Rebuilding Noah’s Ark Following 4,000-Year-Old Instructions

The 4,000 year old clay tablet containing the story of the Ark and the flood stands on display at the British Museum in London during the launch of the book 'The Ark Before Noah' by Irving Finkel, curator in charge of cuneiform clay tablets at the British Museum, Friday, Jan. 24, 2014. The book tells how he decoded the story of the Flood and offers a new understanding of the Old Testament's central narratives and how the flood story entered into it. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Following newly discovered, detailed instructions written on a 4,000-year-old Babylonian tablet, a team is rebuilding Noah’s Ark. 

The instructions were written more than 1,000 years before the account of the Ark was recorded in Genesis.

The Babylonian story, and its correlations with the Biblical account, had been known since the 19th century—but British Museum curator Dr. Irving Finkel recently deciphered a tablet much older than any other accounts previously found.

Douglas Simmonds had approached Finkel at the museum with a tablet given to him by his father. Simmonds’s father had picked up some artifacts from Egypt and China after the war in the late 1940s. Finkel was amazed to find such detailed instructions for building a massive Ark to sustain a great flood.

The most unique feature is that it is the first archaeological evidence suggesting a round Ark. 

A documentary will air on Channel 4 in the UK later this year showing the process of rebuilding this round Ark. The work has already begun, as reported by the Telegraph. 

In 2012, Johan Huibers build a full-scale Ark replica in the Netherlands, but that one wasn’t round, as he didn’t have the newly discovered instructions to work from. 

Johan Huibers poses for a portrait in front of the full scale replica of Noah’s Ark in Dordrecht, Netherlands, Monday Dec. 10, 2012. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

SEE ALSO: Noah’s Ark Blueprints Found—4,000-Year-Old Detailed Instructions