Once upon a time, Ararat and Aragats were sisters with great love. One day, as it happens, they fight. One says: “I am the beautiful one, the higher one”, the other says: “I am both higher and more beautiful than you”. Mount Maruta reaches them and tries to reconcile the sisters. Seeing that she is unable to restore peace, she leaves, leaves and curses them.
Her curse was ominous. “Let Ararat and Aragats be separated from each other in such a way that they never meet again.” In turn, Ararat curses Aragatsin so that sorrow never leaves his heart and tears fall from his eyes. Aragats also curses Ararat, so that he will dry up from grief, that no one will rise up to him on the face of the earth, that no sacrifice will be done on him. That’s how it happens. On the top of Aragats, a lake forms from a tear, thousands of springs flow from its slopes. And Ararat dries up, no one climbs to its top, nor sacrifices are brought there.
Bred from Adam and Eve, mankind gradually turned away from God and became evil. For this reason, God decided to punish all mankind with a flood, except for Noah, who was a righteous and good man and faithful to God. Before the flood, He commanded Noah to build an ark, then take his family, a couple of every land animal and bird, and enter the ark. Then the flood started and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. Everything went under the water and perished.
After a long voyage, Noah’s Ark stopped on Mount Ararat. The news of the receding of the waters was heralded by the dove that Noah had released, which returned with an olive branch in its beak. After seven days, Noah released the dove again, and this time the dove did not return, indicating that the earth had dried up. After leaving the ark, Noah prepared an altar and sacrificed. God made a covenant with him and his sons, the sign of which was the rainbow.
According to the legend, Noah settled with his three sons Shem, Ham, Japheth and their families in the settlements around Mount Ararat. According to the same legend, after coming down from Mount Ararat, when Noah saw the land, he cried out “Երև անդ!”(arm.) which means “appeared there” (hence the name of the capital Yerevan) The first place Noah landed was called Nakhichevan, and his first plant was a grapevine. He was engaged in farming.
The famous British historian Assyriologist Irving Finkel in his book “The Ark to Noah: From Mesopotamia to Ararat” presented cuneiform stories of the flood, a number of evidence that Noah’s Ark really landed on Mount Ararat. The core of the book is the tablets of the ark and a study of cuneiform inscriptions dating to the 2nd millennium, complementing and illustrating the story presented in the Book of Genesis.
Until recently, experts studied three ancient texts about the flood, written a thousand years before the Bible. The fourth text became available to researchers only in 2009. It turned out to be a detailed guide to building Noah’s Ark.
In the book, Irving Finkel compares the Mesopotamian, biblical, and Quaranic versions of the flood story, details the construction of the ark, and examines the facts surrounding the ark’s final resting place on Mount Ararat. The story of Noah and his ark in this book ceases to be just a legend.
Irving Finkel is a British Assyriologist who is also one of the curator-scholars of the British Museum’s Near East Department’s cuneiform collection.
By the way, he is one of the prominent scientists who in many interviews referred to the history, origin and location of Urartu, stating that the name Urartu is an ancient version of the names Ararat and Armenia.
The article was compiled based on observations and materials collected by ArmLand club.
