In Search of Noah's Ark
By Sam Weaver (06/16/06)
NOTE: This is the first in a series of articles that will delve into the mind of the tenacious researcher, Ron Stewart; and will relate the findings of an unfolding odyssey to unearth facts about the fabled Ark of Noah—where it could be and where it is not.
Has Noah’s Ark been found on Mount Judi (aka Mt. Cudi, or Cudi Dagh—“the heights”)? An intrepid team of adventurers is on a quest right now in an attempt to answer that question once and for all.
According to the Qur’an (the Koran—the holy book of Islam) Cudi Dagh is all but categorically the final resting place of Noah’s Ark. As stated in both the Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible, the Ark landed upon “the mountains of Ararat”. Cudi Dagh is about 200 miles south of Mt. Ararat in southern Turkey; an area once known as Urartu, or Ararat. Sennacherib (an Assyrian king ca. 700 BC) commemorated the site by carving images of himself on the side of Mt. Judi. Explorer Gertrude Bell found a stone carving at the summit in the shape of a great ship in 1910 that is still called by the locals “Sefinet Nebi Nuh” (“the ship of Noah”). Christians (Nestorians) built monasteries on and around the mountain many centuries ago and Muslims have built a mosque. News stories as late as January 1994 have proclaimed Cudi Dagh as the possible landing site of Noah’s Ark.
Over the past two months, I’ve been working behind the scenes with a gentleman by the name of Ron Stewart. He is a skilled and devoted researcher/analyst with a driving passion. His passion is to locate the remains of Noah’s Ark. Ron is convinced that he has the photographic evidence that will lead to the discovery of these remains.
For decades, Ron has accumulated an immense portfolio of photographs from sites all over southern Turkey and northern Iran that have been proposed as “possible Ark landing sites”. He has developed a way to enhance these photographs with minimal distortion. He has sought input from experts in several fields of scientific study vis-à -vis his enhanced photos. He is the author of Noah’s Ark: A Scientific Look, Past And Future.
Poring over these photographs, Ron noticed a somewhat familiar shape in an image he observed inside the caldera of Mt. Sabalan in northern Iran. He had seen a very similar shape at Mt. Judi/Cudi. It turns out that the form on Mt. Judi is nothing more than the ship-shaped carving that Gertrude Bell had found in 1910. What’s more, roughly the same shape can be seen on Greater Mt. Ararat. You would not believe some of the other things that Ron claims to have captured in his myriad photos of Greater Mt. Ararat! In the next few articles, I hope to share with my readers some of these images.
Ron Stewart is absolutely certain that Noah’s Ark came to rest on what we now call Greater Mt. Ararat. In several locations—on several different mountains in southern Turkey and northern Iran—monuments, pictographs and carvings were created by local people for centuries after the fact to memorialize the landing of the Ark. Cudi Dagh is one of these locations.
In my next few articles, I hope to provide some of this photographic evidence and to relate some of Ron Stewart’s historical, literary and scientific evidence that supports his conviction that the remains of Noah’s Ark can be found on Mt. Ararat. I also hope to report on an expedition that is just now getting underway to Mt. Damavand and Mt. Sabalan in northern Iran. Please stay tuned!
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