PHOTO: Noah’s Ark. One Islam Productions
Scientists have decoded the world’s oldest map, a 3,000-year-old Babylonian clay tablet called the Imago Mundi, which may reveal the location of “Noah’s Ark.” The tablet, inscribed with cuneiform symbols, provides a circular diagram that depicts the early world. Researchers at the British Museum have analyzed the back of the tablet, where descriptions direct a journey through a series of locations to reach “Urartu,” identified as a Mesopotamian version of Mount Ararat. This is believed to be where an ark once landed, preserving life after a great flood.
The Imago Mundi, also called the Babylonian Map of the World, was discovered in 1882 by renowned archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam in Sippar, an ancient Babylonian city in what is now present-day Iraq
Dr. Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum, notes that the map’s descriptions align with an Assyrian myth resembling the Biblical flood story. Discovered in 1882 in Iraq, the Imago Mundi shows Mesopotamia at its center, encircled by a “bitter river.” The map’s reference to a parsiktu-vessel, similar to measurements of a boat in Babylonian legend, provides further evidence of an ark-like vessel, echoing similar flood myths from the region.
The back of the tablet provides instructions on how to read the map. One passages tells the traveler to pass through the sea and they will come to ‘Urartu’ where an ancient Mesopotamian poem claims a man and his family landed an ark to preserve life
The location is the Assyrian equivalent to ‘Ararat,’ the Hebrew word for the mountain Noah crashed the Biblical vessel that was constructed for the same purpose
SOURCE: THE DAILY MAIL