Scientists have unlocked the secrets of the world’s oldest map – a 3,000-year-old clay tablet known as the Imago Mundi – which is believed to show the location of ‘Noah’s Ark’.
This Babylonian artifact, etched with cuneiform – a script using wedge-shaped symbols – depicts a circular world map, illustrating early Babylonian ideas about the world’s creation.
Housed at the British Museum, the tablet’s recent analysis revealed an embedded Biblical reference in the ancient language, previously overlooked.
The back of the tablet serves as a guide, describing what a traveller would encounter, including passing through “seven leagues… [to] see something that is thick as a parsiktu-vessel”.
The term “parsiktu” appears on other ancient tablets, referencing the scale of a vessel meant to withstand the legendary Great Flood.
Following these descriptions, researchers traced a route to “Urartu,” a location linked to an ancient Mesopotamian poem recounting a family who, like Noah, landed their ark to preserve life. Urartu aligns with “Ararat,” the Hebrew term for the mountain where Noah’s Ark is said to have come to rest after the flood.
British Museum curator Dr. Irving Finkel said: “It shows that the story was the same, and of course that one led to the other but also, that from the Babylonian point of view, this was a matter of fact thing.
“That if you did go on this journey you would see the remnants of this historic boat.”
Since its discovery in 1882 in what is now Iraq, the Imago Mundi has captivated scholars, as its inscriptions recount astronomical events, predictions, and a map believed to depict the entire “known world” of that time.
In a video for the museum, Dr. Finkel explained: “Number four says ‘To the fourth, to which you must travel seven leagues.'” He noted that the journey eventually reveals a “giant vessel” – a sight historically thought to be the remnants of a large boat.
“This parsiktu measurement is something to an Assyriologist which makes their ears prick,” Dr. Finkel explained, “and it’s rather an interesting cuneiform tablet too, because it is the description of the Ark which was built, theoretically, by the Babylonian version of Noah.”
According to the Babylonian myth, the god Ea sends a flood that wipes out all of humanity except for Utnapishtim and his family, who construct an ark filled with animals, much like the Biblical story. Dr. Finkel describes the Babylonian Noah recounting: “‘I did this, this and this. I’ve done it! And I made these structures as thick parsiktu vessel.’”
Biblical texts recount that the ark came to rest on the “mountains of Ararat” in Turkey following a flood lasting 150 days that drowned the Earth.
The supposed ark site in Turkey aligns with dimensions stated in the Bible—“300 cubits, 50 cubits, by 30 cubits”—translating to around 515 feet long, 86 feet wide, and 52 feet high. Yet, controversy persists over whether this structure is natural or divinely created.
