Noah's Ark was a basket

Coracle.png
By Nile and Tigris Journeys in Egypt and Mesopotamia on behalf of the British Museum between the years 1886 and 1913 (1920), showing coracles, or circular boats woven from reeds and sealed with pitch. Wikimedia, public domain.

The other day I watched a Nova program, Secrets of Noah’s Ark. Not much wholly new, and not a whole lot of secrets, but if you watch the program, you will learn of cuneiform inscriptions that describe how the gods precipitate a universal flood, Atrahasis builds an “ark” in the form of a circular basket 220 ft in diameter (70 m for those with better taste), and life begins again, precisely as in the Noah story. Or perhaps it is the other way around: the Jews during the Babylonian captivity took the story of Atrahasis and embellished it by making it a sort of morality play.

At any rate, if you watch the video, you will find that the Ark was more than likely a round, woven boat, known as a coracle, as in the picture above. Such boats are woven from reed ropes and sealed with pitch; they have been used for several millennia. The attempt to manufacture a coracle on a large scale was also interesting, even though it ended in only partial success.

Noah’s Ark is said to have been a rectangular box (Genesis 6:15). Doubtful. More than likely, the Ark was a coracle. It was not, at any rate, shaped the least bit like a certain model being built in Kentucky right now.