In this photo (click to enlarge) looking south, you see what remains of the ARK OF NOAH ( what you actually see here is a below-the-waterline impression - an earthen mold in hardened, blackened mud ), of the great ship that had been ensnared thousands of years past by a limestone rock outcropping which juts from the west side of a narrow defile and pierced the side, to the heart of the vessel, ending its downhill slide. This is an interesting and perhaps prophetic parallel to another famous saviour of humanity whose side was pierced at the end of life.

The Ark of Noah's final impression is located in the narrowest part of an earthslide at 6,200 feet above sealevel, on a mountain in eastern Turkey, about a mile west of the Turkish / Iranian border and 17 miles south of Mount Ararat. This hull-mold is not the "Ark of Noah," but rather an impression of where the Ark was before it was scavenged for wood building materials and finally rotted away several thousands of years ago. The wood of the ship no longer exists. In Josephus' day (1st century A.D.), people were still gathering amulets and talismans of tar from the ark to "ward off evil spirits." The hull impression is 538 feet in length measured by Fasold, & Baumgardner in 1988. Originally the ship measured 550 feet overall, which is precisely 300 cubits of 22 inch length. This cubit length was determined by dividing the sub-surface bulkhead measurements done by Fasold and Bamgardner, by the smallest ( closest to the cubit ) common denominator, which was 22 inches.

The great Noah's Ark ruin was discovered in modern times in May of 1948 by local Kurdish-Turkish farmer Reshit Sarihan after a series of three earthquakes shook apart the surrounding loose and expansive soils that had entrapped it for many centuries. Higher up by 1,200 feet elevation and a mile east by southeast, on this mountain which is called by the local Kurds, "Mashur" ( also known as "Cudi Dag" but pronounced "Judi Da" in Turkish - which means "mountain of the Kurds" ), is located the Ark of Noah's original touchdown, or hard landing place, discovered by this author in 1994, and first published in June of 1997. See "Place fo First Descent."

After David Deal, this author and discoverer, was invited to Turkey in October of 1998 by Professor M. Salih Bayraktutan of Ataturk University, Erzurum to look over the claims of discovery, at which time, and on an subsequent three day expedition the following year, they confirmed his claims of discovery of Noah's lost city Naxuan to a large degree ( -many dwellings and signs of great human occupation were found at 7,400 foot ground level and human ribs were taken and dated by Professor Rob Michelson of Gatech, GA to 1950 +/- 50 years BC.). This radiometric date is approximately 70 years after the death of Noah. Deal discovered Naxuan by analysis of a 1959 Turkish / NATO aerial mapping photograph that showed the ark mold impression in the center, but also the remains of the first two cities of our post flood civilization: NAXUAN, two kilometers higher up the mountain, and the second city, SERON, just west of the ark's final resting place. These two cities are discussed by ancient writers such as Berosus, Moses of Chronen, Ptolemy the geographer, and Josephus, among others.