Early evidence for the British coracle.
(picture acknowledgement 7.7)
It is this practical background that makes sense of the Ark Tablet coracle. Some remote poet once asked himself or was enquired of by a listener – given that the Flood had really happened, and the Ark had really been built – what did the thing actually look like? What kind of vessel would be spacious enough, unsinkable yet buildable? Not a pointed magurgurru, by any means. Looking out over the river, rapt in a daydream, one can readily imagine that the solution would present itself in a lightning bolt of understanding: a coracle, a round coracle, on a – how you say? – cosmic scale …
We are entitled to focus in on an ancient river scene thronged with coracles because these traditional craft remained in use unchanged on the rivers of Mesopotamia right down into the first half of the last century, although in today’s Iraq they are, sadly, extinct. Coracles in general are a much studied and understood phenomenon, and the coracles of Iraq hold a more than respectable position among them. Many nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographs taken there show coracles, portrayed either as specific studies or as part of the inevitable river background to daily life. E. S. Stevens, whose useful 1920s coracle-construction photographs are reproduced here, wrote evocatively:
… we rattled over devious ways, splashing through the flood when we came to it, until the four lean horses came to a stop where a gufa was drawn up onto the bank. A gufa is a large bowl-shaped basket, made water-tight by a coating of bitumen. Some of these round craft are huge; ours would have held thirty people easily. We got in, and the gufachi slung a towing rope over his body, and waded upstream … When we had reached the actual river-bed, he jumped in with his helpers and began to paddle the boat across at an angle; for Samarra, on the high opposite bank, was by this time a good distance down-stream. The current was so swift and strong that it took only a few minutes before he landed us at the landing-stage below the city.
Stevens 1923: 50
Then there is the enigmatic E. A. Wallis Budge, later Keeper in the British Museum, an old coracle hand himself who knew them to be useful even in battle. At Baghdad in 1878 (he confesses) there was a little trouble over a tin of important clay tablets which had been mistaken by customs for a case of whisky and which needed to be deftly manoeuvred onto a British gunboat:
This procedure did not please the Customs’ officials, several of whom leaped into kuffahs and followed us as fast as their men could row. They overtook us at the gangway ladder, and tried to cut me off from the ship by thrusting their kuffahs in the way; and as some of them jumped on to the rounded edge of my kuffah, and tried to drag out of it my trunks and the box of Tall Al-’Amarnah Tablets, I became anxious lest the box of tablets be lost in the Tigris.
The “kuffah” [Budge added] … is a large basket made of willows and coated with bitumen inside and out. It is perfectly circular, and resembles a large bowl floating on the stream; it is made in all sizes, and some are large enough to hold three horses and several men. The small ones are uncomfortable, but I have journeyed for days in large ones, over the flood waters of the Euphrates around about Babylon, and on the Hindiyah Canal, and slept in them at nights.
Budge 1920: 183
Three stages in building a coracle as recorded by E. S. Drower (née Stevens).
(picture acknowledgement 7.8)
Walking the plank coracle-style.
(picture acknowledgement 7.9)
I am only sorry he didn’t bring one back for the British Museum.
This is as far as I think we can go in investigating Mesopotamian ark shapes on the basis of the known cuneiform Flood Story tablets. We know that tradition varied between the long and pointed ˚makurru (antiquated, unsuitable and unseaworthy) or the round and hospitable quppu (modern, practical and preferred). Later processes of textual accretion ‘developed’ the latter model into a tall, multi-floored tower of a cruise ship that was apparently endorsed by Gilgamesh himself (utterly unusable).
The next old photograph shows a cluster of traditional Tigris riverboats at the end of the nineteenth century. Side by side with plentiful round coracles are boats called taradas, whose characteristic outline, viewed from above, corresponds closely to the biconvex makurru shape in the Old Babylonian diagram. The tarada is made of wood, with mast and sails, but in shape such boats are descendants of the ancient makurru. Looking at the two possibilities I think we can agree that Enki chose his round coracle Ark wisely.
J. P. Peters described his photograph of 1899 as ‘A Scene on the Tigris at Baghdad, showing characteristic native boats, the long taradas, and the round, pitch-smeared kufas, with bridge of boats beyond.’
(picture acknowledgement 7.10)
Noah’s Ark in Genesis
From here, as good investigators, we must follow the Ark trail where it naturally leads, which is to the Hebrew Bible and beyond.
Make yourself an ark (tēvāh) of gopher wood [came the instruction]; make rooms (qinnīm) in the ark, and cover it (kāpar) inside and out with pitch (kopher). This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks.
Genesis 6:14–16
Noah’s Ark as illustrated in Martin Luther’s bible, reflecting the Hebrew description.
(picture acknowledgement 7.11)
Such was the order to Noah, facing in his turn the awful task of saving the world more or less single-handedly with the help of a custom-order boat. This is the breakdown of the specs:
Ark: tēvāh (unknown word for rectangular boat)
Material: gopher-wood (unknown species)
Rooms: qinnīm (cells; the basic word means ‘bird’s nest’)
Waterproofing: pitch or bitumen (kopher), smeared on (kāphar), inside and out
Length: 300 cubits (ammah) = 450 ft = 137.2 m
Width: 50 cubits = 75 ft = 22.8 m
Height: 30 cubits = 45 ft = 13.7 m
Roof: 1 cubit high(?)
Door: 1
Decks: 3
Compare the sparser data for Moses’ ‘arklet’ in Exodus 2:2–6:
Ark: tēvāh (unknown word for rectangular boat)
Material: gomeh, bulrushes; rush/reed/papyrus; wicker
Waterproofing: hamār, slime; bitumen/asphalt; bitumen; zefeth, pitch.
The biblical word tēvāh, which is used for the arks of Noah and Moses, occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. The flood and baby episodes are thus deliberately associated and linked in Hebrew just as the Atrahasis and Sargon Arks are linked associatively in Babylonia.
Now for something extraordinary: no one knows what language tēvāh is or what it means. The word for the wood, gopher, is likewise used nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible and no one knows what language or what kind of wood it is. This is a peculiar state of affairs for one of the most famous and influential paragraphs in all of the world’s writing!
The associated words kopher, ‘bitumen’, and kāphar, ‘to smear on’, are also to be found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, but, significantly, they came from Babylonia with the narrative itself, deriving from Akkadian kupru, ‘bitumen’, and kapāru, ‘to smear on’. In view of this it is logical to expect that tēvāh and gopher are similarly loanwords from Babylonian Akkadian into Hebrew, but there has been no convincing candidate for either word. Suggestions have been made for gopher-wood, but the identification, or the non-Hebrew word that lies behind it, remains open. Ideas have also been put forward over the centuries concerning the word tēvāh, some linking it – because Moses was in Egypt – with the ancient Egyptian word thebet, meaning ‘box’ or ‘coffin’, but these have ended nowhere. The most likely explanation is that tēvāh, like other ark words, reflects a Babylonian word.
I have a new suggestion.
A cuneiform tablet dealing with boats from around 500 BC, now in the
British Museum, mentions a kind of boat called a ṭubbû which is found at a river crossing, apparently as part of a vessel swap among boatmen:
… a boat (eleppu) which is six cubits wide at the beam, a ṭubbû which is at the crossing, and a boat (eleppu) five and a half (cubits) wide at the beam which is at the bridge, they exchanged for (?) one boat which is five cubits wide at the beam.
BM 32873: 2
The Babylonian ṭubbû tablet, front.
(picture acknowledgement 7.12)
The Babylonian ṭubbû tablet, back.
(picture acknowledgement 7.13)
The consonants t (in tēvāh) and ṭ (in ṭubbû) are distinct from one another, so it is impossible that ṭubbû, a masculine noun of unknown etymology, and tēvāh, a feminine noun of unknown etymology, represent the same word etymologically. I think that the Judaeans encountered the Akkadian boat word ṭubbû used for the Ark in the story along with the other Akkadian ark words and Hebraised it as tēvāh. In this case the original consonants are less important; the idea was to render the foreign word, for it was only to be used twice in the whole Bible, once for Noah, once for Moses. The relationship between the words is thus that they are neither cognate nor loaned: the Babylonian was given a Hebrew ‘shape’. It is much the same as the way in which Nebuchadnezzar’s eunuch Nabu-sharrussu-ukin became Nebu-sarsekim in the Book of Jeremiah. This would perforce mean that the word ṭubbû must have occurred in place of eleppu, ‘boat’, for Utnapishti’s Ark, in some first-millennium BC Babylonian source for the Flood Story that we do not have now.
An alternative possibility is that the Hebrew word tēvāh is a so-called Wanderwort, one of those basic words that spread across numerous languages and cultures, sometimes as a consequence of trade, whose original etymology or language becomes obscured (a good example is chai and tea), lasting for ever. We would have then an old, non-Semitic word for a very simple kind of river boat – conceivably even ultimately ancestral to the English tub – which appears as ṭubbû in Babylonian, tēvāh in Hebrew. One could imagine readily enough that such a simple word for a simple boat might survive along the waterways of the world for endless centuries. Turned upside down these boats produce a dull ‘dub’ sort of thumpy thud. It is curious that tub, like ark, can mean box, chest and boat. Ironically this Babylonian word ṭubbû, like tēvāh, is rare too: it occurs twice in the tablet just quoted and nowhere else!
Either proposal would account for the biblical name for the Ark: either the Judaeans encountered the ark word ṭubbû and Hebraised it to tēvāh, or they called the Ark tēvāh because it corresponded to the shape characteristic of that kind of old boat which was known to them as a tēvāh and to the Babylonians as a ṭubbû.
But, again, what about the shape?
The traditional river craft of Iraq once included a type of boat which in shape and proportions closely resembles the Ark as described in Genesis. Lieut.-Col. Chesney, compiling a government survey, himself witnessed such boats being made and used in the 1850s:
A remarkable kind of boat is constructed at Tekrít and in the marshes of Lamlúm, but more commonly near the bituminous fountains of Hít. At these places the operation of boat building is an every-day occurrence, and extremely simple. The self-taught shipwrights have not, it is true, the advantage of docks, basins or even slips; yet they can construct a vessel in a very short time, and without employing any other tools than a few axes and saws, with the addition of a large metallic ladle to pour out the melted pitch, and a wooden roller to assist in smoothing it. The first step in this primitive mode of ship-building is to choose a level piece of ground of suitable size, and sufficiently near the edge of the water; on this the builders trace out the size of the vessel’s bottom, not with mathematical precision it is true, still a line is used, and a certain system followed, the floor or bottom of the boat being the first object.
This procedure is exactly similar to that in the Ark Tablet when Enki instructs Atra-hasīs on how to lay out the plan for the boat described above. Chesney continues:
In the space marked out a number of rough branches are placed in parallel lines, at about a foot distance; other branches are places across them at similar distances, and interlaced. These, with the addition of a sort of basket-work of reeds and straw, to fill up the interstices, form a kind of rough platform, across which, to give the necessary stability, stronger branches are laid transversely from side to side, at distances of about eight or twelve inches. The bottom being in this state, the work proceeds to the second stage, by building up the sides. This is done by driving through the edge of the former, upright posts, about a foot apart, of the requisite height; these are filled up in the same way, and the whole is, as it were, consolidated by means of rough pieces of timber, which are placed at intervals of about four feet from gunwale to gunwale.
Having completed detailing the structural aspects of the boat, Chesney goes on to describe the next stage of waterproofing, again parallel to the Ark Tablet:
All parts are then coated with hot bitumen, which is melted in a hole close to the work, and reduced to a proper consistency by a mixture of sand or earth. This bituminous cement being spread over the frame-work, the application of a wooden roller gives the whole a smooth surface, both within and without, which after a brief space becomes not only quite hard and durable, but impervious to water, and well suited for navigation. The usual shape of the boats thus constructed is much like that of a coffin, the broadest end representing the bow; but others are of a neater shape. Such a boat, 44 feet long, 11 feet 6 inches broad, and 4 feet deep, drawing 1 foot 10 inches of water when laden, and only 6 inches when empty, can be constructed at Hít in the course of one day …
Chesney saw at once that the shape and proportions of such vessels strongly recalled the biblical Ark, arguing rather plausibly that Noah could have produced a boat of this type without much trouble:
The ark, as we are all aware, was three hundred cubits in length, fifty cubits in breadth, and thirty cubits in height, finished in a cubit, or sloping roof. These dimensions, presuming the smallest cubit to have been in use, would give 450 feet for the length, 75 feet for the breadth, and 45 feet for the depth of this enormous structure, whose burthen, making an allowance for the cross-beams with which it was braced and the supports, would be upwards of 40,000 tons. From the description just given of the Hít boats, it will be seen that there is not anything to prevent the people of that town, or of the neighbouring country, from constructing such a vessel, a larger scantling only being necessary for the frame-work. The lower story being intended for quadrupeds, must necessarily have been divided into compartments; and these divisions, as a matter of course, would support the second floor, which was appropriated for the people, whose apartments, again, supported the upper story, or that allotted for the birds. As this arrangement required three floors and a roof, the divisions and the necessary supports would have given sufficient stability to the whole structure; therefore the objections raised on account of the supposed difficulty of the work, may be considered as obviated, more particularly as the ark was destined to remain and be floated on the same spot …
Thanks to the archaeologist John Punnett Peters we have a photograph of several boats of this kind, in construction or finished, taken in 1888. Judging by his caption he, too, was irresistibly reminded of Noah’s Ark.
The second of J. P. Peters’ photographs, which he described as ‘A Noachian Boatyard at Hit on the Euphrates.’
(picture acknowledgement 7.14)
So now we have a real, functional boat-style candidate that is neither long and thin (Sumerian-type), round (Atra-hasīs-type) or square (Utnapishti-type), but which matches the oblong Genesis ark description to a disconcerting degree. It is reasonable, I suggest, to assume that the Hebrew description in the Bible reflects an oblong boat of this pattern, which, like the coracle, was surely commonly seen on the rivers of Mesopotamia in antiquity, and was encountered there by the Hebrew poets. Unfortunately neither Chesney nor
Peters records the nineteenth-century Arabic name, but all things considered it seems not unlikely that this type of boat was called ṭubbû in Akkadian, tēvāh in Hebrew.
The existence of such boats contributes an important element to our assessment of the Hebrew encounter with the Babylonian story. If the oblong shape of the Hebrew ark reflects an existing type of Babylonian boat easily seen ‘out of the window’, this has direct implications for the transmission of the story.
It is conceivable that, while Utnapishti at Nineveh ended up tweaking a square ark out of a circular one, another and unknown cuneiform edition tweaked this a little further into an oblong, convinced that a cubic boat would never work and swayed by the existence of the oblong barge-type called a ṭubbû. While retaining virtually the same base area (15,000 cubits2 as against 14,400 cubits2), the length and width of the Ark were adjusted to round numbers reflecting the relative proportions of such a barge.
The importance and brevity of the biblical description of Noah’s Ark meant that successions of scholars, religious and otherwise, have pored over these lines of Noah text. The rabbis have left us many details to amplify the simple narrative.
Noah, for example, is supposed to have planted cedar trees one hundred and twenty years in advance with the double advantage that the population would have time to turn away from sin, and the trees could grow tall enough. The ark is variously attributed three hundred and sixty cells, or chambers, ten by ten yards, and nine hundred cells, six by six yards. Some authorities saw the top floor for the unclean beasts, the middle for the humans and clean beasts, and the bottom for refuse, while others favoured the reverse, while there was a trapdoor to allow waste disposal into the sea. Atra-hasīs, emptying pans, must have often mused rancorously over this supposedly humorous Akkadian fable:
The Ark Before Noah Page 14
