3,800-year-old blueprint reveals that Noah’s Ark was round

THE story of how the animals climbed aboard Noah’s Ark “two-by-two” has captivated children for hundreds of years.

Workers reconstruct the ark for a Channel 4 documentary based on Dr Finkel's research [CHANNEL 4]

But now an expert who has spent the past five years translating an ancient tablet on which instructions for building the vessel were inscribed has debunked the story as a myth.

It is commonly assumed that Noah’s Ark was a rectangular wooden ship that saved him and the animals from a tsunami.

But Dr Irving Finkel of the British Museum claims it was a round, doughnut-shaped vessel with a skyscraper-shaped cabin for the animals, which was about two-thirds the size of a football pitch.

With these dimensions it would have been highly unlikely to have floated.

Dr Finkel, whose book The Ark Before Noah is out next week, said he was confident the vessel supposedly housing two of all the world’s animals, was a myth. “I’m 107 per cent certain it didn’t exist,” he said.

“The purpose of deciphering this tablet was to show that people from antiquity were really like us.

“The flood in this story was inflicted by man because he was annoying and noisy.

“The gods decided Man lived under the heavens and must be obliterated. It demonstrates the frailty of human existence.

“It’s likely there was a previous tsunami and people survived on boats. The idea of a boat as a survival tool’s obvious.” Dr Finkel said the tablet, which dates back to 1850BC, was brought in several years ago by a member of the public whose father had acquired it when he was stationed in the Middle East during the Second World War.

No one had any idea what it was, however, until the inscription was deciphered. “It is undoubtedly one of the most important human documents ever discovered,” Dr Finkel explained.

The inscription on the palm-sized clay tablet is believed to be genuine and provides accurate dimensions for constructing the doughnut-shaped ark. If built it would be 18ft high with an area of 4,300 square yards. The inch-think rope used in its construction would stretch 340 miles.

Legend has it the instructions were sent to Noah from a committee of gods angry at man

Legend has it the instructions were sent to Noah from a committee of gods angry at man. The story is said to have been made up by a member of the intelligentsia living in King Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian empire.

It was then told to families living in fishing villages and passed down through the centuries as an example of man’s frailty. Just like today’s ­not-so-easy-to-understand instructions for assembling flat-pack furniture, one side of the tablet details what Noah needed to build the ark as well as technical specifications.

It was to be made from wood and kept waterproof by a coating of bitumen. On the reverse, in Babylonian text, is an inscription telling Noah the animals would go in “two-by-two”.

Dr Finkel’s claim is at odds with the Book of Genesis which describes how Noah saves himself, his family and animals on the eve of a catastrophic flood. However, the tablet was written 1,000 years before the Bible story. Although some religions embrace the story of the ark as canonical, most experts agree Noah’s Ark is apocryphal.

For a start there is no reference to how collecting, housing, watering, feeding and caring for hundreds of animals aboard a wooden ship was achieved. There is also no clue as to how the animals managed to travel or where they were going.

For decades it was thought the ark could be buried somewhere on Mount Ararat in Turkey but extensive archeological excavations have proved fruitless.