The Case for Ağrı Daği/Masis as Biblical Mt. Ararat

There are some scholars believe that the Akkadian cognate for Ararat, itself, may mean “mountains,” which would heighten the emphasis on mountainous characteristic of these particular mountains-perhaps suggestive of their dramatic appearance and height.

It is interesting that a similar interpretation (of mountain range) was made for Mt. Māšu/ Masis in the Gilgamesh Epic by Hildegard and Julius Lewy. They take as a plural rather that dual (twin) and thus translate Tablet IX line 38 as the Māšu mountain range. Most scholars understand this not to be mountains plural, but twin mountains or the two peaks of Mt. Ararat (see George, Andrew R., trans. & edit. (1999), The Epic of Gilgamesh (reprinted with corrections 2003 ed., Penguin Books, p.71.).

C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, The Pentateuch, Vol. 1, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans (1973) p. 148.

Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, (1990) p. 301. (Claus Westermann attributes the reading of the distributive plural in Genesis 8:4 to the tendency of interpreters and commentators through the centuries of wanting to name or identify a particular mountain as the place where the ark landed, Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11, Minneapolis: Fortress (1994), p. 443.

E.g. E.A. Speiser, Genesis, Doubleday, NY: Anchor, (1964) p. 55. J. Doukhan, Genesis: SDA International Bible Commentary, Pacific Press (2016), p. 152.

Ibid. For additional support Hamilton cites M. Greenberg (Ezekiel 1-20, p. 68) on Ezek. 3:6 as an illustration: “not to [one of] many peoples . . .” versus “not too many peoples” (RSV).

For various candidates for Mt. Ararat see Lloyd R. Bailey, Noah: The Person and the Story in History and Tradition, University of South Carolina Press: Columbia: South Carolina (1989), pp. 53-81.

Mt. Judi, sometimes called Qardu [from the Aramaic], is a peak near the town of Jazirat ibn Umar (modern Cizre), at the headwaters of the Tigris, near the modern Syrian–Turkish border. According to the 18th century English scholar George Sale, “This mountain [al- Judi] is one of those that divide Armenia on the south, from Mesopotamia, and that part of Assyria which is inhabited by the Curds, from whom the mountains took the name Cardu, or Gardu, by the Greeks turned into Gordyae, and other names. ... Mount Al-Judi (which seems to be a corruption, though it be constantly so written by the Arabs, for Jordi, or Giordi) is also called Thamanin ..., probably from a town at the foot of it” The Koran, translated into English, with explanatory notes from the most approved commentators, (1734). Mt. Djudi/Judi appears as al-Ǧūdiyy ( ٱلْجُوْدِيّ , Arabic), Cûdî, (Kurdish): Cudi (Turkish), also known as Qardū ( קרדו , Aramaic), (Classical Syriac).

For example, see Lloyd R, Bailey op.cit., Bill Crouse, Gordan Franz, “Mt. Cudi-True Mountain of Noah’s Ark,” Bible and Spade 19:4 (2006), pp. 99-111; Hamlet Petrosyan, “The Sacred Mountain,” in Levon Abrahamian and Nancy Sweezy (eds.) Armenian Folk Arts, Culture and Identity Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, (2001), p. 33-39; Arnen Petrosyan, Biblical Mt.. Ararat: Two

Identifications, Comparative Mythology, December 2016, Volume 2, Issue 1, pp. 68- 71.

Babyloniaca, was a history of Babylon written by Berossus for the Greeks, who were fond of origin or ktisis stories. The original work of Berossus is lost but quotes of it survived in works by Alexander Polyhistor and (later) Josephus and Eusebius.

Atraḫasīs means “exceedingly wise;” Utnapishtim means, “he who saw life.”

See Richard D. Lanser Jr., An Armenian Perspective on the Search for Noah’s Ark, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Near East Archaeological Society, November 14-16, 2007, San Diego, California.

According to Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare, “The Syrians of the east Tigris had floating among them, independently of the Jewish legend, a native story of a flood and of an ark which rested on the Djudi mountain in the land of Kardu. Under the influence of this Syrian form of the legend, especially in the second and later centuries, Armenia and Ararat, Djudi and the land of Kardu (i. e., Gordyene), were all confused together . . . ,” in “Reviewed Work: Ararat und Masis. Studien zur armenischen Altertumskunde und Litteratur by Friedrich Murad,” The American Journal of Theology, (April 1901), p. 336. Similarly, August Dillman, in his Genesis commentary (1892: 147) suggests that “this late Jewish exegesis arose by their interpreting the biblical Ararat as the land of Kardu; and the specific Mount Cudi location was the result of familiarity with the Babylonian flood epic, which, according to the version transmitted by Berossus, places the landing site of its hero Xisuthros explicitly into the region of Kardu.” See also, J. P. Lewis, Noah and the Flood: In Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Tradition, The Biblical Archaeologist, (December, 1984).

According to the Qur’an, 11:44, “Then the word went forth: “O earth! swallow up thy water, and O sky! Withhold (thy rain)!” and the water abated, and the matter was ended. The Ark rested on Mount Judi, and the word went forth: “Away with those who do wrong!” For a convenient translation see online https://quran.com/11/44.

See Bill Crouse and Gordon Franz, “Mt. Cudi, True Mountain of Noah’s Ark,” Bible and Spade 19.4 (2006), pp. 99-111.

See Armen Petrosyan, Biblical Mt. Ararat: Two Identifications, Comparative Mythology, December 2016, Volume 2, Issue 1, p. 73 and references there.

Movses. Khorenaci, The History of Armenia, Yerevan, 1981, p. 50-51.

In his History of Armenia, Movses. Khorenaci derives the name from king Amasia, the great-grandson of the Armenian patriarch Hayk, who is said to have called the mountain Masis after his own name.

See A. Petrosyan, E. Lipinski, and W. Horowitz. There are many reasons given for equating Masis with Māšu: (1) the names sound and are spelled similarly-see E. Lipinski, and W. Horowitz and A. Petrosyan who writes, “In the Assyrian version of the Akkadian language, Māšu sounded Māsu.”;

both mountains have similar traditionsagain, according to A. Petrosyan, p. 72, “In Armenian folklore, Masis is referred to as “the Black mountain” and “the Dark land”, which could obviously be put in parallel with Gilgameš’s journey in darkness after reaching Mt.. Māšu and “the mountain / land of the dark” in other ancient Semitic sources. Also, both mountains have a tradition of being associated with the sun; and both are cosmic or “world mountains” that reach the heavens and the underworld below. (3) linguistic arguments (see A. Petrosyan); (4) both mountains have a connection with the idea of “twin” which obviously evokes the two distinctive peaks of Masis. In early Akkadian glyptic art, several cylinder seals dating toca. 2200 B.C. have been found that show a double peaked mountain-often with one peak higher than the other-with the sun god Shamash emerging between the peaks. These cylinder seals are almost universally thought to be depicting the Akkadian Mt. Māšu.

Tilgay p. 216. Unfortunately, the Atraḫasīs Flood story is damaged and that section where the reference to Māšu might be expected to appear is missing.

2 Kings 19:37: And it came about as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son became king in his place; Jeremiah 51:27: Lift up a signal in the land, Blow a trumpet among the nations! Consecrate the nations against her, Summon against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz; Appoint a marshal against her, Bring up the horses like bristly locusts.

In addition to being a cognate with the Hebrew Ararat, it appears in Akkadian as Urashtu, and in Armenian as Ayrarat. See David Marshall Lang, Armenia: Cradle of Civilization. London: Allen and Unwin, 1970, p. 114; and Anna Elizabeth Redgate, The Armenians. Cornwall: Blackwell, 1998, pp. 16–19, 23, 25, 26 (map), 30–32, 38, 43.

Mack Chahin, The Kingdom of Armenia: A History, Routledge Curzon: Abingdon, Oxon, (second revised edition, 2001), p. 54.

Some of these peaks include Suphan Dagi (4058 m), Tendurek Dagi (3584 m), Pirrisit Dagi (3109 m), Kucukagri (3896 m), Agri Dagi (5165 m), Hudavendiger Dagi (3421 m).

Archibald H. Sayce suggested that as early as the sixteenth or seventeenth century BC, the Babylonians knew of the Armenian highlands as Urdhu (probably the contracted for of Urardhu). A. H. Sayce, “The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Studies, (1882), p. 412. This idea has been repeated by Chahin, p. 53.

Abram Rigg Jr., Horace, “A Note on the Names Armânum and Urartu”. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 57/4 (Dec., 1937), pp. 416–418; Zimansky, Paul E. Ancient Ararat: A Handbook of Urartian Studies. Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1998, p. 28.

Grayson, A. K. Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, Locust Valley, New York: J. J. Augustin (1975).

For example, see Chahin p. 55, refers to Nairi as meaning “Riverlands.”

See Paul Zimansky, Ecology and Empire p. 49.

Zimansky, Ecology and Empire, p. 49

Paul Zimansky, “Urartian Material Culture as State Assemblage: An Anomaly in the Archaeology of Empire,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, (1995), p. 103-105 of 103-115.

Mack Chahin, The Kingdom of Armenia: A History, Routledge Curzon: Abingdon, Oxon, (second revised edition 2001).

Zimansky, Ecology and Empire, p. 50.

See H.F. Russell, Shalmaneser’s Campaign to Urarṭu in 856 B.C. and the Historical Geography of Eastern Anatolia according to the Assyrian Sources, Anatolian Studies, 34,(1984), 171-201.

According to Russell: “If Dayaeni is in the area occupied by the Diauehe, all the essential conditions for its location in the Assyrian evidence are met: the Diauehe occupied land near possible sources of the Euphrates, close to Urartu,” p. 187. Russell places Dayaeni north-west of Urartu on his map.

The Assyrians seem have continued to refer to Nairi as a distinct entity for decades after the establishment of Urartu, until Nairi was totally absorbed by Urartu (with some southern parts taken over by Assyria) in the 8th century BCE. See Paul Zimansky. Ecology and Empire: The Structure of the Urartian State. pp. 49-50.

Chahin, p. 54, 55.

Chahin, p. 54.

Mt. Niṣir/Nimush is, of course, mentioned explicitly in the Gilgamesh Epic as the mountain where Utnapishtim’s ark landed. While some identity this mountain with Pir Omar Gudrun in northern Iraq, some scholars believe the name is a secret or hidden name and not the actual name of the physical mountain upon which the ark landed.

See Chahin p. 54.

See Davies, G.I., “Introduction to the Pentateuch”, pp. 19, 20 in Barton, John; Muddiman, John (eds.). The Oxford Bible Commentary. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Examples of such scholars and their studies include I. M. Kikawada, “Literary Convention of the Primaeval History,” Annual of Japanese Biblical Literature 1 (1975) 3-21; Kenneth A. Kitchen, The Bible and Its World (Execter: Paternoster, 1977) p. 31; G. Wenham, “The Coherence of the Flood Narrative,” Vetus Testamentum 28: 336-48; William Shea, “A Comparison of Narrative Elements in Ancient Mesopotamian Creation- Flood Stories with Genesis 1–9,” Origins 11 (1984): 9–29;

David Toshio Tsumura, “Genesis and Ancient Near Easter Stories,” in Richard S. Hess and David Toshio Tsumura eds., I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns: Winoa Lake, Indiana (1994) pp. 27-57; Gary A. Rendsburg, “The Biblical Flood Story in the Light of the Gilgameš Flood Account,” in Joseph Azize and Noel Weeks, eds., Gilgameš and the World of Assyria, (eds. Joseph Azize and Noel Weeks), Proceedings of the Conference held at Mandelbaum House, The University of Sydney, 21-23 July 2004, Leuven: Peeters (2007), pp. 115-127.

See especially Shea, above, n. 20; Duane Garrett, Rethinking Genesis: The Sources and Authorship of the First Book of the Pentateuch, (Baker: Grand Rapids, MI), 1991) pp. 185-187; Kenneth A. Kitchen On the Reliability of the Old Testament, (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI) 2003, p. 426, 427; the studies by Wenham, Rendsburg (note 1 above) and Jared Pfost, “A Literary Analysis of the Flood Story as a Semitic Type-Scene.” Studia Antiqua 13, no. 1 (2014).

See Rendsburg above, n. 20

So Rendsburg and Pfost (notes 1 and 2 above).

Jared Pfost, p. 6.

According to Tigay, “various considerations arising form the study of Akkadian literature as a whole have led scholars to the conclusion that the late, standardized versions of most Akkadian literary texts, including The Gilgamesh Epic, were produced during the last half or quarter of the second millennium. As a rough approximation of the date, 1250 is sometimes given, but it should be kept in mind that the date is conjectural,” p. 131.

See W. G. Lambert, “A New Look at the Babylonian Background of Genesis,” pp. 96- 113 in I studies Inscriptions from Before the Flood, (Richard S. Hess and David Toshio Tsumura eds), Eisenbrauns: Winona Lake, Indiana, 1994) p. 108.

Kenneth A. Kitchen p. 426-427.

See above, n. 38.

William G. Lambert and Alan R. Millard, Atraḫasīs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood, (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1969), p. 14.

George, Andrew R., trans. & edit. (1999), The Epic of Gilgamesh (reprinted with corrections 2003 ed.), Penguin Books, page 101.

Andrew George, pages xxiv–xxv. The most complete version of the Standard Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh Epic is a 7th century copy found in Nineveh at the library of Ashurbanipal.

See Tigay 1982, pp. 123-29, 185-86; George 2003, pp. 339-47.

Lambert and Millard 1969, pp. 131-33. George, pp. 139-40.

Kitchen and Rendsburg p. 122, (although Rendsburg prefers a composition of the Hebrew story in the early Iron Age).

William Shea, “A Comparison of Narrative Elements in Ancient Mesopotamian Creation- Flood Stories with

Genesis 1–9,” Origins 11 (1984): 9–29. Shea

is followed by Kitchen (op.cit. n.21, p. 422-

424).

Kenneth A. Kitchen, The Bible in Its World: The Bible and Archaeology Today International Varsity Press:Downer’s Grove,

Ill, (1977), p.35.

For a convenient summary of the history of the Kingdom of Urartu see Oktay Belli

Pfost, p. 6.

Ibid.