The Ark Before Noah

by Irving Finkel

  At this point on our journey we can conclude:

  1. The Ark’s resting place in Antiquity was a massive religious and cultural icon whose significance would be valued and appreciated universally; that is, across borders and across religions. We are operating in timeless terrain with modern analogies.

  2. Such sites, then as now, were possessed of religious or magical power sometimes mixed with commercial implications.

  3. They will always have attracted pilgrims, tourists and the sick.

  4. There will always have been the inbuilt likelihood of contrast or conflict between the ‘real’ site and any number of rivals or alternatives.

  5. The appearance of such rivals may or may not have provoked response from the ‘first’.

  Traditions about where Noah’s Ark landed do not need to be reconciled, therefore; merely understood for what they represent.

  Conclusions

  The written and illustrated tradition of the Babylonian Map of the World is the oldest information we have; it encapsulates Old Babylonian ideas of the early second millennium BC which are a thousand years older than the tablet on which it is preserved. According to this the Ark came to rest on a very remote, gigantic mountain, located far beyond Urartu on the other side of the world-encircling Ocean, far indeed beyond the ken of man. To find the Ark, in other words, would have meant travelling to and through Urartu and virtually into infinity beyond. This was the traditional view that prevailed from at least 1800 BC, and almost certainly we would find it made explicit had we access to the whole contemporary Flood Story narrative of which the Ark Tablet is only part.

  Under these circumstances it is far from difficult to understand how Agri Dagh in northeast Turkey became identified as the mountain; it was located in the ‘right’ place and direction in northern Urartu, it had outstanding geological magnificence and plausibility for the role, and, unlike the ethereal mountain of the original conception, it was near and visible and visit-able. This process, if not originally due to the Bible, was certainly confirmed and reinforced by the biblical account, the potency and effect of which was far greater than any tradition that ran before. In response, the mountain actually came to be called Mount Ararat.

  This tradition of the original ‘somewhere beyond Urartu’ drawing in closer to ‘somewhere in Urartu’ resulted in, as we may say, the version which has run uninterruptedly ever since; it was old and entrenched by the time of most of the writers who ever wrote about it, and to a large extent it still holds sway today.

  By the first half of the first millennium BC the Assyrians, for reasons that are unclear, had instituted a deliberate Ark-mountain change and promoted Mount Niṣir. Perhaps the reasons were several.

  In 697 BC, if slight clues have been correctly put together, Sennacherib, for whom Mount Niṣir was certainly the ‘real’ Ark Mountain, encounters a second, rival set-up flourishing already at Cudi Dagh. This would be the first evidence for what later became a very strong rival to Mount Ararat and easily outlived the Assyrian Mount Niṣir, which disappeared entirely from the field with the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC and was otherwise unheard of until George Smith read the Assyrian library copies in the 1870s, when the name experienced a new lease of life.

  Cudi Dagh was successively embraced by Nestorian Christianity and, then, Islamic tradition as the landing place for Noah or Nuh’s boat. In the course of time, other, less durable, Ark mountains made their appearance.

  Ironically, whatever phenomena adventurers may claim to have found, it is Mount Ararat today that is closest in location and spirit to the original conception of the Babylonian poets.

  The Babylonian Map of the World, by the way, is full of other secrets and to wander after them now would take us far beyond this book into cuneiform byways of astrology, astronomy, mythology, and cosmology (at least), brave journeys themselves that cannot be undertaken here. The map story is far from concluded. The map’s uniqueness from our point of view, however, does not mean for a minute that it was such a rarity in its own day. On the contrary, it is probable that many such maps existed, both on clay and on bronze, fulfilling different functions and even expressing different theories. One reason for this conclusion is that the Babylonian tradition exemplified by the Map of the World found its counterpart in the maps known to historical geographers as ‘T-O’ or ‘O-T’ maps, which survived from the Early Middle Ages until perhaps the fifteenth century AD. The origin of this name lies in the fact that these European maps show the world as a disc surrounded by the mare oceanum, with a T fixed in the middle that represents the three major waterworks that divide the three parts of the earth. These maps bear an uncanny – and usually unexplained – resemblance to the Babylonian Map of the World, with its N→S River Euphrates transversed by the waterway to the south. The resemblance is such that the European maps seem literally to be a reinterpretation of a Babylonian model.

  A so-called T and O map by Isidore of Seville dating to 1472. Its antecedents are unmistakable.

  (picture acknowledgement 12.8)

  Computerised reconstruction of the Babylonian Map of the World; front view.

  (picture acknowledgement 12.9)

  That the Babylonian design survived and could exert its influence so long after the event is surely a further demonstration of what followed when Greek mathematicians and astronomers came to investigate Babylonian cuneiform records. Surely they copied whatever they found interesting onto papyrus for consideration and development once they got home, and that would have included any maps and diagrams that they came across in the libraries.

  Noah’s Ark lands convincingly on the Mountain, as painted by Aurelio Luini (1545–1593).

  (picture acknowledgement 12.10)

  13

  What is the Ark Tablet?

  ‘We may as well imagine the scene.’

  ‘No, my mind baulks at it.’

  ‘Mine does worse. It constructs it.’

  Ivy Compton-Burnett

  In pursuit of the Flood Story in its cuneiform incarnations we have subjected the Ark Tablet to prolonged decipherment, dissection and discussion. The time has come to face another question: what, in fact, is the Ark Tablet?

  When the text as a whole is read over with the other versions now in mind – Atrahasis on the one hand, Gilgamesh on the other – a remarkable phenomenon becomes apparent: the Ark Tablet contains absolutely no narrative.

  On the contrary, a succession of nine speeches takes up the entire quota of sixty lines of text. The god Enki delivers his key speech verbatim to our hero, and the subsequent lines break down very naturally into eight separate report monologues by Atra-hasīs. Each marks an important stage in the unfolding of the plot, but none of those moments is otherwise described or built upon. This is what the Ark Tablet looks like when analysed from that perspective:

  Speech 1. Enki to Atra-hasīs: ‘Wall, wall … !’ (Lines 1–12)

  Speech 2. Atra-hasīs: ‘I set in place …’ (Lines 13–17)

  Speech 3. Atra-hasīs: ‘I apportioned one finger …’ (Lines 18–33)

  Speech 4. Atra-hasīs: ‘I lay me down …’ (Lines 33–8)

  Section 5. Atra-hasīs: ‘As for me …’ (Lines 39–50)

  Speech 6. Atra-hasīs: ‘And the wild animals …’ (Lines 51–2)

  Speech 7. Atra-hasīs: ‘I had …’ (Lines 53–6)

  Speech 8. Atra-hasīs: ‘I ordered …’ (Lines 57–8)

  Speech 9. Atra-hasīs to the shipwright: ‘When I shall have …’ (Lines 59–60)

  Substantial, if not vital, plot elements (such as Enki’s telling Atra-hasīs what to say to the elders to explain his absence, or the strange and ominous rain that will be the sign of the Flood to come, or the rather important question of the boat-building time available, or the punctual arrival of the workmen with their various tools) are completely left out. All we have is Enki’s famous address and Atra-hasīs telling him, and us, what he accomplished, step by step. What is more, Atra-hasīs speaks in the first person: my building (
past tense); my waterproofing, my troubles (past tense); my order to the shipwright (present tense).

  From several standpoints this is quite remarkable. In the more or less contemporary Old Babylonian Atrahasis the corresponding elements of the story are couched in the third person by an unseen narrator. It is only in Gilgamesh XI that we find this narrative reported in the first person, and here it is perfectly understandable since Utnapishti, who had built the Ark and endured the Flood himself, is reminiscing to Gilgamesh. While it has always been clear that in recycling the old story this shift from third to first person was necessary for Gilgamesh, it is significant to encounter an Old Babylonian Flood Story tradition in which it occurs.

  Because of this close perspective, there is certainly more emphasis in the Ark Tablet on Atra-hasīs the man and his predicament than is perceptible in Old Babylonian Atrahasis (even though this is incomplete at important points), while Gilgamesh XI has no time for that side of things at all beyond a rush of tears on landing.

  Enki’s reassuring tone about boat-building, You know what sort of stuff is needed for boats, and Someone else can do the work (Ark Tablet 11–12), implies that Atra-hasīs had protested his inability to do what was wanted, as he does explicitly in Assyrian Smith 13–15 (‘I have never built a boat … Draw the design on the ground that I may see the design and build the boat’). His suffering and address for mercy to the Moon cover the whole of lines 39–50, and when complete must have been a more affecting passage than we can now fully grasp. In Old Babylonian Atrahasis there are three terse lines in counterpart.

  Side by side with the considerable detail about building and waterproofing there is clearly an attempt to develop the character of Atra-hasīs so that he emerges as a person, and to invite sympathy with his predicament.

  Think again for a moment what this predicament was: the world and all its life forms were to be destroyed and Atra-hasīs alone had the task of ensuring the survival of all species for a post-Flood world. His instructions came from one god who had gone out on a limb to rescue life, while the gods as a body were intransigent and deaf to appeal. He has to get everyone on board, he has to get all living things up the gangplank and meanwhile the water clock is ticking. His boat springs a single leak and that’s the end of everything. This is a role for a hero as nerve-racking as that in any contemporary Action Film, in which charismatic actors are usually responsible for saving the world against all odds and under ludicrous time-pressure from something utterly appalling.

  There is a further and related oddity that must be registered. There is no indication in the Ark Tablet as to who is speaking. We have to know that it is the god Enki who speaks at the beginning. From line 13 onwards it is up to us to understand that the man Atra-hasīs is speaking since the change of speaker goes unmarked. But to whom is he talking, in recounting his achievements? And who would guess from the tablet alone that the last two lines are addressed to his (unmentioned) shipwright?

  This unusual situation is due to the fact that the tablet omits all outbreaks of the conventional literary structure – Anu opened his mouth to speak, saying to the lady Ishtar … followed by Ishtar opened her mouth to speak, saying to her father, Anu …

  Gilgamesh VI: 87–88; 92–93

  – with which Babylonian narrative literature is, not to put too fine a point on it, slightly tiresomely littered. In fact, I cannot come up with another example of Babylonian mythological or epic literature that is devoid of this characteristic speech-linking device. Its repetitive nature at first sight looks like a remnant of oral literature, where things are repeated more than we would repeat them today, which the modern connoisseur of cuneiform literature just has to accept, or appreciate as atmospheric and authentic. On reflection, however, it is just the opposite. The characteristic dependence on this formula originates in the very transition from oral to written literature, for who is speaking at any one time will always be clear in a storyteller’s presentation, but the process of writing down what has previously been spoken aloud creates ambiguity for the reader unless each speaker is clearly identified.

  Assyriologists have long convinced themselves that the stories of which we have written versions circulated for a very long period as oral literature, enjoying a level of freedom and improvisation that was shut off once the process of formally recording them swung into action, with its inevitable inhibition of literary creativity and variety. The arrival of the second millennium BC was probably the period when the writing down of stories got a substantial push. Before that major step, the story of the Flood was the province of storytellers, although we can feel confident that the arrival of written versions of the stories in urban contexts did not spell the end of storytelling as an art.

  Let us imagine one of these Old Babylonian storytellers. Such people surely existed on many levels, from penniless itinerants who followed their muse from village to village, telling stories for a place by the fire and a mess of pottage, to plumper professionals, patronised by proper kings for when they had had enough of blind harpists, dancing girls and snake charmers or wanted to impress visitors.

  Our storyteller is recounting the Story of Atra-hasīs, with the Ark, and the Flood. Probably everybody knew the rudiments, but in the hands of a skilled storyteller its power and magic would know no bounds. For he is dealing with the largest possible issues: the life and death of mankind, the narrowest of escapes, how all eggs were entrusted to one big basket, buffeted above heaving waters, all living things crying in terror (or because they were seasick or being squashed). The narrative could be supported with props; a small reed fence for Ea to whisper through, a horned head-dress for the speaking god, a toy coracle for Atra-hasīs, a stick to draw in the dust. A popular narrator might muster a simple drummer, a flautist, a boy assistant. With these tools he could transport his audience, telling a story that was always the same but always different; sometimes terrifying with the unswayable cruelty of the gods and the onrush of deathly waters, sometimes soothing with everything turning out all right, maybe sometimes even funny, when a dreamer who has never got his hands dirty is told by a god that he has to achieve the impossible right now and he doesn’t want to. Why pick on me, already?

  The Ark Tablet, however, did not belong to such a wanderer with a head full of narratives learned by heart. It begins at a very dramatic moment, ‘Wall, wall! Reed fence, reed fence!’ imparting the worst news in the world, and ends equally dramatically with everyone sealed in their capsule, waiting for the Deluge. Here we have the words extracted from a much broader sequence of high drama, packaged in such a way as to commence with and pivot on moments of maximum storytelling tension. This cannot be coincidence. On the contrary, it seems to me to underline the use of this narrative in real storytelling circumstances, a sixty-line, pocket-sized episode that will leave the listeners, by the end, agog. The sound of the first raindrops would be like the closing theme tune for a television series, followed by the announcer’s infuriating explanation that everyone will have to wait a whole week for more.

  This is not to say that we have here the ‘script’ of a traditional storyteller, for such things are incompatible. It is rather a note of the essential spoken parts for the roles of Enki – one voice – and Atra-hasīs – the other – which, rationally speaking, can hardly derive from any other use than some kind of public performance. We know from cuneiform texts of street performers, clowns, wrestlers, musicians, people with monkeys; we know of formal cult processions with the boats of the gods in the street; and the public recitation of the Creation Epic at the New Year Festival. Perhaps, in between all these, we might sandwich the Big Babylonian Atrahasis Show. Can we not imagine some clear-voiced narrator, our hero swaying between fright, despair and confidence, declaiming his speeches, upright by the end of the story in his travelling boat, with his unspeaking, unnamed wife and sons and a quantity of tame livestock immune to stage-fright? What else, indeed, can our Ark Tablet be?

  So I had concluded, with this chapter written and virtual
ly ready to send off to my editor, when a colleague notified me of the existence of the following most helpful book:

  Claus Wilcke, The Sumerian Poem Enmerkar and En-suḫkeš-ana: Epic, Play, Or? Stage Craft at the Turn from the Third to the Second Millennium B.C. with a Score-edition and a Translation of the Text (American Oriental Series Essay 12. Newhaven 2002).

  The author, Claus Wilcke, has argued in this book that this early Sumerian composition, which reflects tension between the ancient precursors of Iraq and Iran, has a cast of gods and mortals and built-in stage directions. Action varies between Sumer, in the cities of Uruk and Kulaba – at a cattlepen and sheepfold near the city of Eresh, then a gate facing sunrise and on the banks of the Euphrates – after which at Aratta in mountainous Iran – in a priestly residence and at the so-called ‘Sorcery Tree’. The demonstrative role of the narrator can be seen in the grammar, which is full of elements called, in a self-explanatory way, ‘demonstratives’. Wilcke derives the action from real events, locating court performance early in the reign of the Sumerian king at Ur, Amar-Sin (c.1981–1973 BC).

  As Wilcke very reasonably put it, ‘ancient Near Eastern theatre seems at first sight difficult to imagine’, and this had troubled me, too, in proposing public performance behind the text of the Ark Tablet, but now each case – the one Sumerian, the other Babylonian – reinforces the plausibility of the other. With the Ark Tablet, in fact, I think there can be no other possible interpretation.