3000-year-old Babylonian tablet reveals new details about Noah’s Ark

BAGHDAD — A 3,000-year-old Babylonian tablet known as the Imago Mundi, or the Babylonian Map of the World, led British Museum researchers to an astonishing find: a reference to a Great Flood story that parallels the Biblical account of Noah’s Ark.

This remarkable tablet, barely larger than a hand, features the oldest known map of the world.

“If you look carefully,” explains Dr. Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum in a British Museum video, “you will see that the flat surface of the clay has a double circle drawn…with cuneiform writing in it which says it’s the Bitter River.”

The tablet, currently preserved in the British Museum, dates back to the ancient Babylonian civilization of Beth Nahrin (Mesopotamia), includes a circular map, showing Mesopotamia in its center, with details about where the ship was built.

According to Dr. Finkel, the cuneiform inscriptions on the Imago Mundi’s map detail this ancient ark that legend says came to rest on a mountain known as Urartu.

In the Bible, Noah’s Ark similarly lands on Ararat, which scholars believe to be the same mountain range referred to as Urartu by the Babylonians.