Full Moon over Noah's Ark
Page 35
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author amid the ruins of Ishak Pasha Palace. Portrait © Simon Carr.
Rick Antonson is the author of To Timbuktu for a Haircut: A Journey Through West Africa and Route 66 Still Kicks: Driving America’s Main Street. He is co-author of Slumach’s Gold: In Search of a Legend, the story behind the Pitt Lake lost gold mine featured in Discovery Channel and Animal Planet’s television series Curse of the Frozen Gold. He has served as president and CEO of Tourism Vancouver; chair of the board for the Destination Marketing Association International, based in Washington, DC; deputy chair for the Pacific Asia Tourism Association, based in Bangkok, Thailand; and president of Pacific Coast Public Television Association, aligned with PBS affiliate KCTS in Seattle. He has traveled extensively with his wife, Janice. In five trips over a dozen years, Rick and his sons Brent (author, Of Russia: A Year Inside) and Sean have circumnavigated the northern hemisphere by train. He recently hiked the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea. Rick has spoken internationally about the concept of Cathedral Thinking. He holds an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Capilano University, Vancouver. Rick and his wife make their homes in Vancouver, Canada, and in Cairns, Australia. www.rickantonson.com
SOURCES AND RECOMMENDED READING
Balsiger, Dave, and Charles E. Sellier, Jr. In Search of Noah’s Ark. Los Angeles: Sun Classic Books, 1976.
Bell, Brian and Melissa Shales, Editors. Turkey, Insight Guide. London, 2009.
Berlitz, Charles. The Lost Ship of Noah: In Search of the Ark at Ararat. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1987.
Bonomi, Joseph. Nineveh and its Palaces: The Discoveries of Botta and Layard, Applied to the Elucidation of Holy Writ. London: Third Edition, H. G. Bohn1857; Elibron Classics reprint, 1999.
Carrington, Richard. A Million Years of Man. New York: World Press, 1963.
Casson, Lionel. Libraries in the Ancient World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Cline, Eric H. From Eden to Exile; Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible. Washington: National Geographic, 2007.
Corbin, B. J., ed. The Explorers of Ararat: And the Search for Noah’s Ark. Long Beach: GCI Books, 1999.
Cornuke, Robert, and David Halbrook. In Search of the Lost Mountains of Noah: The Discovery of the Real Mts. of Ararat. Nashville: Broadman & Homan Publishers, 2001.
Cummings, Violet. Has Anybody Really Seen Noah’s Ark? San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1982.
______. Noah’s Ark: Fact or Fable? San Diego: Creation-Science Research Center, 1972.
Damrosch, David. The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007.
Dobbs, Kildare. Away from Home: Canadian Writers in Exotic Places. Toronto: Deneau Publishers, 1985.
Fagan, Brian M. Return to Babylon; Travelers, Archaeologists, and Monuments in Mesopotamia (Revised Edition). Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2007.
Finkel, Irving. The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014.
Finkel, Irving, and Jonathan Taylor. Cuneiform. London: British Museum Press, 2015.
Frost, Robert. In the Clearing. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962.
Hovhannisyan, Nikolay. The Armenian Genocide. Yerevan, Armenia: Republic of Armenia, National Academy of Sciences Institute of Oriental Studies, 2002.
Hovhannisian, Sen. Armenia Ararat. Yerevan, Armenia: Publishing House NAHAPET, 2008.
Irwin, James B. and Monte Unger. More than an Ark on Ararat. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1985.
Jwaideh, Wadie. The Kurdish National Movement, Its Origins and Development. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003.
Kanner, Rebecca. Sinners and The Sea; The Untold Story of Noah’s Wife. New York: Howard Books, Simon & Shuster, Inc., 2013.
Keller, Werner. The Bible as History; Digging up the Bible. La Vergne, TN: BN Publishing, 2008.
Khachikyan, Armen. History of Armenia. Yerevan, Armenia: Edit Print, 2010.
Kissinger, Henry. World Order. New York: Penguin, 2014.
Hazleton, Lesley. The First Muslim; The Story of Muhammad. London: Atlantic Books, 2013.
La Haye, Tim, and John Morris. The Ark on Ararat. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1976.
Larsen, Mogens Trolle. The Conquest of Assyria; Excavations in an Antique Land 1840–1860. London: Routledge, 1996.
Layard, Austen Henry. Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the Desert. London: John Murray, 1853. Reprint. London: Elibron Classics, 2005.
______. Nineveh and its Remains. London: John Murray, 1882. Reprint. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2001.
Lemkin, Raphael. Raphael Lemkin’s Dossier on the Armenian Genocide. Glendale, CA: Center for Armenian Remembrance, 2008.
Lightman, Alan. The Accidental Universe; The World You Thought You Knew. New York: Vintage Books, 2013.
Maine, David. The Preservationist. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2004.
Mandeville, John. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville; The Fantastic 14th-Century Account of a Journey to the East. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. 2006. First published, London, Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1900.
Melikian, Danielle. Armenia, From Centuries to Eternity. Yerevan, Armenia: Vahagn Melikian Family, 2011.
Mitchell, Stephen, trans. Gilgamesh. London: Profile Books, 2004.
Montgomery, John Warwick. The Quest for Noah’s Ark. Minneapolis: Dimension Books, 1974.
Navai, Ramita. City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death and the Search for Truth in Tehran. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014.
Navarra, Fernand. The Forbidden Mountain. London: MacDonald & Co., 1956.
______. Noah’s Ark: I Touched It. Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1974.
Parrot, André. The Flood and Noah’s Ark. London: SCM Press, 1955.
Parrot, Friedrich, and W. D. Cooley. Journey to Ararat (1859). New York: Harper & Brothers, 1859.
Plimer, Ian. Telling Lies for God: Reason vs. Creationism. Sydney: Random House Australia, 1994.
Robertson, Geoffrey. An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians? Sydney: Random House Australia, 2014.
Ryan, William, and Walter Pitman. Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event that Changed the World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
Salter, James. Solo Faces. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979.
Shockey, Don. Agri-Dagh (Mount Ararat): The Painful Mountain. Ringgold, GA: TEACH Services, 2006.
Thomas, Lisa, Editorial Director. Strange But True. Washington: National Geographic Society, 2015.
Thorne, T. K. Noah’s Wife, 5500 BCE. Springville, AL: Blackburn Fork Publishing, 2009.
Trip, Charles. A History of Iraq. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Wells, Carveth. Kapoot: The Narrative of a Journey from Leningrad to Mount Ararat in Search of Noah’s Ark. New York: National Travel Club, 1933.
Westerman, Frank. Ararat: In Search of the Mythical Mountain. London: Random House, 2010.
Wilson, Ian. Before the Flood: The Biblical Flood as a Real Event and How it Changed the Course of Civilization. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004.
In the Internet-enabled world, desktop research has become akin to a nearly untraceable game of hopscotch wherein one seeks background information and jumps from offered source to related topics and on to appealing side notes, all without ever returning, or tracking, the educational journey. I am one who has done that and garnered many insights and ideas and corroborated concepts which are reflected in this book, though the exact sources are so many that it would require pages of website listings to account for them, so they are not shown. However, on any topic of interest from this book, one can be assured of exceptional sources for both the matters identified and contrarian views, debates, and counterpoints, all enjoyably provided through any search mechanism.
CREDITS AND PERMISSIONS
Images
All maps © Eric Leinberger and Ri
ck Antonson
page xiv: 19th-century line drawing of Mt Ararat. From Alexander MacDonald, The Land of Ararat; or, Up the Roof of the World: By a Special Correspondent, published 1893. Courtesy of the British Library.
Foreword, page xviii: Photograph of Khor Virap courtesy of Andrew S. Behesnilian.
Chapter 1: The Forbidden Mountain
page 9: Photograph of Mount Ararat and lesser Ararat © and courtesy of Wojciech Ogrodowczyk.
page 17: Cuneiform tablet recording the allocation of beer. ©The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.
page 19: The Flood Tablet. ©The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.
Chapter 3: Whirling Dervish
page 48: Whirling dervishes photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, photographer Schorle.
Chapter 4: The Van Gölü Express
page 62: Courtyard of the palace of Sargon II: Hero, called “Gilgamesh”, taming a lion. Ca. 710 BCE. Limestone. 4.5 x 1.88 x 0.22 m. AO19861. Photo: Thierry Ollivier. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.
page 66: Image of Friedrich Parrot courtesy of the Manuscripts and Rare Books Department of the Tartu University Library, Estonia.
Chapter 5: Women of Ararat
page 82: Kurdish woman fighter. Photograph reproduced by permission of Flickr member BijiKurdistan.
page 83: Kurdish woman fighter with dove. Photograph reproduced by permission of Flickr member BijiKurdistan.
Chapter 6: Turkish Honeycomb
page 91: The Ark Tablet. Photograph copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd. 2015. Reproduced with permission.
page 92: Photograph of modern-day coracle courtesy of Sreeraj PS.
page 93: Photograph of the round ark replica © Kuni Takahashi. Used with permission.
Chapter 7: Taking Tea with Van Cats
page 103: Painting of Noah’s ark, by Simon de Myle (fl. 1570), “Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat”; oil on panel; private collection in southern France. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Chapter 14: The Lost Ship of Noah
page 204: Photograph of Ishak Pasha Palace courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, photographer Attaliev.
page 207: Photograph of Durupınar courtesy of John Dawson, www.lakedistrictwalks.com.
Chapter 16: The Buried Book
page 246: Illustration: Reconstruction of the north-eastern facade of Sennacherib’s (681 BCE) palace (Kouyunijik). Assyrian. From Austen Layard Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, London, 1853. / Universal History Archive/UIG / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 18: The Trans-Asia Express
page 311: Photograph of the Cyrus Cylinder. ©The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.
Chapter 20: Mother of the World
page 330: Ambassador Morgenthau’s telegram courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States.
page 332: President Wilson’s letter of appeal to the American people. Photograph courtesy of the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, Indiana University.
page 333: Armenian orphans at the gates of Alexandropol. Photograph courtesy of the Near East Relief Historical Society, Near East Foundation collection, Rockefeller Archive Center.
Trip Images
Goran Jovanovic’s photographs appear on pages 135, 136, 137, 144, 153, 163, 171, 178, 180, 191 and 196. Kubi took the one on page 157, and Brent Antonson’s photograph is on page 338. The photograph on page 345 is by Photo Vage, photovage@hotmail.com. All others are from the author. Image on page 24 sourced through Taha Jabbar.
Texts
Translations of the Bible, unless otherwise indicated, are from the King James Version, reproduced in the United Kingdom with the permission of Cambridge University Press.
The following translations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™: pages 182–183, the quotation beginning “So Noah came out …,” which is from Genesis 8:18–22; page 196, the quotation beginning “Never again will the waters …,” which is from Genesis 9:15; page 211, the quotation beginning “The sons of Noah …,” which is from Genesis 9:18–19.
Translations of the Koran (Qur’an) are from The Koran, trans. N. J. Dawood, 4th rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 1974). Reproduced with permission.
Translations of the Epic of Gilgamesh are reprinted with the permission of Profile Books (UK) and of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell. Copyright © 2004 by Stephen Mitchell. All rights reserved.
page xv: Cuneiform characters courtesy of Joe McCormack at virtualsecrets.com.
page xv: Arabic text is from the Qur’an, 11:44.
page xv: Hebrew text of Genesis 8:4 is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex, provided without restriction by the J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research.
Chapter 1: The Forbidden Mountain
Epigraph, page 1: From Oliver S. Crosby, “Demavend and Ararat, 1951,” courtesy of the American Alpine Club Journal, published in 1954.
page 8: “God paid mind …” Reprinted from the Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. Copyright 1985 by the Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia.
page 14: footnote 4, quotation reproduced by permission of Douglas Todd.
Chapter 2: The Bosporus Strait
Epigraph, page 28: From Jenna Millman, Bryan Taylor, and Lauren Effron, “Evidence Noah’s Biblical Flood Happened, Says Robert Ballard,” courtesy of ABC News.
page 35: “then burst all the well-springs …” Reprinted from the Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. Copyright 1985 by the Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia.
Chapter 6: Turkish Honeycomb
page 84: Epigraph. From “Irving Finkel: Reader of the Lost Ark,” by Tom Chivers. © Telegraph Media Group Limited 2014.
page 93: Excerpt from The Ark Before Noah, by Irving Finkel, 2014, Hodder & Stoughton, London, courtesy of Hachette Books Ireland.
page 95: Excerpts from D. Longuinoff, “Ascension de l’Ararat,” published in the Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie for 1851. Extrait du “Bulletin de la Société de Géographie” (Paris), 4ème série, Tome I, 1851.
Chapter 11: Final Ascent
Epigraph, page 166: From Bryce, James. Transcaucasia and Ararat, Being Notes of a Vacation Tour in the Autumn. (Original work published 1896) Reprint. London: Forgotten Books, 2013.
page 182: “The cornea doesn’t get as much oxygen …” is quoted from Jennifer Byrne, “‘Extreme sport’ patients present specific set of visual needs,” Primary Care Optometry News, September 2003.
Chapter 12: Walking Bones
Epigraph, page 184: From H.W. Tillman, Two Mountains and a River, 1949, Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 18: The Trans-Asia Express
Epigraph, page 294: From British Museum, “The British Museum lends the Cyrus Cylinder to the National Museum of Iran,” press release, September 10, 2010. http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/press_releases/2010/cyrus_cylinder_loan.aspx.
page 311: From Neil MacGregor’s TED talk “2600 Years of History in One Object,” presented at TED2012. Quoted with the permission of TED. The transcript of the entire talk is available at https://www.ted.com/talks/neil_macgregor_2600_years_of_history_in_one_object/transcript?language=en.
pages 320–321: Excerpts from Robert S. Strother, “The Great Good Luck of Mr. Smith,” Saudi Aramco World 22.1 (1971). Courtesy of Saudi Aramco World.
Chapter 20: Mother of the World
Epigraph, page 325: The letter from Leslie Davis to Henry Morgenthau is in the public domain, as it was written as part of Davis’s official duties for the United States government. It is held in the US Department of State archives. NA/RG59/867.4016/269. United States Official Records on The Armenian Genocide 1915–1917. Compiled with an Introduction by Ara S
arafian, London, 2004, pp. 461–462.
Afterword: Begin Again
page 349: From Henry Kissinger, World Order, Penguin, 2014. Reproduced with permission of Penguin USA and Penguin UK.
INDEX
A
Abich, Herman, 120
Abovian, Khachatur, 328–329
Adventurer’s Handbook, The: Life Lessons from History’s Great Explorers (Conefrey), 99
Ahmet (guide), 94, 117–119, 123–128, 135, 192, 212, 214–218, 220–226, 228–231, 234, 268
Ahora Gorge, 159
Akdamar Island, 75, 107, 110, 111
Alexandropol, 333
Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Morgenthau), 11–12
Anatolia, 9, 124, 353
Annals of the Old Testament, Deduced from the First Origins of the World (Ussher), 15
Antonson, Brent, 25, 193, 232, 326–329, 331, 333–338, 340–343
Antonson, Janice, 25, 28, 39, 193, 231–232, 316–317, 324
Antonson, Sean, 23, 25, 193, 232, 242, 287–288, 312, 328
Apollo 15, 159, 160
Ararat (film), 148–149, 148n14
Ark. See Noah’s Ark
“Ark Tablet,” x, 89, 91–92, 93–94, 104, 353, 360, 362
Armenia, 75–76, 77, 101, 118, 118n12, 124, 162, 327, 329
Armenian Genocide, 10–12, 11n2, 148, 148n14, 325, 328–334, 331n19
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, 139
Ashurbanipal, 19, 246–249, 247n15, 323, 354
Ashurnasirpal, 349
Assyrian Discoveries (Smith), 321, 324
Atalay, Bülent, 151
Atrahasis, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 353, 361
Atrahasis Epic, 59, 90, 92–93
Away from Home (Dobbs), 49
A-Wishing Well (Frost), 347
Azerbaijan, 118n12
B
Babylon, 7n1, 18, 19, 37–38, 59, 90, 92, 93, 246, 250, 310, 321, 353, 354
Bahnsen, Pierce, 129
Ballard, Robert, 28, 37
Barbershops, 53–55
Base Camp, 143–154
Beam, Amy, 5–6, 16
Bell Jar, The (Plath), 195
Berossos, 7n1
Bible