Mountains of Ararat

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Mountains of Ararat

Not to be confused with Mount Ararat
Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat is the tallest peak in east Turkey. This snow-capped, dormant volcanic cone is located in the Igdir Province, near the northeast corner of Turkey, west of the Iranian and south of the Armenian border....

The Mountains of Ararat is the place named in the Book of Genesis where Noah's ark

Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark is a large vessel featured in the mythology of Abrahamic religions. Narratives that include the Ark are found in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an ....
came to rest after the great flood (Genesis 8:4). Abrahamic tradition associates the mountains of Ararat with Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
located 750 miles (1200 kilometers) northeast of Jerusalem

Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and its List of Israeli cities in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if Positions on Jerusalem East Jerusalem is included....
.

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Noah's Ark

Mount Ararat

Turkey

Jerusalem

Timeline of Armenian history

Earliest *6000-4000 BC: Neolithic cultures of the South Caucasus, such as the Shulaveri-Shomu culture.*3400-2000 BC: Kura-Araxes culture.**2400 BC: The Indo-Europeans were people who migrated from Caucasus into Europe, settling on lands along the way....
, it eventually fell into the hands of the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299?1923. It was Treaty of Lausanne by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923....
and later the Persian Empire

Persian Empire

The 'Persian Empire' was a series of successive Iranian or Persianization empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and beyond in Southwest Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus....
(Iran

Iran

Russo-Persian War, 1826-1828

The Russo-Persian War of 1826-1828 was the last major military conflict between the Russian Empire and the Qajar dynasty.After the Treaty of Gulistan concluded the previous Russo-Persian War in 1813, peace reigned in the Caucasus for thirteen years....
and the Treaty of Turkmenchay

Treaty of Turkmenchay

The Treaty of Turkmenchay was a treaty negotiated in Turkmenchay by which the Persian Empire, more commonly known today as Iran, recognized Imperial Russia suzerainty over the Erivan khanate, Nakhchivan khanate and the remainder of the Talysh Khanate, establishing the Aras River as the common boundary between both empires, after its defeat...
it was incorporated into the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

File:Russian Emperor Flag.jpgFile:Romanov Flag.svgThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917....
as part of the Armenian Oblast

Armenian Oblast

The Armenian Oblast or Armenian Province was an oblast of the Russian Empire that existed from 1828 to 1840. It roughly corresponded to most of present-day central Armenia, the Igdir Province of present-day Turkey, and present-day Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan exclave....
and later the Erivan

Yerevan

Yerevan is the capital and largest city of Armenia. It is situated on the Hrazdan River, and is the administrative, cultural, and industrial center of the country....
Governate

History of the administrative division of Russia

This article covers the history of the administrative division of Russia from 1708 to 1744....
. After World War I

World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
, it came under the administration of the Democratic Republic of Armenia

Democratic Republic of Armenia

The Democratic Republic of Armenia , 1918?1920, was the first modern establishment of an Armenian republic. The collapse of the Imperial Russia with the Russian Revolution of 1917 gave chance to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation to create the new republic which the leadership and the 103 of delegates from former Romanov realm belonged t...
as part of the Ararat province

Ararat (province)

Ararat is a provinces of Armenia of Armenia with capital in Artashat. Named after Mount Ararat, the province borders Turkey to the west and Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan to the south....
but was ceded to Turkey by the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
in the Treaty of Kars

Treaty of Kars

The Treaty of Kars was a friendship treaty between the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, which in 1923 declared the Republic of Turkey, and representatives of Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan and Soviet Georgia with participation of Bolshevist Russia....
.

Background

Historians have long sought to corroborate the biblical reference to the "mountains of Ararat" with Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat is the tallest peak in east Turkey. This snow-capped, dormant volcanic cone is located in the Igdir Province, near the northeast corner of Turkey, west of the Iranian and south of the Armenian border....
, or to ascertain the actual location of the mountains mentioned in the account. The Book of Jubilees specifies that the Ark came to rest on one of the peaks of the "Mountains of Ararat" called "Lubar".

Some have sought to connect the name "Ararat" with ancient states in the area such as Urartu

Urartu

Urartu was an Iron Age kingdom in Eastern Anatolia , rising to power in the mid 9th century BC, and finally conquered by Median Empire in the early 6th century BC....
, and the even older "Aratta

Aratta

Aratta is a land that appears in Sumerian myths surrounding Enmerkar and Lugalbanda, two early and possibly mythical kings of Uruk also mentioned on the Sumerian king list....
" found in Sumer

Sumer

Sumer was a civilization and a historical region located in Southern Iraq , known as the Cradle of civilization. It lasted from the first settlement of Eridu in the Ubaid period through the Uruk period and the Dynastic periods until the rise of Babylon in the early 2nd millennium BC....
ian records. These cultures were centered around Lake Van

Lake Van

Lake Van is the largest lake in Turkey, located in the far east of the country. It is a salt lakes and soda lake, receiving water from numerous small streams that descend from the surrounding mountains....
in ancient Armenia

Armenia

Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in South Caucasus between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea....
during Biblical times (currently in Turkey). Mount Ararat has the distinction of holding this tradition among its surrounding cultures for centuries, and is also geographically within ancient Urartu, giving it the most legitimate potential claim as the Biblical Ararat. However, the Biblical account could plausibly have been intended to refer to any of the mountain ranges associated with Urartu.

An obvious problem associated with identifying the resting place of the Ark is that its elevation must be lower than the ultimate depth of the flood water, since the Biblical account indicates that the highest point of land was covered to a depth of about twenty feet. An elevation higher than a certain point would require an impossible rate of rainfall to cover it. In the view of some biblical literalists, it is dubious that a peak of over 16,000 feet would even exist at the time of the Flood; hence the facts imply that the mountains of "Ararat" were much lower than today, even if they were the highest in the world, a position not supported by modern geomorphology.

Other potential Ararat candidates have been proposed over the millennia at locales as widely distributed as Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast....
, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....
, and Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and formerly known internationally as Persian Empire until 1935, is a country in Central Eurasia, located on the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf and the southern shore of the Caspian Sea....
.

The Latin Vulgate says "requievitque arca [...] super montes Armeniae", which means literally "and the ark rested [...] on the mountains of Armenia", which was corrected to "... mountains of Ararat" (montes Ararat) in the Nova Vulgata (New Vulgate).

In the book, Antiquities of the Jews
Antiquities of the Jews

Antiquities of the Jews was a work published by the important Jewish historian Josephus about the year 93 or 94. Antiquities of the Jews is a Jewish history, written in Greek language for Josephus' gentile patrons....
, Josephus

Josephus

Josephus , also known as Yosef Ben Matityahu and, after he became a Roman citizenship, as Titus Flavius Josephus, was a first-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70....
wrote:

Mountains of Ararat

Background

See also