The Institute for Creation Research, under the leadership of John Morris, had hoped to put a team on Mount Ararat in July and August of 1974 to continue their exploration work (see Bible and Spade, Summer 1974, pages 90–96). Because of the Cyprus situation, however, the team was unable to secure a permit to visit the highly sensitive area.
Although the ICR team did not make it, veteran arkaeologist John Warwick Montgomery was able to get on the mountain for a brief period of work in June of 1974. Dr. Montgomery, Professor of Law and Theology at the International School for Law in Washington, D.C., accomplished a significant feat in that he relocated the site where Fernand Navarra made his historic discovery many years before.
It was in 1955 that French industrialist Fernand Navarra, accompanied by his then eleven year old son Raphael, recovered a piece of hand-hewn wood, apparently of great antiquity, from a crevasse high on Mount Ararat. The find was made above Lake Kop (see map, page 127), at about the 13,600 foot level. Here is the account of Navarra’s exciting discovery in his own words:
Once on the edge of the crevasse, I lowered the equipment on a rope. Then I secured the ladder and climbed down myself, assuring Raphael I would not be long.
Passing through the corridor, I found the sloping terrace and started clearing off the snow, to uncover the dark strips I had seen the day before.
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Navarra stands at the edge of the crevasse where he recovered the wood which he believes is from Noah’s ark.
Soon the strips appeared, but — This was the worst disappointment of my life. These shapes were not wood, but frozen moraine dust! It was easy to be fooled; from a distance, the mass looked like a ship’s carcass. I cleared off the snow along another fifty yards. Everywhere it was the same.
At that moment Raphael’s voice, distorted by the echo, came to me.
“Well papa, have you cut off a piece of wood?”
“No, it isn’t wood, it’s only moraine dust.”
“Have you tried to dig in?”
In my dismay, I had not thought of it! Attacking the ice shell with my pickaxe, I could feel something hard. When I had dug a hole one and one half feet square by eight inches deep, I broke through a vaulted ceiling, and cleared off as much icy dust as possible.
There, immersed in water, I saw a black piece of wood!
My throat felt tight. I felt like crying and kneeling there to thank God. After the cruelest disappointment, the greatest joy! I checked my tears of happiness to shout to Raphael, “I’ve found wood!”
“Hurry up and come back — I’m cold,” he answered.
I tried to pull out the whole beam, but couldn’t. It must have been very long, and perhaps still attached to other parts of the ship’s framework. I could only cut along the grain until I split off a piece about five feet long. Obviously, it had been hand-hewn. The wood, once out of the water,
BSP 3:4 (Autumn 1974) p. 121
Navarra holds a piece of the wood which has been sectioned. It is seen to be both hand hewn and squared.
proved surprisingly heavy. Its density was remarkable after its long stay in the water, and the fibers had not distended as much as one might expect.
I took snapshots and movies, then carried my wooden prize to the foot of the ladder. I attached it to the rope and left it there, for I wanted to give Raphael the joy of hauling it up himself. At last I climbed up the ladder.
Back on the edge of the crevasse, I took movies of Raphael.
It was 7:00 a.m., July 6, 1955.1
Navarra led a team back to the site in 1969 and several more pieces of wood were found. Between 1969 and 1974, a number of groups and individuals have tried to return to the spot, but to no avail. Now, with Dr. Montgomery’s relocation of Navarra’s find site, important groundwork has been laid which hopefully will lead to the recovery and identification of the elusive wooden object buried in the ice there.
Dr. Montgomery has given Bible and Spade the following report of his 1974 expedition:
What was accomplished? (1) In the midst of extreme storm conditions,
BSP 3:4 (Autumn 1974) p. 122
Montgomery atop Mount Ararat in 1970.
we relocated the site where Navarra found 5,000-year-old, hand-tooled wood almost twenty years before (1955). The cave and the semi-melted ice lake beneath it remain as Navarra found them, but the “object” has evidently sunk farther down. Wet-suit exploration is now mandatory, and one of the members of our team, intrepid advance scout Robert Stuplich, has the experience necessary to do the job. University laboratories at Heidelberg and Cologne are ready to subject to the most searching analysis anything found as a result of such future investigation, (2) We were accompanied on the mountain by expert photo-journalist Brian Bastien and a crack TV documentary team (Jack Dabner of the National Association for Media Evangelism, and Hollywood 1st cameraman Frank Raymond, who shot the acclaimed film. His Land; their photographic coverage provides a record of current Ararat exploration that will soon bring a severe case of “Ark Fever” to armchair explorers across the land. (3) On the way home, we were graciously received by Fernand Navarra at his home in Bordeaux. There Navarra and I discussed the past and present state of the quest for the Ark, and this dialogue-interview was filmed for English dubbing and incorporation into the projected documentary on the Ark’s survival.
The future task? To find more of Navarra’s wood; to identify the site of the “unidentified object” whose photograph accompanies my essay “Arkeology 1971” (The Quest for Noah’s Ark, 2d ed., Pyramid Books, 1974); to search out the exact spot on Ararat where the anomaly appears in the ERTS satellite imagery. In the latter connection, Dr. John M. Miller,
BSP 3:4 (Autumn 1974) p. 123
a remote sensing specialist from Fairbanks, Alaska, is now engaged in the digital analysis of this imagery. Referring to a more recent (July 1973) ERTS image of Ararat, he tantalizingly wrote to me on September 3, 1974: “There is another spot that could be of greater significance as a potential anomalous area. It is the somewhat circular, light-blue region in the northwest quadrant of the snow field. Such a light blue-gray color tone compared with more pure white surroundings frequently is indicative of melting or less thick ice (or snow). This is an effect that imbedded, dark colored wood might have in the summer upon the ice that surrounds it. While the discolored area is much too large for the Ark itself, there is the possibility that it no longer is intact. If the wood is broken, deteriorated, and scattered a bit, it might have an effect over an area much larger than its original dimensions.”
Political conditions, however, continue to worsen. U.S.-Turkish relations have been severely strained over Cyprus, and it is anyone’s guess as to the immediate future of the quest for the Ark. But one day Ararat will yield up her secret, and I for one have little doubt that it will be still another vindication of the ways of God to man.
The TV documentary on Noah’s Ark mentioned by Dr. Montgomery is being made available for showings on local stations. Readers desiring further information should contact the National Association for Media Evangelism, P.O. Box 1553, Hollywood, California 90028.