quite capable of carrying ships. There it also abandons its name and flows with the Tigris down to the Persian Gulf. The land between these two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, is called Mesopotamia.”