"Archaeologists say writings on an ancient tablet confirm there was a global flood and an ark that carried animals.
A recently deciphered 4,000-year-old clay tablet, discovered in modern-day Iraq -- which is ancient Mesopotamia -- reveals striking similarities to the biblical account of Noah. The tablet describes a massive flood that destroys the earth and instructions that animals should be loaded onto the craft "two by two."
The tablet differs from scripture in its description of the ark. It tells of a giant round vessel, two-thirds the size of a soccer field. In the book of Genesis, God commands Noah to build a longer vessel, providing specific dimensions that are not round.
Experts say other ancient civilizations adapted versions of Noah's story to their own cultures.
The tablet is on display at the British Museum in London, and engineers hope to build the vessel following the ancient instructions." CBN
And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of:
The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits,
the breadth of it fifty cubits,
and the height of it thirty cubits.
A window shalt thou make to the ark,
and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above;
and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof;
with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.
Genesis 6:15,16
"The tablet went on display at the British Museum on Friday, and soon engineers will follow the ancient instructions to see whether the vessel could actually have sailed.It's also the subject of a new book, "The Ark Before Noah," by Irving Finkel, the museum's assistant keeper of the Middle East and the man who translated the tablet.
Finkel got hold of it a few years ago, when a man brought in a damaged tablet his father had acquired in the Middle East after World War II. It was light brown, about the size of a mobile phone and covered in the jagged cuneiform script of the ancient Mesopotamians.
It turned out, Finkel said Friday, to be "one of the most important human documents ever discovered."
"It was really a heart-stopping moment -- the discovery that the boat was to be a round boat," said Finkel, who sports a long gray beard, a ponytail and boundless enthusiasm for his subject. "That was a real surprise."
And yet, Finkel said, a round boat makes sense. Coracles were widely used as river taxis in ancient Iraq and are perfectly designed to bob along on raging floodwaters.
"It's a perfect thing," Finkel said. "It never sinks, it's light to carry."
Other experts said Finkel wasn't simply indulging in book-promotion hype. David Owen, professor of ancient Near Eastern studies at Cornell University, said the British Museum curator had made "an extraordinary discovery."
Elizabeth Stone, an expert on the antiquities of ancient Mesopotamia at New York's Stony Brook University, said it made sense that ancient Mesopotamians would depict their ark as round.
"People are going to envision the boat however people envision boats where they are," she said. "Coracles are not unusual things to have had in Mesopotamia." 7NEWStheDenverChannel.com