The Discovery of Noah's Long-Lost City - Mesha / Naxuan
Discovery! Higher up the slopes of Mt. Judi, seventeen miles south of, and in plain sight of the ark hunter's ever-popular Mt. Ararat, and just under the great white limestone escarpment wall known as Ziyaret, which means "shrine," lie the ruined remains of the ancient lost-city of Noah, called "Mesha" anciently, and known later as "Naxuan." In July 1997, the city was discovered by researcher and author, David Allen Deal. This small map of the center section of the ancient city is taken from a larger map which you may view on the following page. This map was created by Deal using photogrammetric methods from a Turkish Air Force aerial mapping photograph, taken in 1959 by pilot Sevket Kurtis (Dave Fasold gave Deal this negative about 1995 ). Captain Ilhan Drupinar first noticed the ark impression, while examining the photos and the rest, as they say, is history. 11 years earlier, however, Reshit Sarihan the Kurdish shepherd was in reality, the first to discover the ark in modern times.
This high-resolution 20,000 ft. aerial photograph (not a satellite photo), allowed the discovery of the lost city by Deal, based on the assumption that the ark must have slid downhill from a higher location and then lodged in the descending mudflow near the village of üzengili 2 kilometers (just over a mile) downhill. In July of 1997 Deal, while searching the uphill source of a mudflow valley, noticed another impression, identical in shape and size to the lower ship-mold. This then, was the landing place of the ark after the great flood. Soon, building foundations began to show up under close examination of this area of the photo. In a few days, nearly a thousand house foundations had been identified. Mesha / Naxuan, Noah's city, had come to light after 4,500 years.
(Click here or on the image for a close-up.)
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House foundation Photograph taken in 1998 by Professor Robert Michelson of Georgia Tech, on our first expedition to Naxuan, shows Dr. M. Salih Bayraktutan, associate professor of geology at Atatürk University, Erzurum standing within the foundation stones of one of the ancient dwellings at the Naxuan city center near the ark landing site, at an elevation of 7,400 feet above sealevel.
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Reconstruction This shot is a reconstruction of the same house showing approximately how the walls and roof timbers looked during its original construction. This is not an actual building but a computer rendering by David Deal. It is assumed here that the ark was used as a souce of roof timber, furnishings, and firewood.
(Click here or on the image for a close-up.)
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