Utnapishtim vs. Noah: War of the Ships (Part 3)

By Stephen Mitchell

If Noah’s ship was not copied from Utnapishtim’s ship, then we have to ask, from where did these supposed Jewish myth makers get their boat pattern?

Some commentators have looked for significance in the dimensions of the Ark, seeing importance in them as multiples of 60 and 10, like the patriarchal ages, or the length times width being three times the area of the tabernacle courtyard (Wenham, 173). However, Hong, et al, also considered 12 other hull forms of barge-type in their study “by varying principal dimensions while keeping the displaced volume constant.” They considered eight seakeeping behaviors for all thirteen hull forms, concluding that the Ark “had the second best hull design, with the best hull design in this case being hull #1, which had the worst overturning stability” (https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/safety-investigation-of-noahs-ark-in-a-seaway) Thus, believing that the dimensions of the Ark were simply plucked out of the air to match some other significant supposed numerology but accidentally landing on the ideal hull form for a barge-type craft designed to ride out a major flood requires some major credulity on the part of the skeptic.

Could the Jews have simply copied ship dimensions from contemporary sea-going craft? The Ark had a beam to length ratio of 1:6 and a beam to depth ratio of 1:0.667 with three decks and a roof.

The reconstructed “solar barge” of Khufu.

The oldest fully preserved ship known was discovered in a pit near the Great Pyramid. It is 143′ long by 19.5′ wide giving it a beam ratio of 1:7.33, and is from the time of the Great Pyramid about the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C. Though it is called a “barge,” it did have paddles and was thus not a true barge. However it was most likely towed by another ship in moving on the Nile (Greenhill and Morrison, 131-132). The barge used to transport Hatshepsut’s obelisk had a beam to length ratio of about 1:3. For both barges everything was carried on the deck. These certainly do not resemble the Ark with its three decks and both Egyptian barges were designed with narrow bow and stern to move smoothly through the water, unlike the Ark which merely had to be stable in water with no means or provision for propulsion.

About the time of the Jew’s return from Babylon, roughly 500 B.C., the penteconter, a 50-oared ship-of-the-line, was the predominant warship used. It was also used as a merchantman. Its beam to length ratio was about 1:7 and was designed to cut through the water quickly. Merchantmen were also plying the waters with a single deck and hold below, again with narrowed hulls at the bow and stern. Multiple decked craft were not used at this time nor were barges with multiple decks known.

“The freighters that brought grain to Athens or were the standard carriers for overseas transport of wine and oil were … capable of holding 100 to 150 tons on the average, while vessels capable of hauling 250 or more were not uncommon. (What the dimensions of the last were is anybody’s guess; the smaller American coastal packets of the first half of the nineteenth century, which had a carrying capacity in the neighborhood of 250 tons, ran 80 to 85 feet long, 23 to 25 feet wide, and 11 to 12 feet deep in the hold.) … The ordinary workhorse freighter of the Mediterranean was not so large …: it probably carried about 80 tons or so on average; it tramped leisurely from port to port, picking up and delivering any and every sort of cargo; and it took its chances on wind, weather, and pirates” (Casson, 114).

There were no ships or barges similar in shape, definitely not in size, nor in purpose to the Ark for the Jews to draw upon for a more reasonable alternative to Utnapishtim’s cube. The Ark’s carrying capacity was about 21,000 tonnes, far exceeding anything on the waters of their day (Snelling, 36). All-in-all, there does not seem to be any way for the Jews to have come up with such a craft, unless, of course, they were relating details of an actual craft designed for the purpose for which the Jews recorded it. Certainly the Ark’s beam to length ratio of 1:6 is appropriate for a barge and similar to but different from those ships designed to make their way through the water.

Noah’s ship could not have been copied from Utnapishtim’s, nor from water craft of their era. So the claim that the Jews simply copied from the Babylonian flood account, making a few alterations for their own purposes, is an unreasonable claim. Then from where did their account come?

There is one interesting detail in the Gilgamesh Epic that I mentioned in the first post: that of Utnapishtim building a frame first for his ship and then fastening on the planking. No early ships or boats were made this way. It was not until around 1,000 A.D. that we begin to see this method of shipbuilding. All known ancient shipbuilding was done by fastening planks together up to a certain point and then inserting framing for stiffening. This method of shipbuilding is called ‘shell construction.’ “[T]he vessels of classical Greece and Rome and their Bronze Age predecessors back to the fourteenth century BC at least were smooth skinned edge-joined shell-built structures with inserted frames” (Greenhill and Morrison, 50). However, from modern shipbuilding techniques, we know that ships as large as Noah’s must be built using frame, or ‘skeleton,’ construction. Though Utnapishtim’s ship is untenable as a water craft, yet it would have had to have been built using skeleton construction, as would have Noah’s craft. This detail seems to be an echo from an actual event, the building of a very large ship in antiquity.

It would be more reasonable to accept the account in Genesis as original and the Gilgamesh Epic as a faint echo of Genesis modified through much retelling but with some of the details retaining their accuracy. And we could conclude this, if Genesis were actually much older than the fifth or sixth century B.C.

That will be a discussion for a later post.

Bibliography

Lionel Casson, The Ancient Mariners (Princeton, New jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991)

Basil Greenhill with John Morrison, The Archaeology of Boats and Ships: An Introduction (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1995)

S. W. Hong, et al, Safety Investigation of Noah’s Ark in a Seaway (https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/safety-investigation-of-noahs-ark-in-a-seaway). Accessed 9/22/2015.

Andrew A. Snelling, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, vol. 1 (Dallas, Texas: Institute for Creation Research, 2009)

Gordon J. Wenham, Word Biblical Commentary: Genesis 1-15 (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1987)