Irving Finkel | The Ark Before Noah: A Great Adventure

欧文·芬克尔｜诺亚之前的方舟：一场伟大的冒险 欧文·芬克尔（Irving Finkel）讲述了一块由民间人士带来的古巴比伦楔形文字泥板如何揭示出：美索不达米亚最初的方舟实际上是一艘由盘绕绳索、木材和沥青制成的巨型圆形皮筏。芬克尔结合1920年代伊拉克造船的民族志研究，证明了泥板上详尽的数学规范代表的是真实的工程数据，而非虚构神话。他还介绍了在印度喀拉拉邦建造按比例缩小的可运行复制品及其后续水上试航的宏大项目。最后，芬克尔将泥板中的独特措辞与《巴比伦世界地图》（Imago Mundi）联系起来，阐释了美索不达米亚宇宙观如何直接影响了《圣经》中方舟搁浅于亚拉拉特山脉的记载。 一块约公元前1800年的古巴比伦楔形文字泥板揭示，美索不达米亚方舟最初并未被构想为远洋船只或立方体，而是一艘由盘绕棕榈绳、木质肋骨和沥青建造的巨型圆形皮筏（quffa）。 (8:48) 泥板上的神圣建造指令指定了14,430苏图（sūtu）的棕榈纤维绳，与现代独立数学计算得出的数值（14,624苏图，约合527公里）误差极小，证明古代抄写员记录的是真实的工艺工程数据。 (15:03) 在印度喀拉拉邦开展的一项实验考古项目成功建造并下水了一艘按比例缩小的可运行复原船，证明该圆形设计尽管没有龙骨或船首，依然具有天然浮力且结构稳固。 (24:01) 约公元前600年的《巴比伦世界地图》（Imago Mundi）与方舟泥板共享了一个独特的习惯用语（“厚如帕西克图”/thick as a parsiktu），用来描述搁浅在乌拉尔图（Urartu）以外山巅上的船体木料，明确指出了《圣经》中“亚拉拉特诸山”的直接美索不达米亚出处。 (50:08)

British Museum curator Irving Finkel demonstrates that an Old Babylonian cuneiform tablet dating to circa 1800 BC records technical blueprints for a colossal circular coracle, revealing that the Mesopotamian flood vessel—and its biblical successor—drew on functional regional boatbuilding traditions rather than conventional ocean ships. Deciphering the Circular Ark Blueprint (8:48) Around 1985, member of the public Douglas Simmons presented a miscellaneous bag of antiquities to the British Museum, including an Old Babylonian cuneiform tablet that Finkel identified as an unpublished fragment of the Atra-hasis Flood Story. Unlike the 7th-century BC version discovered by George Smith in 1872—which depicted the hero Utnapishtim's vessel as a giant cube—this older inscription, dating to roughly 1800 BC, contained exhaustive divine instructions from the god Enki specifying that the rescue craft was to be completely round (*kippatu*). Finkel recognized the design as an immense coracle (known in Arabic as a *quffa*), the traditional skin-and-reed circular craft utilized across Mesopotamian river systems for millennia. Mathematical Precision and Vernacular Engineering (15:03) The text functions like a technical assembly manual, detailing a vessel with a floor area of 3,600 square meters, seven-meter-high walls, a lower deck partitioned for regional animals, and an upper tied-reed deckhouse for Atra-hasis and his family. To decipher the dense numerical inscriptions, Finkel cross-referenced the text with James Hornell's 1920 ethnographic survey of Iraqi coracle construction. When a modern mathematician calculated the rope required to build a vessel of those dimensions using palm-fiber cordage of finger thickness, the theoretical requirement totaled 14,624 *sūtu* (approximately 527 kilometers). This figure closely matched the divine instruction of 14,430 *sūtu* on the tablet. Finkel emphasizes that this negligible margin of error confirms the literary text preserved authentic, empirical data from working Mesopotamian shipwrights. Experimental Reconstruction and Seaworthiness Trials (24:01) To test the tablet's engineering, an international documentary team directed by maritime archaeologist Tom Vosmer undertook a scaled reconstruction in Kerala, India. Because modern computer modeling indicated that timber ribs could not bear the structural load at full scale, builders scaled down the size while strictly preserving the ancient proportions. The craft was assembled on a raised cradle entirely by lacing coiled rope under tension without nails or glue. After Iraqi cultural heritage authorities prohibited exporting natural Iraqi bitumen, builders used inferior local bitumen that peeled and leaked, requiring pumps during the launch. Nevertheless, the rolled-out vessel floated stably on an Indian lake and glided without producing a bow wake, confirming the inherent buoyancy of the circular Mesopotamian design. Linguistic Proof and the Road to Ararat (50:08) Finkel links the tablet's boat directly to the biblical landing narrative through the British Museum's Babylonian *Imago Mundi* (BM 92687), a world map incised around 600 BC. The map's reverse text describes an outer mountain lying beyond the northern region of Urartu that preserved giant wooden wreckage with timbers "thick as a *parsiktu*"—a capacity-unit idiom that appears nowhere else in cuneiform literature except on the Atra-hasis Ark Tablet, where it describes the boat's ribs. Finkel argues that Judean scribes during the Babylonian Exile assimilated this tradition, adapting the cosmological peak beyond Urartu into the familiar Hebrew phrasing of Genesis: the vessel grounded not on a lone peak, but within the regional "mountains of Ararat." Finkel concludes that the biblical flood narrative is an adapted inheritance of ancient Babylonian coracle lore preserved across millennia of oral and scribal tradition. While experimental reconstruction proved that the tablet's structural principles are seaworthy at a scaled size, building and waterproofing a 3,600-square-meter rope vessel at full scale remains an unverified logistical feat of ancient literature.

大英博物馆亚述学学者Irving Finkel通过对一块约公元前1800年的古巴比伦泥板的破译，提出诺亚方舟的原型并非传统认知中的尖头海船或长方体木箱，而是一艘以巨型皮筏（Coracle）为原型的圆形水运工具，这一工程文本深刻揭示了《圣经》大洪水叙事的源头。 西蒙斯泥板与圆形方舟指令 (1:51) 约1985年，藏家Douglas Simmons将一块古巴比伦泥板带到大英博物馆，该泥板在近十年后重回Irving Finkel手中进行全面释读。泥板记载了神明Enki向大洪水英雄Atra-hasis下达的造船指示，关键阿卡德语词汇“kippatu”指明船体为完全的“圆形”，本质上是美索不达米亚平原沿用数千年的传统芦苇编织圆形皮筏（阿拉伯语称quffa）。该泥板年代约为公元前1800年，比1872年George Smith发现的亚述巴尼拔图书馆泥板早约一千年。Smith所译文本将方舟描绘为等长等宽的立方体，一度引发维多利亚时代神职人员对巴比伦神话不切实际的攻讦，而西蒙斯泥板的圆形设计颠覆了维多利亚立方体、长条形棺木状圣经方舟以及传统儿童玩具船的三方争论。 泥板工料清单与真实造船数学 (11:42) 泥板通篇以神明对英雄的指令展开，宛如宜家式组装手册，详细列出占地3600平方米、侧壁高7米的巨型圆形皮筏的工程细节。建造步骤包含用椰枣树内皮搓捻强力粗绳、自中心向外盘绕缝合为巨大筐体、以内部木质肋拱支撑加固，并在内外表层涂刷热沥青防水。Finkel借助苏格兰学者James Hornell在1920年记录的伊拉克皮筏民族志报告，厘清了泥板中晦涩的技术术语。神明要求获取14430“sūtu”的绳索；现代数学家根据船体尺寸和指头粗细的传统棕榈纤维绳进行独立验算，得出实际所需量约为14624“sūtu”（约527公里），两者的微小误差表明文本嵌入的是古代造船工匠的真实工艺数据，绝非凭空捏造的宗教神话。 印度复原验证与工程极限 (24:01) 为验证该蓝图的工程可行性，电视制作组选址具备相似地貌与工艺原料的印度喀拉拉邦建造复原船。由海洋考古学家Tom Vosmer团队指导，三位专家带领当地印度教与穆斯林工匠协同作业。由于现代力学模拟显示全尺寸木材结构无法承受原始载荷，制作团队按比例缩减了尺寸，但严格保留几何比例。底盘置于木架上整体建造以防拖曳开裂，全船仅靠绳索张力、摩擦力及木肋绑扎，未使用钉子或胶水。船内设立柱支撑由系扎芦苇屋构成的双层上甲板以安置人员，下层按隔断安置美索不达米亚本土动物。由于伊拉克文物部门限制天然沥青出口，团队改用印度劣质沥青，导致下水后出现渗水并需水泵排污；但平缓湖面测试证实，这艘无首无尾的巨型圆形浮器完全能平稳漂移，且航行时不产生传统船只的楔形尾波。 世界地图泥板与亚拉腊山渊源 (50:08) Finkel进一步将方舟泥板与约公元前600年的大英博物馆“巴比伦世界地图”（BM 92687）联系起来。该地图以圆盘形态描绘两河流域，外围环绕一圈“苦水”（宇宙洋），并在外圈放射出代表神话岛屿或极峰的三角形陆地。地图背面文字记载，越过苦水的远方山峰遗留有残骸，其木料“厚如parsiktu”。“parsiktu”原为巴比伦容量单位，作为俗语意指极为粗大厚实，该罕见表达在全部楔形文字文献中仅出现于西蒙斯方舟泥板的肋木描述与此世界地图。地图指明该山峰正位于乌拉尔图（Urartu，即古代亚美尼亚）北面之外。Finkel论证指出，《希伯来圣经》创世记中方舟停靠的并非孤立的“亚拉腊山”，而是复数形式的“亚拉腊山地”；流亡巴比伦的犹太文士吸收了这一古老地理传说，将巴比伦宇宙观中难以企及的彼岸极峰，本土化为近邻的乌拉尔图山区。 Finkel的研究通过严谨的文献释读与实验考古，重构了古巴比伦圆形皮筏的工程实质，阐明了圣经大洪水故事直接脱胎于美索不达米亚传统的脉络。尽管全比例复原在现代工程与物理承重上依然存在技术局限，古代文献所呈现的高精度数据已确证其来源于两河流域实际的船舶建造智慧。

[50:08] Irving Finkel: There is a rule in Assyriology that the more interesting a document, the more damaged it is.

[0:08] Well, thank you, Gil. It's customary for people in this miserable position to [0:13] say how glad I am to be here. And in my case, it's literally true, because I [0:18] haven't been here since 1979, and I'm extremely glad to be here. It's wonderful [0:23] to discover that this thing, which has lived in my mind as a kind of lingering [0:27] fantasy, is still, in fact, standing. Because, when you go to England, it's more [0:32] miraculous if things are still standing. But that's neither here nor [0:34] there. So I'm going to talk to you about this topic, the Ark before Noah, which has [0:40] been a big adventure, which is converting my life from the dull, tedious, dusty, and [0:44] un-exciting life of a normal curator into just the opposite, with hard, [0:49] endangering consequences. So, one of the things that happens if you are a curator [0:54] in the British Museum is, because the public have the mistaken idea that we [0:58] are experts, is to identify things which people bring in. And they always make a [1:04] lot of fuss about how interested they are when you tell them it's Middle [1:08] Bronze Age, or Late Iron Age, or something of this sort of technical side. But, [1:12] what they really want to know is how much they are worth. And, we are forbidden by [1:19] the trustees from ever referring to this matter, so we are experienced in dealing [1:23] with all sorts of drama. And it happened to me once when I was on duty that a [1:27] person called Douglas Simmons came in, in about 1985, with a bag full of [1:31] antiquities, small antiquities, which he poured onto the desk, and I was the duty [1:36] officer. And it contained some coins, a couple of lamps, a bit of Chinese stuff, a [1:42] couple of shabtis, and a cuneiform tablet. Well, it might not surprise you to [1:47] know that I picked up the cuneiform tablet first. [1:51] And, I picked it up, and at first sight I assumed it was going to be an old [1:56] Babylonian letter, I'm sure you would have the same conclusion. In terms of [2:01] size--size, shape, dimension, grammatical form, semantic parallels, and [2:06] so forth. But, I lifted it up and started to read it. And this is what came out. I'm not [2:14] going to read the whole of this book out. I should tell you if you want to read it [2:17] yourself, this is easily arranged, it's very easily arranged--afterwards. [2:23] "Wall, wall, read wall, read wall. Atra-hasis, pay heed to my advice that you may [2:31] live forever. Destroy your house, build a boat, spurn property, and save life." Well, [2:39] not many letters begin that way. And, in point of fact, I was able to read it [2:44] at sight, because I had a very demanding teacher who used to hit people and [2:49] thrash them with barbed wire until they learnt their signs, and so recognizing [2:54] the beginning of the Flood Story in the Babylonian epic was a doddle for someone [2:59] who graduated from that classroom. So I realized I had in my hands a piece of [3:04] the Old Babylonian version of the Flood Story, which is a piece of gold in the [3:09] world, because everyone is interested in the Flood Story, and nobody ever gets [3:13] their hands on an unpublished piece which has never been seen by any other [3:16] Assyriologist. So I was rather excited about it, and what happened was, he took [3:21] it away, picked up the lamp, and said, "And what about this?" And, when I had gone [3:26] through the rest of the material, trembling with excitement, and thinking, [3:29] "Can I borrow this for a while and read it?" He went, and I didn't see him for the [3:33] best part of a decade. So I knew that this thing was in circulation and this [3:38] was before the trustees of the British Museum had produced this handbook about how [3:43] to knock people to the floor and take over their property for the trustees, so [3:49] I just let him escape. But I knew that sooner or later it would come back to [3:53] the British Museum, because all important things do. Some of them, for example, are [3:57] temporarily in the Louvre, but sooner or later they come to us. [4:03] So, the thing is, when I finally got this thing into my control, I had the--let--the [4:10] luxury, to say, of reading it properly, in privacy, with a good light, and, and so [4:15] forth, to get the guts of it out. And it became apparent that the thing was of [4:20] sixty lines in length, and although the beginning was exactly the same as is [4:24] attested in the other sporadic examples, the rest of it was very startling. Now, [4:30] knowledge of the Flood, itself, on cuneiform tablets, has been in the public [4:34] domain since 1872, when George Smith, the character on the left, for the first time. [4:41] was a modern human being who read a piece of this dog biscuit kind of [4:47] material from his barbaric background and discovered that he was reading Holy [4:52] Writ, virtually, in this peculiar format. And the story goes, in our department [4:59] record, I'm sure it's true, that he dropped the tablet on the table, and in [5:03] his anxiety, and started to run around the room, holding his head and making [5:07] funny, squeaking noises, and, eventually, attempting to remove his clothing. And [5:12] this has gone down in history as a laughable matter, but it's almost certain [5:17] that what actually happened was he had an epileptic fit, because the impact of [5:22] discovering for the first time that the text of Genesis, which everybody in 19th [5:26] century London knew by heart, existed in this peculiar rival form. So, George [5:33] Smith, then, in 1872 discovered this for the first time, there was a huge furor [5:39] about it, all sorts of discussion by all sorts of people. I'd just like to draw your [5:44] attention to the image of Smith on your left. He has the broad, intelligent [5:49] forehead, leadership kind of profile, fine beard, lucid, intelligent eyes, and so [5:55] forth. It's always been this range of characteristics that the trustees have [5:58] looked for in their Assyriological employees. [Laughter] [6:05] So, the thing is, that when Smith published this, he wrote very lucidly about [6:11] it and its implications for the biblical story, because it contained not only the [6:15] approximate parallel, but a much more specific one. For example, the fact that [6:20] when the Flood was abated, and then things were quiet, a series of three [6:25] birds was released, and the only the third one came back. I mean, didn't come [6:30] back, so he knew that something had appeared above dry land, which is, of [6:34] course, what Noah did in the more popular version of the story, as they wrote it in [6:38] Hollywood, and the really good one, which you have to read in the original in [6:42] Babylonian. So, um, one of the interesting things about the version which he [6:51] discovered, that 1872 tablet, it came from the Library of Assurbanipal in the [6:56] seventh century B.C. It was one of the king's own personal copies of his standard [7:00] literature. And although they didn't know that, securely at the time. And when Smith [7:05] made his very quick and very accurate translation, it included a description of [7:11] what the Ark that this, Utnapishtim, the equivalent of Noah in his version of [7:16] the story, had built. And the description comes out as a cube. That's to say, an [7:21] object which is the same height, width, and length in all dimensions. So [7:29] the clergymen, who were extremely worried about the way that the Bible had been [7:33] undermined and what this might mean for the end of civilization, came [7:38] back in full, saying, "Well, this is rubbish, this is nothing like the Ark in the [7:41] Bible. I mean, it's a cube. I mean, whoever had a boat that was a [7:44] cube, which is mad anyway." They had to take notice of this, and so they were [7:49] compelled and felt encouraged to dismiss evidence which was unwelcome to them. Of [7:55] course, they were operating on the assumption that the real Noah's Ark, so [7:58] to speak, looked like this. I was rather fortunate to find this contemporary [8:01] photograph, which, it's what we call research in the British [8:06] Museum, it's called Google, generally. And, here it is, exactly as it was, [8:11] reconstructed in this image according to the text of the Bible. So, the situation [8:18] was that in 1872 and a half, there were people who believed in the Assyrian [8:24] version, there were people who stuck fast to the Bible, so you had a cube or a [8:28] coffin. But, of course, at the same time everybody really knew what Noah's Ark looked [8:34] like. It's one of these things, there's usually a giraffe looking out the window, [8:39] just to complete it. So, in fact, Ark fanciers, so to speak, had [8:44] these three alternatives at their disposal. So it made it even more [8:48] astonishing when I had the letter to read this tablet, when it turned out the [8:54] following thing. Because the god, Enki, who had discovered that the world was going to [8:59] be destroyed, he decided it wasn't a good matter, and that he picked on some human [9:03] being to build this lifeboat to rescue all life-forms against the waters that [9:09] would come. And it's always been a mystery, actually, why he picked on this [9:14] Atra-hasis whose name means "extremely intelligent," because however intelligent [9:20] he might have been, it is clear that Anki didn't trust his knowledge of boat [9:25] building at all. Because in this tablet, he tells him all the information you [9:31] need to know in order to build this boat. In other words, it's one of those like [9:37] one of those boxes from Ikea, which has all the information on a mimeograph [9:43] panel on the side, so when you take it home, you can build it on your own. So the [9:49] first piece of information that came out of reading this tablet was that the boat [9:53] was round. And I'm fairly secure about most words beginning with "K," because I [9:59] worked on the "K" volume, so I felt that the word [kipartu] was under my belt, but I [10:04] thought I'd make absolutely sure that I hadn't misremembered it, because round [10:09] boats are not something you tend to encounter in your [10:11] normal life. You remember, of course, that River Rhine communities all over the [10:15] world have used round boats, which we called "coracles," and which in Arabic are [10:20] called "kuffar," and that in ancient Mesopotamia they certainly had boats [10:24] like this, and it suddenly became a rather intelligible picture that for an old [10:28] Babylonian poet, who lived when he wrote that tablet in about 1800 B.C., so it's a [10:34] thousand years older than the Assyrian version, in writing about the story, [10:39] conceived of the ark question, the boat to save lives, as a round coracle [10:44] boat, as people built on the sides of the river. And this makes a lot of sense, [10:50] because the thing about a coracle, if you've never been in one, you have to [10:54] take my word for it. I've been in one once. The reason is I'm the president of [11:00] the British Coracle Association. It's not a funny thing at all, I don't see why you are [11:05] sniggering, this is a major, major tribute to me as a person. I am, I haven't got a [11:11] gold chain, it's a bit annoying, but they promised me one. And I had to go in one, [11:15] so I've been in one, so I can talk about this with a great deal of familiarity. And [11:18] the thing about these boats, I know from many years of experience, is that they [11:22] don't sink. And if you've got the job of collecting up all these male and females [11:28] and putting them in a boat, it doesn't have to go from Portsmouth to New York. [11:32] All it has to do is float. And the coracle doesn't have a front or a back, [11:37] it just floats. And they float beautifully. So that is why the poet who [11:42] wrote this story, trying to visualize the thing in a realistic way, decided it was [11:47] going to be a giant coracle. It certainly was going to be a giant [11:51] coracle. The surface area of the plan is given. It's 3,600 square meters. So, bigger [11:59] than this room. And in this IKEA list of instructions, he tells him of the [12:05] materials he will need. That's to say, the the rope, which is wrapped around to [12:13] build the body of the boat, the ribs made of wood, and the bitumen to coat the [12:18] inside and out to make it waterproof. He not only tells him he will need these [12:22] materials but, he actually tells him how much of them he will need in order to [12:26] complete the job. So this is where it becomes something very remarkable. So, [12:34] this is what, of course, Iraqi coracles look like, or used to look [12:40] like. The one at the top, on your left, is a fairly modern one, one of the last ones [12:44] ever made, probably. And the one below that is the runner-up to the Guinness [12:50] Book of Records award for the most males ever stuffed in a single coracle [12:56] with success. And in fact they were disqualified, because one of them was a [12:59] boy and they thought that with cheating. So that's them, and then in the middle is [13:05] a horn from a lantern slide, which was given to us in the museum by an old lady [13:10] from her father's collection. And we had it blown up, and you can't see very [13:15] clearly on this screen but you've got two women who are doing the Grand Tour [13:19] and have clearly been persuaded by some slick organizer of holiday [13:24] activities to go in one of these boats and sample life in real, and they all [13:30] look terrified. So the thing is that the coracle in Iraq is known in ancient [13:37] times. It's on the sculptures, for example. But, also, from many anecdotal and [13:43] photographic pieces of evidence from the 19th and 20th century, as well, even [13:49] though I think it's now disappeared. So the other photograph, which I will now [13:53] show you, is... This, which is from a pair of lantern slide pictures and part of a [14:02] sequence of someone who photographed the construction of a coracle on the banks [14:07] of the river in Iraq in about 1920. And here you can see in principle how this [14:14] boat is built. And what you do, is you have to have all this great quantity of [14:20] rope and you have a pith, the pith which comes from the trunk of a palm tree [14:25] which is twisted and twisted and twisted, until it becomes a thick rope and it is [14:30] exceptionally strong. And the basic way in which the coracle is to be made is [14:35] you draw it out on the ground, in a great circle, and as it comes back to the [14:39] beginning, the next bit is laid on top of the previous one and it is stitched [14:44] north to south, and go round and stitch north to south, and then the third on top [14:48] of the second and you end up with a great floppy basket. And when you've done [14:51] that, you have to have ribs which fit round the frame, which is laced to the [14:56] hole, and then the bitumen is applied. So, something very interesting happened to [15:03] me, probably unique situation. The central portion of this tablet is full of [15:10] numbers and very technical, and I'm frantically enumerate. So I got a bit of [15:16] help with dealing with the numbers, and I never built any boats at all in London, [15:20] so I wasn't really on top of it, but I discovered in the library of the [15:23] Ethnographical Institute in our museum that a man called Hornell wrote in 1920 [15:29] an account of how these coracles are built, for which this is an illustration [15:34] by somebody else. So this Hornell was a very worthy person, a great folk [15:40] historian, and he was from Scotland, and he was a man of very small number of [15:45] words. His sentences are extremely terse and very difficult to understand. And the [15:52] Babylonian, which is more or less preserved, is very terse and difficult to [15:56] understand in different areas. So I had this unique situation, that I use Hornell's [16:02] description from 1920 A.D. to understand the narrative written in the [16:08] 18th century B.C. about how to build these boats. And at the same time use the [16:14] Babylonian to understand what he meant in English. [16:18] And eventually, both things became mutually intelligible, and the whole sequence [16:23] emerged. So I'm not going to go through all this in laborious detail, it was [16:29] tempting to do this and then perhaps suggest over wine there might be a short [16:33] paper of test questions for you all to fill out, but there is one thing I want [16:37] you to retain from this experience, drab though it may be, for many years to come. [16:43] The measurements of the materials are, of course, given in Babylonian [16:49] measurements, it's not in English, they weren't that advanced. So when it came to [16:54] the rope, needed to wind round to make this boat, this god, Enki, explained Atra- [17:00] Hassis that he would need fourteen thousand four hundred and thirty su- [17:05] tu measures of rope in order to build this boat. I thought this supposed to be [17:15] the Oriental Institute. Someone's supposed to go [whistle] or something like that. [17:22] I'm rather disappointed. Okay, let me tell you another amazing fact. I decided I [17:29] couldn't cope with the maths on this tablet, so I did what people in my [17:33] position normally do, which is look in the Yellow Pages for a cheap Nobel [17:36] Prize-winner in mathematics. And I got this fellow to come over, and I explained [17:42] that we had these measurements, that the rope length was given at fourteen [17:48] thousand four hundred thirty sutu. And we knew that the area of the boat was three [17:52] thousand six hundred square meters, and that the walls were seven meters high. And we [17:56] also knew that traditionally, to build these boats, the rope is about a finger [17:59] thick, powerful finger thick. So we have, in other words, all the dimensions [18:03] available for a mathematical genius to work out, if we were going to build this [18:08] boat of this size using this material, how much we would really need. Are you [18:13] with me? Superb. I'll just refresh your memory. The [18:19] divine instructions specify fourteen thousand four hundred and thirty sutu. [18:25] And this mathematician--thanks. Extra wine afterwards. [18:31] So, this mathematician--and he did it several times, I used to do it several [18:36] times and get it wrong each time, but this guy got it right each time, it's [18:39] rather interesting. When he calculated what we would actually need using a [18:43] whole bunch of mathematical theorems, which are incredibly bewildering to me, [18:47] it came out that fourteen thousand six hundred and twenty-four sutu. In other [18:55] words, five hundred and twenty seven kilometers. So if this were England, I [19:02] would say this rope goes exactly from London to Edinburgh. [19:06] And the difference between the specified measure from heaven and the calculated [19:13] measure worked out by a mathematician is less than the distance from London to [19:18] Watford. Or to put it in American terms, Chicago to Minnesota, and Chicago to [19:28] Minnesota minus about 32 sutu. You can work that out for yourselves. But the [19:34] point about it is that the difference is A, minimal, given the length, and secondly, [19:39] cannot be coincidence. So one is fought demure--forced to accept that, embedded in this [19:47] poetic narrative, the data, which was given, as it were, from heaven, as it were, [19:53] to man to use was realistic and predicated on real boat building. This is [20:01] a very remarkable thing and it's also remarkable to note that people who made [20:05] these boats by the side of the river did the same thing from 1800 B.C. to the [20:10] middle of the 20th century A.D., meaning that the coracle is a perfect [20:16] construction. It never needed improvement, it never needed adjustment. Once it had [20:22] come into being, it just went on in the world. Also interesting. So something [20:29] funny happened to me. I'm sitting on top of this stuff, it's full of amazing [20:35] excitement, it turns out there's no narrative, it's just speeches one person to [20:39] another, like--unlike any other Mesopotamian texts. It turns out that the [20:43] animals went in two by two, which we knew from the Bible, not from [20:47] cuneiform. And a million other really marvelous things, so I'm having a lot of [20:51] excitement about this. And a lady comes in who works for the Guardian newspaper, [20:55] about three weeks before Christmas, and says to me, "Anything new in the tabs [21:02] business?" Which is the way journalists talk in Britain. "Eh, nothing special, except [21:06] that time I've got the blueprint for how the Babylonians built their Ark in the [21:10] Old Babylonian period. So she asked me all sorts of questions, [21:13] and just before Christmas, this came out in the newspaper. [21:27] Well this had other consequences than mere laughter, I can tell you. I had a [21:33] large number of phone calls, mostly from this country, from television producers, [21:39] who said, "We got to make a movie!" Like that. And sometimes they called it a [21:45] documentary, if they knew the full word, I'm not sure. Anyway, this Trustees' [21:50] Manual I explained to you about before has taught all curators to have nothing to [21:55] do with documentary makers, because the documentary makers all tell lies. And [22:00] it's always been our policy to sup with a very long spoon when it comes to [22:05] anything to do with being in a documentary film, especially if it's [22:08] something to do with the Bible, because what happens is they make a recording [22:12] and they go away and in the editing process, they miss out certain words. Like [22:17] "not." And so you find yourself on stage talking stuff which is diametrically [22:24] opposed to what you either said or what you believe. So we're all a bit skeptical [22:28] about these things. But, turned out in the end, a rather interesting person [22:32] approached me and said, "We've got to do a documentary about this." He was an [22:35] Englishman, which helped. And um, I said, "I'm prepared to do this, would be an [22:40] adventure." Because what he wanted to do was to build this boat on the basis [22:44] of the doctor, because the doctor made everybody think, "Well, you could build [22:47] this boat." So they thought, "Why don't they do it?" They're all clever in that kind of way. [22:50] So all they had to do was raise a hundred million dollars, and we would do [22:53] it. So I said, "I'm happy to do this. Only, I'd like this to be one of those [22:58] documentaries, unusual documentary, where we tell the truth about everything. We [23:03] tell the truth." Kind of long silence. "Hallo, what, what, I don't think any of my [23:09] colleagues have ever had that idea before, an interesting conception to work with." And [23:13] I wanted to be all over this film and to run it. I wanted to do the score, the [23:18] lyrics, not to mention the film anglings. [23:22] Everything about it, I had this documentary in my head, it would have been a [23:25] masterpiece. But, actually, when we started, they kept me down in the most depressing [23:30] way. So they got the money together. And they decided, we couldn't build it in [23:35] Iraq for obvious reasons, and after a lot of time and investigation, they settled [23:40] on builting it in India, in southwest India, in the state of Kerala. And they [23:45] found a lake, and a shipyard they could hire, and the palm trees that provided [23:51] the rope were there, and all other sorts of materials were there, and it was Iraqish [23:57] in appearance, so to speak, you know, it had that kind of look about it. [24:01] So, they got together a very serious team of the three ancient boat [24:07] builders, and a team of workmen, and for four or five months in India, they built [24:12] this boat. So, what actually happened was this. That, when I realized that my [24:20] translation, which was all done in the humility of being a normal Assyriologist, [24:23] and nobody's head is on the block or anything like this, I suddenly wake up [24:28] one day to discover there's going to be this multi-multi-million dollar [24:31] operation the other side of the world with people following my every word as [24:35] if it's gospel. So of course I would run everything a hundred-hundred times. [24:38] Woke up in the middle of the night thinking that actually, I got it wrong, [24:41] it's actually designed for a double-decker bus, or something terrible [24:44] like that. And it was a very nerve-wracking thing, especially when I [24:47] send the translation with the dimensions to India, and and the guy in charge of it [24:52] had to be hospitalized when he read how big the thing was. And we had a [24:56] long interlude before it was agreed the following thing: if they couldn't build [25:00] it full size, they would build it as big as they possibly could in accordance [25:04] with the dimensions given by the original measurements. And, as you will [25:08] see, in the second part of this lecture, sometime after 10 o'clock, that the [25:15] the impossibility of building it full size was, in fact, perfectly reasonable. So [25:21] that was the compromise. It was reached. And I also said--actually, they sent an [25:25] email, it was rather, rather smart. This email came, saying, "Would you mind terribly if, y'know, [25:32] we've done this on the computer, and the wood, it wouldn't sustain itself. We can't, [25:36] would you mind if we--Instead of being like a normal person, who [25:41] wishes to write back and say, "Chaps, you know, it's marvelous that you're doing [25:45] this, and whatever you have to do is fine, you know, you know, how [25:50] could I ever--" I let the thing go for four or five days. And then I sort of sent [25:55] was a little note, "Okay, if you must." Like that, you know, just kind of "Okay." [25:59] "Just this once, we're building a boat. Just this once, you want to make it small. [26:03] Okay, fine." And I discovered afterwards that was a brilliant piece of strategy. Remember [26:08] this if you're ever in the process of making a documentary film with other [26:11] people, that's the way to do it, go out of your way to be a bastard. So, I've got [26:20] marvelous, marvelous images which were taken when this boat was being built. [26:24] Really fantastic photographs. And I brought you only a few to give you an [26:29] idea. But here, you can see the chaps who are starting to coil the material, which [26:36] is already in this very thick, snake-like rope. At the very beginning of the [26:40] process of making the bottom, which they were then go round and round and round [26:44] until they've got the whole boat. And then. [26:52] This is a view from the very bottom, underneath, when they first started it. [26:57] And the thing is, they calculated very rapidly that the thing, when it was [27:02] finished, would be exceptionally heavy. And they could, once it was completed, and the [27:07] bottom was finished, they could never drag it along the ground as you would [27:10] with a lifeboat, because the structure wouldn't withstand it. [27:13] So the whole thing had to be built on a cradle above the ground so that the [27:19] whole thing could be bodily brought into the water when it came to the time for [27:23] the launch. So this gives you an idea, from the bottom, how it looks. The tight [27:30] structure, laced together and tied. And everything was done with, with ropes and [27:36] things, without any glue or nails or anything. [27:38] Everything was tightened and tightened. It was the most extraordinary construction. [27:42] And, this was a very important member of the team. Actually, I [27:48] wanted to bring this elephant back to London, because something happened [27:53] to me once when I was a young curator. I came out of the doors of my department [27:58] into the gallery, and there were two middle-aged American tourists, and one of [28:03] them said, "Oh, do you work here?" And I said, "Yes." And he said, "My wife and I, we were [28:07] asking ourselves, how can it be that the, the doors here are so tall?" Because [28:14] the doors to my department are about the whole size of this wooden paneling. Double doors. [28:18] And all the museum doors are built on the escape. And some devil came into my [28:24] mind, I don't know what made me say this, but I just said, "Oh, well, this goes back [28:28] to the time of the British Raj, because in those days, the keepers of the [28:32] departments used to come to work on elephants." [28:35] And the guy said, "Oh, that's really interesting." And I had to run after them, [28:39] up the gallery, and say, "No, it's not true at all." So, I thought-- [28:51] So these are the chaps at work, and they had these primitive tools, so to speak, [28:56] and they sang when they were working, and it was a, it was marvelous. And eventually, [29:01] as the boat took shape, this was a view of the inside. And it was very beautiful [29:08] inside, it was extraordinary, it was sort of handcrafted, and it smelled of wood. And [29:13] you can see, perhaps, that these are the the great ribs which come down and meet [29:18] in the middle to make the floor, and they go all the way up here to the top. And [29:23] these are the walls made of the rope, which is lashed to the ribs on the [29:27] inside. And then on these struts coming down, off the ribs, into the middle, they [29:33] laid these big circular woods, with these stanchions, which supported the [29:40] upper deck. Because in the tablet, it's described. How many there are of [29:45] something and how long they are. These stanchions were posed so that the [29:50] upper deck could be installed, because the human beings were going to be [29:54] upstairs and all the animals downstairs. And they explained in the text that the house [29:59] is to be built on the upper deck for Atra-Hassis and his immediate family. And it [30:05] was made by the verb of "tying," so it wasn't made of wood, it was made out of [30:10] reeds, as I will show you in a moment. So this is what the inside of it looked [30:15] like, and you know, people who find out about this have the two very interesting [30:21] questions. The most burning question that I've ever been asked, because I had [30:26] to talk about this for periodically at literary festivals and other rooms full [30:30] of unknown individuals. And then usually somebody asked me at the afterwards, "What [30:35] do they do with the dung?" And it doesn't say in the tablet what they did with the [30:41] dung. So if anybody's anxious about it, I'm [30:44] really sorry, but I don't know either. But the interesting thing is that [30:50] the, this is built literally like a wedding cake from a recipe. And this [30:56] structure is how the Babylonian tablet conveyed the idea of it. And [30:59] theoretically, the stanchions could have had partitions between them, in which [31:04] species could have been kept separate, if, for example, you're going to do that. If [31:09] you write a book about Noah's Ark--this is another health warning I should [31:12] impart to you--you do get into hot water, because lots of people [31:19] believe in it, of course. And lots of people have very serious questions, like, [31:22] "Wouldn't it sink with all the animals?" And, it's an interesting thing, this. Lots [31:31] of discussions of this on the internet, which are absolutely insane in every [31:36] other particular, discuss how difficult it would be to have a boat with all these [31:40] heavy animals in. But the point is that when the Babylonian said all the animals, [31:44] they meant all the animals that they knew. They didn't mean all the animals they'd [31:47] seen on television. They meant the animals that they knew. And it's the same in the Bible, [31:52] they meant the animals that were familiar to them. There were wild animals [31:54] and domestic animals, and in fact, the list isn't so great. I worked out what [31:58] the list was, it isn't so huge, and it's not so mad as if you have all the heavy [32:03] things, and all the gnats sort of sticking together, and the one squashing [32:07] the other, and so forth. Anyway, now. When they built this boat in Babylonia, if [32:15] they did really build it, they had the world's best quality bitumen in [32:19] abundance, because it bubbles out of the ground like a spring, and it's been used [32:23] for waterproofing since the beginning of time. And when Iraqi bitumen is applied [32:29] to a boat or a wall or some other material, when it goes hard, it is [32:33] impermeable, and if you renew it now and again, it will last forever. And we were [32:38] expecting to get a tanker full of Iraqi bitumen brought to [32:42] India to do this job. And the careful exercise of discipline about cultural [32:48] property in Iraq included carcinogenic petroleum kind of productions, and they would [32:53] not allow a single drop of Iraqi bitumen to leave the country. So at the [32:58] last minute, we had to get Indian bitumen. This is not something I would recommend. [33:06] I hate to say this, but it's on the black market. Which means there's no [33:13] quality control. And the thing about Indian bitumen is this. That whatever you do, [33:18] it comes off. So these poor blokes, in an unbelievably unpleasant environment, [33:24] extremely hot, were constantly applying this stuff, and patching it, and applying [33:29] it, to try and coat it entirely in bitumen. And it was a much more exhausting [33:35] and unpleasant task than it would ever have been in antiquity. So, this here is a [33:41] photograph which shows my dear colleagues--and I have to get this right-- [33:47] guy in, the chap in the hat is a man called Tom Volsner. And he is the [33:53] kind of grand old man of architectural, of archaeological boat [33:58] reconstruction. And then, if I get this correct, Eric is the one in the dark blue [34:04] shirt, who is his best student. And Alessandro is his other best student. And [34:09] Alessandro lived on this site for about four months with the workmen and ran [34:15] everything. And this is me, obviously, with them, when it was ready to launch. So I [34:21] told you I wanted to run this film from beginning to end, and they wouldn't let [34:24] me anywhere near it, and they actually only allowed me to go out for the last [34:28] two days before the launch. So, the house which they built in accordance with what [34:36] I mentioned before about it being tied, is an imitation of such houses which [34:42] used to exist in the marshes of Iraq, a long time ago. And they [34:48] copied one of those houses to be in the spirit of the theme, for, to represent [34:54] that part. So they left half the floor open, as you can see, so that it could be [34:58] filmed and everything. And you can see, also, perhaps, the ribs that come up at [35:02] the top, that's where they all finish, and there's a kind of binding round, round, [35:06] round the top. And it was marvelous. So one of the things that I said-- [35:11] Once in a while, you see, they took me for lunch. So I thought, "Oh, this [35:15] is my chance to influence this documentary for good. I've got these [35:19] terrific ideas, so why not." One idea was this, that you cannot really have a [35:23] documentary about the Ark without animals in it. And we have to have [35:27] animals in it. And I said, animals, you know, street value, credibility, animals, and [35:32] things. And I had this idea for myself. [35:39] You, you know, you know, the Hitchcock thing, there's a kind of vignette for a moment, [35:45] when the distinguished profile is visible on the screen, for those who knew. [35:50] So my idea was to dress up in a sheet, and wear sandals, and let my hair down, [35:55] and thwack one of these rhinos on the buttock so they would go up the [36:00] gangplank. This was, I thought, "That will be enough for me, that will be a [36:04] heroic moment." And they said, "No." So then I said, "Well, look, I have a better idea. In [36:11] India, there are many cults and villages where things are made of packing mache [36:16] and painted with great realism, especially tigers and elephants and [36:20] snakes. They know what they look like. And we could, we can get them to make two [36:23] of each, and they could go on the boat. But if the boat sinks, well, that's what [36:27] things usually do in the ritual, so no one would mind about it, and if it didn't [36:31] sink, it would be a miracle. So what's wrong with that?" [36:34] "No," they said. So, I gave up. Now, when I went to India, as I say, it was for the [36:40] last couple of days. And, I have to tell you, two things happened, which it's [36:47] difficult for me to explain clearly in English, because it was so overpowering. [36:53] One of them is this. That when the boat was ready to--or like, let me show you a [36:59] picture of it. Hold on. When I got there, the boat was ready to [37:06] launch. And the plan was, in this film, they would do the following thing. It was [37:13] all leafy and grown over so that no one could see the site. It was supposed to [37:17] be so no one could spy on what was going on. So it was lots of vegetation. [37:22] And this was the plan that the, the director said to me. Was that I had to walk [37:28] through this jungle into the clearing where the boat was in a casual, [37:35] interesting, fascinating way. And then when I saw the boat, I had to register [37:41] amazement and delight. So, for an actor, this sort of thing is a doddle, of course. [37:48] But, you know, you've got to walk right on television. You can't just walk, you know, [37:52] left leg right leg stuff. No, there's a whole way. So, it has to be a kind of [37:58] nonchalant, studied, intellectually stimulating sort of walk. So I get there, [38:05] telling myself, "I've got to be excited and delighted. What was it, or delighted, [38:08] and inside. What was it, what was it." Now I'm thinking, "And I can only do it once." And [38:11] as I was walking along this great metal construction with a camera lens, was [38:18] going backwards through the mud, focusing on me from about two inches away, so that [38:23] my feelings would be recorded for posterity, because they could only do it [38:27] once. So this is very difficult, sort of like this, through the clearing, turn the corner, and [38:33] I see this boat. This is not a very dramatic photograph of it. But when I saw [38:37] this boat, it was unbelievably exciting and marvelous. Because this thing was a [38:43] beautiful boat, a ship, a she, a definite she. It was black and somber and [38:50] it looked like an antiquity, it didn't look like it just been built. And it was [38:54] all there from this stupid bit of clay in the British Museum the other side of [38:58] the world, come into existence. So it was impossible to simulate reaction, it was [39:04] all I could do not to burst into tears. It was unbelievably marvelous for me. [39:09] And that's one thing that happened. And then the other thing was this. About these [39:14] animals. When the boat was ready to go, this is how it was. [39:19] They got this lake, a special lake in India, where there was, of course, no tide, [39:23] and no depth, and no danger, where they were going to launch the boat. And there [39:29] was a lot of talk about whether it would float or not. Now, as the water was not [39:36] very deep, and as all the materials from which the boat was made would themselves [39:41] float, anyway, I thought that the chances of it sinking were slim. But. It was [39:50] poised on the edge of this lake, and in front of it there was a sea of mud, like [39:55] a rugby pitch. And they got this photographer with a cine camera on a [40:00] tripod. And just before the ritual of launching the boat, the leaves parted [40:06] again, and these old men came out. Two of them. With goats on strings. You know that [40:13] way the dog walkers work, certainly in Manhattan, you see them, with seven [40:19] dogs on one and seven--I don't know what they do when they defecate, I have no [40:22] idea. But, anyway, like the dog walkers, they came out with these goats, and they [40:26] planted a stake for one of them and stake for the other. And I suddenly [40:32] realized what this meant. That the director had thought of a cheap way of [40:37] "doing" the animals, right. So what he was going to do, is he was going to have two [40:43] goats, one male and one female, in the lens, so that when it was broadcast and [40:48] people were on their sofas watching, they would imagine all the animal kingdom behind them. [40:54] Okay. It's the really cheap version. So what happened was this. These two parties [41:02] of goats, up to their ankles in mud, decided that head-butting was a lot more [41:07] interesting than being a movie star, and after a while they decided that sexual [41:11] intercourse was even more interesting. And they had to pay these blokes a lot [41:16] of money to disentangle this heaving, massive beast and get rid of them, so [41:22] that we could launch the boat. I thought that was a good bit of sweet revenge. [41:28] That's the goat. Or one of them. So this is what the, this is what the coracle [41:35] looked like when it was nearly ready to go. And you can see that they built it on a [41:41] kind of stand. And the stand itself, they had to get that into the water, and they [41:47] had a very brilliant way of doing it. They got hold of some local Indian, [41:53] giant coracle launches, who did this sort of stuff on a regular basis, and they had [41:58] these sausages of, of rubber which could be laid under the structure in parallel, [42:04] like sausages on a grid, and then inflated, so they became fully round. And [42:09] then, like wheels, they would act as rollers. The thing could gradually be, [42:15] gradually go into the water. So, this is what it looked like close up. The really [42:22] intrepid and heavily insured crew members were on board, and the rest of us [42:28] had to stand back. And these are two of these people who have never heard of [42:33] the expression "health and safety," it's marvelous to meet people who've never [42:37] heard of the word "help and safety." So, gradually moving the thing into the [42:40] water, and eventually it went into the water, and that's what it looked like. So-- [42:45] exactly, what a nice noise. So, look, the thing is this. A real coracle would be about that big. [42:55] I mean a normal, a normal, functional coracle in rocky waters. So that gives you an [43:00] idea, it's slightly bigger than normal. And, eventually, thing was that one of the [43:05] cooks had given us all sandwiches in case we were never seen again. [43:08] And we put the sandwiches in this little house while we all got on with [43:12] walking round and leaning over the side and making noises. And when we went to [43:17] have a sandwich, there were millions of ants on them. So this is the truth about [43:23] the flood and the Ark. That the one species you don't have to worry about [43:27] is ants. So, because of the bitumen, there was a bit of a problem with a [43:38] bit of a leak. And, in fact, some journalists made sardonic remarks about [43:42] leaks, and unfair statements about leaks, in point of fact. My argument is if [43:49] you've ever been in a rowing boat, there's always water in the bottom, so [43:52] wouldn't you expect it with the world's largest coracle, I thought that was perfectly [43:56] reasonable, but actually the water started coming in rather fast, and they [43:59] had to get a couple of fellows with pumps to pump. But it's because of the [44:04] bitumen. If it had had Iraqi bitumen, we could have gone all around the world. [44:08] It's a very odd thing to be in a round coracle of that size. You probably never [44:12] will. But it's very remarkable, because there is no wake. So when the boat goes [44:18] through the water, the prow of the boat always leaves that shimmery kind of [44:22] triangle thing, which, you, you know, must be there with the boat. So, when you're in a [44:28] boat when there isn't one, it's very odd, it's like someone who ought to have a [44:31] shadow who doesn't have a shadow. It's most peculiar. Anyway, they did lots of [44:36] filming of it for the documentary, and then, in the end, it was necessary to tow [44:41] this boat out of the lake down one of the canal networks that comes into it [44:47] and park it somewhere, or as we say in coracle circles, berth it. And here [44:55] you can see the trial fleet crew all wearing orange, inflatable, body [45:01] sealing, anti-drowning devices. So we all walked about like this. [45:09] And it was hot enough, hardly hot enough to exist in anyway, and these things [45:13] insulated you from head to groin. It was really a kind of torture. So this is the [45:18] interesting thing that happened. After all this is done. Actually, there's something I [45:28] want to tell you, I forgot, hold on a moment. Yeah, something important. You see, there [45:34] are clouds in the sky. Now. The fact that they built this thing in secret was not, [45:45] was not accident. They had sworn all the workmen to secrecy because they [45:50] didn't want tourists coming and getting hurt. And half the tourists were Hindu [45:56] and half were Muslim. And they worked together for many years on many projects, [45:59] and they faithfully did not tell anybody about it. So on the day of the launch, the [46:05] sky had these immensely threatening storm clouds. And everybody thought this [46:10] was my doing. And this became clear because when the work was finished and [46:19] the workmen all wanted to be photographed next to me. So they, I didn't, [46:24] there were 40 or 50 of them and they were all different sizes and dimensions. [46:28] So it was the sort of up here and then it was a down here, and all the [46:32] variations of it, all next to these chaps one by one. And when we were going home [46:38] on the plane, I said to one of the film crew, "You know that I was very touched by [46:42] that display at the end of the, of the whole operation. They'd been working for so [46:46] many months, and they were so friendly to me, and so warm." And I said, "You know, I'm [46:49] used to being a tremendous social success wherever I go, but I did think [46:53] that was a bit surprising." And this guy said, "Well, there's nothing about that at [46:58] all surprising. They all thought you were a descendant of Noah." [47:02] [Laughter] [47:13] So the thing is this. We are going home at dusk, and you can see up the sides of this canal [47:20] these boats for tourists, where people go for the day or for a few days' excursion, [47:27] and they sit on deck drinking gin from dawn to dusk. So by dusk, they're usually [47:33] fairly lubricated. And as we went past all these boats, person after person [47:40] called out, "Look, there's Noah's Ark!" And I thought, [47:48] "Could anything be more annoying? That we spend half a million dollars to build [47:53] something which is totally unlike Noah's Ark in any way whatsoever! By a load of [47:59] drunks is immediately recognizable." I mean, how infuriating is that? So, look. [48:05] If you fly over it, now you would never connect that with Noah's Ark, would you? [48:09] You wouldn't think for a moment of Noah's Ark. But they all had this low view of it, [48:13] and they immediately recognized it. So, that's a kind of weird thing. But then it [48:19] made me think. Because these boats that we have in nurseries, that shape. Where [48:25] does it come from? Because all the paintings that we have, like of the Tower [48:31] of Babel, and so forth, all come from the text of Genesis. That, the, the material of [48:36] the artists, of all the famous artists, who did the Tower of Babel faithfully [48:40] tried to follow what's in the Bible. So, why did nobody ever paint Noah's Ark [48:44] like it's described in the Bible? Why is it always this kind of boat? And it [48:48] occurred to me, the very possibility, that in point of fact, that the boats that you [48:53] see, this shape, are in fact the profile of a round boat. And maybe some echo of [48:59] this tradition survived beyond this tablet. Because otherwise, it's [49:02] unintelligible. Anyway, in the end, we had to moor it by this small canal out [49:12] of the, out of the way of the world. And in good, Nelson tradition, I was the [49:16] last man off. It was a hell of a wrench to leave that boat there. And the [49:21] plan was to try and find someone to take it over, but that's an altogether another [49:25] story. So, the film was made, the film was shown, [49:28] and, et cetera, et cetera. And in the first flush of excitement, I was taken aback to find [49:34] this newspaper. [49:37] [Laughter] [49:49] Actually, that there are, these newspapers have even more startling things than [49:53] that. But that's pretty good, I think. Anyway, [49:57] of course, I knew, I knew they were wrong. And the reason I knew they were [50:03] wrong was because we have the proof in the British Museum. You see, we have [50:08] this old map of the world, which was drawn in about 600 B.C., probably in [50:12] Babylon. And this map of the world has been in the museum since about 1878. It's [50:19] a very well known thing, it's published all over the place. But for those people [50:24] who are interested in this Ark story, it's a corker of a thing. So, you will see, [50:29] with the aid of this modern, sophisticated computer diagram, which is [50:34] pretty good going for the British Museum, that you have a circle with a ring of [50:39] water around it. And the water is described as a "bitter water," it's a river. [50:44] And inside this disc represents the Mesopotamian heartland. And it is [50:51] interesting, that conceptually, they thought it was round. Acting on the [50:57] assumption that if they didn't think it was round, they wouldn't have drawn it as [51:00] round. So here we have the Euphrates River, and this is the Persian Gulf, and [51:04] this is Babylon straddling the Euphrates. And there are these various circles [51:09] with the inscriptions in, which are mostly towns in Iraq, or sometimes tribal [51:14] names. And so this is a kind of rough map of Mesopotamia. There are lots of people [51:19] who've written about it saying, "It's not accurate." You know, and, "It's inaccurate." [51:23] And, "We tried to use it on our motoring holiday and we got lost." As if the thing [51:28] was meant to be accurate in the first place. In fact, it wasn't. Because the [51:33] interesting thing for these people is these triangles, which are drawn off the [51:38] perimeter, the outer perimeter of the river. And these are considered to be [51:44] islands or mountains which are on the rim of the world. And there are in fact [51:50] eight of them, and this text on the other side-- [51:57] When it was complete, there is a rule in Assyriology that the more [52:01] interesting a document, the more damaged it is. This is a prime specimen. But there [52:05] are eight sections here, in which what is to be found on those remote islands is [52:10] described. And they are like something out of Greek, Greek narrative. There's a [52:17] tree that has jewels on it, there are birds that don't fly, they're extraordinary [52:23] travelers' tales type inventions. And on this one, here, it says, "If you grow across, [52:32] you go across the river, and you climb the mountain, you go the distance across [52:35] the river, you go up the mountain, you'll see something whose wooden blocks are as [52:38] thick as a parsiktu." Now, the thing is this. In this Atra-Hassis tablet, when [52:44] Enki is telling Atra-hassis to build the Ark, each time he has done one of the [52:53] tasks, he says to Enki, "I have done what you asked me." And when he cut the ribs, he [52:59] said, "I have cut the ribs as thick as a parskitu." Now, a parsiktu is a volume [53:09] measurement and not a length measurement. So this means, as far as I can see, that to say, [53:16] "Something is thick as a parsiktu" is a kind of expression in Babylonian, like [53:21] you might say, "As thick as two short planks" or "As thick as a barrel." Because two [53:28] short planks can be of any thickness, it doesn't really matter. It's a kind of [53:31] image. And the thing is that this expression, "thick as a parsiktu," occurs [53:37] only on this map and on the Ark tablet. So it is my contention that what this [53:44] refers to is the ribs of the boat outlined against the sky, and if you [53:49] climb this remote mountain, you will see the remains of Atra-Hassis's Ark landing on [53:55] the mountain. But this in itself is not surprising because Noah's Ark lands [54:01] on a mountain. And so in George Smith's tablet, [54:03] a thousand years after my one, so to speak, also landed on a mountain. So that's [54:08] what tended to happen to arks, in general. Here, however, we have a map which tells [54:13] us which one it was. Now, the really cute thing is that we can identify now it's [54:20] this one here. Now, this is where it gets really whistle-y. Because, you will see here, [54:30] that the part of the known world, which is in the same direction as this [54:35] mountain, is labeled as "Urartu." It's Armenia, it's the name of Armenia, where there [54:42] were people who were very troublesome to the Assyrians, the Armenians, and they [54:45] called their area, area Urartu or Urashtu. And so this map tells you that if you [54:53] cross this river, you see this mountain, here you see the ribs of the boat. When [54:57] you come back, the first place you land in is Urartu. Well, in my opinion, this is [55:04] the explanation for the narrative in Bible, where Noah's Ark is supposed to [55:10] land on Mount Ararat. Not on Mount Ararat, in fact. It is landing among the [55:18] mountains of Ararat. It is not--the Hebrew is unambiguous that Noah's Ark [55:25] landed among the mountains of Ararat. So, in other words, a district. And I believe [55:32] that, as I try to explain in detail in this book, that the traditional idea, that [55:38] the story in Genesis derives from the Babylonian forerunner, also adopted with [55:43] it the tradition about where this thing landed. But for the Judeans, they no [55:49] more knew where Urartu was than anywhere else. And they certainly didn't tweak the [55:53] idea that the Babylonian conception was that you go beyond the river, beyond the [55:58] edge of the world, to a district where no man ever goes and comes home again. But [56:02] this word, in the same geographical location as this mountain, is surely [56:07] the origin of the expression in the Hebrew Bible. So I thought that was kind [56:11] of neat. And then, life intervened to teach me a lesson. [56:16] The Easter before last, I and my family went off on the Sunday for a day [56:23] trip. We passed this sign which said, "Very old church." We all liked going [56:29] to old churches, so we went and drove up and went in. And there was a lychgate, [56:34] and then the very ancient church behind it. And as it was Easter Sunday, it wasn't [56:39] clear whether there was a service going on. So I stood at the door, the big door [56:46] you can see here, to try and listen through the gap, so we wouldn't burst in [56:52] and disturb everybody. And as I was crouching there, listening, there was a [56:56] kind of "plop" on the back of my head. And I looked up, and there on the roof. Up there. [57:07] Where is he? Oh he's up there. Sorry. There was a bird. Now the thing is this. [57:15] There was no bird shit on the ground at all. This was not a bird toilet. And the [57:25] bird there was a pure white dove. So I had--oh there he is, he's up there. There! It's a [57:35] pure white dove. And the floor beneath was spotless. I mean any detective would [57:39] immediately examine the terrain to see whether there was prior use. There was [57:43] none. So I can only conclude that that bird [57:46] came to get me. And all I can say is I have a pretty good idea who might have sent it. [57:54] Thank you.