“We’re heading out now,” shouted the American in a loud voice. “If we’re going to find Noah’s Ark, we can’t just sit around here doing nothing!”
It was May, twenty-five years ago. I was on a journey to China in the footsteps of Marco Polo and had reached a small Turkish town near the Iranian border. In the lobby of the Hotel Isfahan sat a group of American believers, each with a backpack. One clutched his Bible tightly, another carried binoculars and heavy photographic equipment.
“The cars are waiting for us! Let’s go!”
Jay, the group’s leader, had told me the day before that God had commanded them to travel to Turkey in search of Noah’s Ark. “We want to prove the existence of God,” he said.
“Prove the existence of God?”
“Exactly. We belong to a Bible group in Phoenix, Arizona, and are conducting preliminary research. But we won’t start searching until August.”
“Why August?”
“There’s less snow and ice on the mountain then.”
Jay was in a generous mood and invited me to the group’s “preparatory meeting” in the hotel’s basement.
The meeting opened with a short prayer, during which Jay lifted his eyes to the low ceiling and said: “Now, almighty God, we are at Ararat, the most beautiful and mysterious of all mountains. Grant us strength and wisdom to find the Great Ark so that we may bring this wonderful news to all of humanity!”
Another participant showed slides from a previous trip and concluded that there was definitely “something” up there—something indistinct, possibly the remains of the famous ark.
But the Muslim Ahmet Özul, a Turk who knew the mountain like the back of his hand and who was to accompany the group, was not convinced. Every time Jay pointed to a “discovery” that needed to be investigated, he replied indifferently, “Forget it! It’s nothing!”
A third participant spoke up, saying he had studied all available “Ararat literature.” In one book, George Hagopian, an Armenian Christian, claimed that as a child in the early 1900s he had not only seen the Ark but had climbed and played on it. That summer, when he was eight years old, was unusually hot and dry, and the ice cap surrounding the mountain had receded. Formations and objects previously hidden suddenly emerged. Together with his uncle, he had climbed almost to the summit. And there lay the Ark!
“Praise the Lord,” the participants answered in unison before rising and heading to bed.
The next morning, we were on our way to Abas-Abas, a small village on the northern side of Ararat. Jay was excited and asked Ahmet if it was possible to preach the Gospel to the poor heathens in the village.
“But they’re Muslims,” Ahmet objected.
“That’s why! I’m sure they are hungry for the Holy Gospel!”
The discussion ended with Jay setting aside the Bible—for now.
The drive to Abas-Abas took us across a vast plain, crisscrossed by trickling streams. Marco Polo wrote that Ararat was covered in eternal snow, which is entirely accurate. Most likely, he left the mountain alone, as his journey was not of a religious nature, but to explore trade opportunities in China.
The Americans had rented four Land Rovers for their day-long expedition.
“These people are crazy,” Ahmet told me during one of our stops. “They think they’re going to find Noah’s Ark. But okay, we’re making money off them. How will they find the Ark? Even James Irwin couldn’t do it.”
“James Irwin?”
“The guy who went to the moon. He came here in the early 1980s and searched the mountain on foot without finding anything. Later, he flew around it, not just once but several times. Every square meter was photographed. It’s easy to travel to the moon, but finding Noah’s Ark is incredibly difficult, I’m telling you!”
Abas-Abas dozed behind a large stone wall, nearly two thousand meters above sea level. The mountainside was fresh and green, before giving way to great rocky expanses and the snow-white crown of the mountain, stretching five thousand meters skyward. The villagers turned out to be Kurds—mostly elderly men and women and a dozen dogs with huge, snarling jaws. Ahmet had to throw stones at the beasts to keep them at bay.
For the next few hours, we followed the gentle slope of the mountain in a western direction. Soon the grass and shrubs disappeared, and Ararat became a world of gray stone. One of the participants, Dennis, tripped and fell hard. He lay groaning, blood oozing from wounds on his palms. Several of us rushed to him, but Dennis said the fall was God’s will and that he was willing to shed even more blood to find the holy ark. With bandages and antiseptic applied, the expedition continued.
Jay was ecstatic and told us to look out for wooden fragments.
“Wooden fragments?”
“Wood from Noah’s Ark. If the Ark was crushed under the pressure of ice masses, its remains could be scattered on the mountainside.”
Ahmet shook his head.
“Another expedition, also American, found some wooden fragments up here many years ago. The leader immediately declared he had found Noah’s Ark, and the news went worldwide. But carbon dating showed the pieces were only three hundred years old.”
“Well,” Jay replied. “Let’s look for wooden fragments anyway!”
The day on the mythic Ararat was wonderful. Jay and his friends took hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures of every kind of formation in the landscape, but no Ark was found—nor any wood. One of the photographers remarked that Ararat reminded him a lot of Mount Fuji in Japan. It’s actually true. Ararat—a beautiful mountain. Isn’t that enough?
“The problem,” said Jay, sitting behind a large rock, “the problem is that there are multiple Ararat mountains. The Bible refers to ‘the mountains of Ararat’ in the plural. That means the Ark could be on this mountain—but also on other mountains in eastern Turkey.”
The mountain we were on is known as Greater Ararat. Its closest neighbor, Lesser Ararat, is just as beautiful but 1,300 meters lower. From a distance, they look like twins. In ancient times, when the Book of Genesis was written, Ararat referred to a region 250–300 kilometers farther southwest, near the borders of Syria and Iraq. Could the Ark be there?
“Not impossible,” Ahmet replied, still rather indifferent.
Every autumn—on September 14, to be exact—Muslim believers gather for prayer on Mount Al-Judi, for the Quran states that “Noah’s Ark came to rest on Al-Judi.” The mountain is two thousand meters high and has had many names throughout history.
When Gertrude Bell, a determined British woman, reached the summit in 1910, she discovered a rock formation that strongly resembled a boat, which the locals called “Sefinet Nebi Nuh”—Noah’s Ark.
“Well,” Ahmet sighed, kicking at the gravel. “But let’s say you do find the Ark—what will you do with it? Do you need the Ark in order to believe in God?”
Jay stood silently, staring into the distance, as if out of answers.
“We believe anyway,” he finally declared. “But the more evidence we have, the better.”
And so we made our way back the same way we came. By evening, the air had grown noticeably cooler, and in the village of Abas-Abas, shepherds sat by a small fire warming themselves. Back in the lobby of the Hotel Isfahan, Jay called out to the group: “Tomorrow, we continue the search. And remember—we leave at 9 o’clock sharp!”
MY READING TIP
Torbjørn Færøvik: Veien til Xanadu. En reise i Marco Polos fotspor, Cappelen Forlag, Oslo 2001, and later editions.
