In his description of guffa-building, Hornell tells us that between these main ribs shorter upright lathes the height of the walls are sewn to the inside of the basket to provide additional rigidity. These elements are not explicit in our description, but perhaps this absence is explained through the following step.
4. SETTING UP THE DECK AND BUILDING THE CABINS
At this stage there are no supports for the roof of the coracle basket, which must be assumed to have been woven along with the rest of the boat. The next lines of the Ark Tablet address this in typically succinct fashion, describing the installation of a vast number of stanchions as support for an interior floor and the fitting of wooden cabins so that the occupants had upper and lower decks. The presence of more than one deck is the second way in which the Ark differs from simply being a scaled-up guffa.
The supports are half a nindan long and – in parallel to the previous line about the ribs – ‘half (a parsiktu) thick’, and they are described as being ‘made firm’ within the boat (lines 15–16). If for simplicity we assume them to have a square cross-section then this would have an area of about 15 fingers × 15 fingers = 225 fingers2 each. Although the greatest dimension of these elements is described as a length, their vertical nature is inescapable through the use of the term ‘stanchion’ (imdu, from the verb ‘to stand’). Other uses of this term cited in the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary I/J assure us that these supports are intended to be made of wood. The Ark Tablet tells us that one šār, i.e. 3,600, are to be installed. Although this sounds more like an arbitrarily large number, it turns out that this number would actually take up only a little over 6 per cent of the one-ikû floor space of the Ark, which is similar to the proportion of any building’s floor space taken up by supporting walls. Indeed, if this number is intended to be anything other than a literary device (as seems probable to us), these supports must have been thought of as having a placement designed to bear the load of the structures on the upper deck, rather than simply being arrayed across the floor like a forest.
Although this upper floor or deck is not mentioned as such in the text, we are assured that this is the purpose of the supports by their height – which is half the height of the Ark, by their shape, and by their number, which would be adequate for the purpose. We are next told that cabins have been constructed ‘above and below’, and it is possible that the flooring of the upper cabins was simply meant to be understood as the upper deck, resulting in an economy of description. This floor level would bisect the internal space of the craft into two roomy decks each about three metres high.
Such boat cabins are usually described as being wooden, but this probably meant having a wooden framework with woven basketwork walls, an idea reinforced by the root of the verb used for their construction – rakāsu – which involves the idea of ‘tying’. The cabins complete the structural elements of the Ark, and result in a cross-section for the vessel which may be schematised thus:
The Ark showing its stanchions, deck, and upper and lower cabins.
Obviously the framework of the cabins on the upper deck will have the function of supporting the already-completed roof of the Ark. If the internal floor was extended until it could be fixed to the external walls, this would also increase the structural strength and more than make up for the absence of the shorter supports expected between the ribs. So the presence of a deck and roof results in a more robust craft.
Caulking the Ark
The next step toward the completion of the boat is the waterproofing of both outside and inside faces of all external walls. This is done with the two types of bitumen – iṭṭû-bitumen and kupru-bitumen – with a final coating of oil. Before we move on to what the tablet says about this procedure, it will be of benefit to look at what is known generally about the two bitumen agents.
There are two useful resources here. The first is Leemans 1960, which looks at tablets dealing with the waterproofing of boats, and tentatively deduces the following information, valid for the Old Babylonian period to which the Ark Tablet dates:
1. iṭṭû-bitumen was moist; kupru-bitumen was harder and more mastic;
2. iṭṭû-bitumen is used as a liquid for some tasks, and its liquid form is produced in a kiln;
3. for caulking boats, large amounts of kupru-bitumen are used in comparison with iṭṭû-bitumen;
4. For caulking, iṭṭû-bitumen could be used on a rough kupru-bitumen base to improve its quality;
5. iṭṭû-bitumen was used on top of kupru-bitumen, on cabins and on the inside.
The second source is Carter 2012, where analysis shows that ancient bitumen samples used in caulking were never just pure bitumen but included organic and mineral components in amounts suggesting they had been deliberately added, perhaps as tempering agents. In addition, quite large quantities of oil are accounted for in boat-building but for an unknown use, although it is assumed waterproofing of ropes might be involved.
Now we turn to what the Ark Tablet has to say about waterproofing. The process outlined in the text is entirely reasonable for caulking a normal-size boat, with the quantities proportionally adjusted to accommodate the vast surface area involved. However, there are significant differences from the individual details adduced from the two references above. This part of the tablet is heavily abraded with a number of incomplete lines, but enough remains to clearly see the nature and order of the steps involved, which appear to throw new light on how bitumen was processed for caulking boats.
5. CALCULATING THE BITUMEN NEEDED FOR WATERPROOFING
Here, as before, Atra-hasīs’s 3,600 measures are to be taken seriously. The first step is to work out how much bitumen will be needed to complete the process, and in lines 18 and 19 we are told that Atra-hasīs apportioned one finger thickness of iṭṭû-bitumen, for the inside and outside of the hull. This is where the area calculations we looked at earlier come into their own. As the bitumen will be applied in a uniform layer, one need only work out the area of the boat, multiply it by two for the inside and outside, and then multiply it by the thickness of the coating. However, as the boat itself is one finger thick the work has already been done, and the amount of iṭṭû-bitumen needed is twice the volume of fibre needed to make the hull, which was four šār-and-a-bit, so something over eight šār. This is exactly the sort of calculation a scribe accounting for boat-building materials would have to make, and the sort of problem that would be practised diligently in the scribal school.
Line 20 tells us that the interior cabins have already been coated with one finger thickness of liquid iṭṭû-bitumen, thus focusing our attention on the critical task of waterproofing the hull.
6. LOADING THE KILNS AND PREPARING THE BITUMEN
Lines 21 and 22 tell us that indeed eight šār of kupru-bitumen have been loaded into the kilns and one šār of iṭṭû-bitumen is to be poured in as well. That is, we have our two × four šār-and-a-bit, as anticipated above. The eight šār will form the one-finger-thick base coat on the inside and outside of the vessel, while the remaining one šār will be applied as a thin protective top-coat to the outside. Notice, however, that although we are told we need one finger thickness of iṭṭû-bitumen for the inside and outside of the hull, we are actually loading almost entirely kupru-bitumen into the kilns as raw material (as well as a small proportion of iṭṭû-bitumen as a liquid – it is poured in).
This can probably be explained by lines 23, 24 and 25, which read: ‘The iṭṭû-bitumen did not come to the surface [lit. up to me), (so) I added five fingers of lard, I caused the kilns to be loaded … in equal measure.’
We interpret this as alluding to the process of fractionation. The kupru-bitumen with fresh bitumen was probably in its native form, solid and containing plant and mineral impurities, and heating it in the presence of oil releases the more-fluid iṭṭû-bitumen, which rises to the surface and can be ‘creamed off’ and used. Much like butter added to a frying pan, the lard transfers the heat to the solid bitumen, preventing
it from burning and helping it to melt. The ‘five fingers’ is certainly meant to represent a small quantity, used as a rendering aid, which was then added to all the kilns equally.
7. ‘ADDING’ THE TEMPER TO THE MIX?
We have reached a stage in the bitumen processing where we can assume that the pure liquid iṭṭû-bitumen has been skimmed off the top, leaving only the heavier kupru-bitumen remaining in the kiln. This will have concentrated in it the residue of the plant and mineral impurities from the original raw bitumen. The resulting mastic was presumably used to provide a tough outer layer, similar to that seen in samples of ancient bitumen caulking – which have the appearance of having had tempering agents artificially added. As tamarisk wood is commonly used as firewood, we interpret lines 26 and 27 = ‘I completed … tamarisk wood and stalks’; as referring to increasing the temperature of the fires beneath the kilns in an effort to soften the kupru to make it suitable for application.
8. BITUMINISING THE INTERIOR
Work has now progressed from preparation of the bitumen to its application, and although line 28 is almost totally obliterated, we can tell it refers to coating the interior surface of the hull, by line 29, which can be read as ‘going between her ribs’.
9. CAULKING THE EXTERIOR
Again, line 30 has been reduced to indecipherable traces, but it must have described covering the exterior surfaces with iṭṭû-bitumen, as this is mentioned in line 31. This base layer is a fine waterproof coat, which must be free from impurities and sufficiently plastic not to crack when the boat flexes. By lines 32 and 33 it is already in place, as a further protective coat is here being applied: ‘I applied the exterior kupru-bitumen from the kilns, using the 120 gur set aside by the workmen.’ This is obviously the remains of the initial kupru-bitumen after all the iṭṭû-bitumen has been extracted. It would form a stiff protective shell over the waterproofing coat of iṭṭû-bitumen.
This order of coatings is the second point which differs from the details from the references in Leemans 1960, which suggest that a crude layer of kupru-bitumen is put on first which is then overlaid with a finer layer of iṭṭû-bitumen to improve it. However, the account suggested here tallies more with the ethnographic accounts of Iraqi reed boat-building given in Ochsenschlager 1992, where the still-hot waterproofing bitumen layer is coated with river mud, which binds to it and forms a strong protective layer. The actual figure on the tablet for the amount of kupru-bitumen used is ‘two gur’, but the nature of Babylonian numbers allows the possibility that this two can be understood as representing any factor of sixty. A coating using two gur would be too thin to be meaningful, and a coat using 7,200 gur would use much more bitumen than we have. Interpreting the two as 120 gur equates to a thickness of exactly one-sixth of a finger when applied to the whole exterior of the Ark. Now 120 gur is equal to one šār, so it must be asked why the quantity reserved by the workmen is not given in this fashion. We believe it to be because – rather than a raw material – it is a finished product gathered from the kiln in vessels more appropriate to measurement in gur.
Another important thing to note is that although – as in the references – the amount of raw kupru-bitumen used (eight šār) was indeed much more than iṭṭû-bitumen (one šār), by the time the bitumen had been cooked and the final products manufactured, these quantities would have been completely reversed, with eight šār of iṭṭû-bitumen being used as opposed to one šār of kupru-bitumen as the dregs. That is, the text suggests that the relative proportions of these types of bitumen is not fixed, but can be altered through a basic industrial process involving heating, much like the relative proportions of ice and water.
10. EXTERIOR FINISHING – SEALING THE OUTER COAT
The final part of waterproofing and sealing the boat comes in lines 57–8, after a gap in which the Ark is loaded up with animals and supplies. The lines read: ‘I ordered repeatedly a one-finger (layer) of lard for the girmadû out of the thirty gur which the workmen had put to one side.’ As discussed, we consider that the girmadû is the roller-tool for applying the lard, which is the final operation before the boat is, as it were, ready for what lies ahead.
We are grateful to Sir Peter Badge for confirmation that oil is often applied in the construction of traditional guffas, where it can soften and prevent cracking in the outer waterproof layer, the tough coating of kupru in the case of the Ark.
Utnapishti’s Ark
We turn finally to the revealing construction data preserved within Gilgamesh XI. Here the scribes are working with walls at ten nindanu, which are ten times higher than in Atra-hasīs’s Ark. One of the Gilgamesh XI tablets gives the bitumen quantity for waterproofing at nine šār, transmitting correctly the original Old Babylonian quantity and not adjusting it in terms of the ‘new’ walls. (The other gives six.) However, this nine šār of bitumen is to serve for the whole cubic Ark. This means that if Utnapishti’s craft is waterproofed with a standard thickness of one finger for the bitumen, simple calculation shows that there would not be enough to do the interior at all, and the exterior could only be waterproofed to a height of 6.5 nindan up the walls, incredibly close to the 6.66 or two-thirds that the ‘oiling’ by the girmadû covers.
To us this means that the Gilgamesh editor has used the given height of the walls and the given quantity of bitumen to calculate the coverage this would provide, and then edited this new data into the story. Otherwise the appearance of the ‘two-thirds’ here is rather hard to explain. Unfortunately, in Gilgamesh XI the thirty gur of lard for the girmadûs has ended up as two šār – a completely unfeasible amount – and here the scribe has been unable to make sense of this.
Ut-Napishtim’s Ark coated with bitumen to about 2/3 its height.
Appendix 4
Reading the Ark Tablet
The fortified reader is now encouraged to have a look, line by line, at how the Babylonian cuneiform text translated and discussed in this book is actually written on the tablet. By now, this process cannot be as intimidating as it might once have sounded. As we have seen, it is up to Flood scholars to jump right in. Reading a new document from antiquity is always an exciting process, and this example is about as exciting as it gets.
The words of the Babylonian text of the Ark Tablet are largely recorded in Akkadian syllabograms, with some words given determinatives and others written with a Sumerian logogram.
First come the cuneiform signs in transliteration. Here the pronunciation of each syllabogram or syllable sign that makes up the Babylonian words is given in italic English letters; for example the first three signs, which are i-ga-ar.
Next comes the translation into English, the first word being ‘wall’. Printed below that in smaller script (for anyone who might be really interested) is the ‘joined-up’ form of the Semitic Akkadian word, in this case igāru, as it appears in a modern dictionary of the language.
Words that are written with old Sumerian logograms or word signs are shown as they are in capital letters, and the Babylonian reading is supplied in the line underneath.
In this transliteration:
x means one broken or unidentified sign
x (x) means the traces might reflect two broken or unidentified signs rather than one
[x x] means space for two signs of which nothing survives and
[x (x)] means space for one or two broken or unidentified signs.
Lines 1–5: Atra-hasīs for Flood Hero
1 i-ga-ar i-ga-a[r k]i-ki-iš ki-ki-iš
Wall, wall! Reed wall, reed wall!
igāru, ‘wall’; kikkišu, ‘reed wall’
2 µat-ra-am-ḫa-si-[i]s a-na mi-il-ki-ia qú-ul-[ma]
Atra-hasīs, pay heed to my advice,
ana, ‘to’; milku, ‘advice’; qãlu, ‘to pay attention to’
3 ta-ba-al-lu-uṭ [d]a-ri-iš
that you may live for ever!
balāṭu, ‘to live; dāriš, ‘for ever’
4 ú-bu-ut É bi-ni MÁ m[a-a]k-ku-ra-am ze-e[r-ma]
Destroy (your) house, build a boat; spurn property
abātu, ‘to destroy’; É (ideogram) = bītu, ‘house’; banû, ‘to build’, MÁ (ideogram) = eleppu, ‘boat’; makkūru, ‘property’; zêru, ‘to despise’
5 na-pí-iš-tam šu-ul-lim
and save life!
napištu, ‘life’; šullumu, ‘to save’
Lines 6–12: Plan and Dimensions
6 MÁ te-ep-pu-šu e-[ṣ]e-er-ši-ma
Draw out the boat that you will make
MÁ (ideogram) = eleppu, ‘boat’; epēšu, ‘to make’; eṣēru, ‘to draw’
7 e-ṣe-er-ti ki-[i]p-pa-tim
on a circular plan;
eṣirtu, ‘design’; kippatu, ‘circle’
8 lu mi-it-ḫa-ar ši-id-da-[š]a ù pu-u[s-sa]
Let her length and breadth be equal,
mitḫuru, ‘to be the same’; šiddu, ‘length’; u, ‘and’; pūtu, ‘breadth’
9 lu-ú 1 (AŠ) IKU ka-aq-qá-ar-š[a lu]-ù 1 NINDAN
i-ga-r[a-tu-ša]
Let her floor area be one field, let her sides be one nindan (high).
lū, ‘let it be that’; 1 is written AŠ; IKU (ideogram) = ikû, ‘field’; ‘acre’; qaqqaru, ‘floor area’; u, ‘and’; NINDAN (ideogram) = nindan, ‘a measure’; ‘a rod’; igāru, ‘wall’, ‘side’
The Ark Before Noah Page 32
