George Hagopian has first hand knowledge of the ark. As a young child, he walked along the Ark's planks with his uncle. The following excerpt is from Charles Berlitz, The Lost Ship of Noah , which details the fascinating story.
"He was eight years old, Hagopian said, and it was in the year 1908 [note: another account says the year was 1905 and Hagopian was 10 years old] when his uncle took him up Ararat, past Ahora Gorge, passing the grave of St. Jacob on the way. As the mountain grew more precipitous his uncle carried him on his shoulders until they came to something that looked like a great ship located on a rock ledge over a cliff and partially covered by snow. It had flat openings like windows along the top and a hole in the roof. Hagopian had first thought it was a house made of stone but when his uncle showed him the outline of planks and told him it was made of wood he realized it was the Ark, just like the other people had described it to him. His uncle boosted him up from a rock pile to reach the Ark roof telling him not to be afraid, "because it is a holy ship ..." (and) "the animals and people are not here now. They have all gone away." Hagopian climbed on the roof and knelt down and kissed the surface of the roof which was flat and easy to stand on.
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Lieutenant Roskovitsky
In the summer of 1916, during the thaw, Lieutenant Roskovitsky of the Russian Imperial Air Force noticed a half-frozen lake on the shelf or gully on the side of Mount Ararat while flying high-altitude test to observe Turkish troop movements. As they flew nearer to the lake, he saw a half submerged hull of some sort of ship. He noticed two stubby masts and a flat catwalk along the top.
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From the New Eden Magazine, California, 1939): "We flew down as close as safety permitted and took several circles around it. We were surprised when we got close to it, at the immense size of the thing, for it was as long as a city block, and would compare very favorably in size to the modern battleships of today. It was grounded on the shore of the lake, with one-fourth underwater. It had been partly dismantled on one side near the front, and on the other side there was a great doorway nearly twenty feet square, but with the other door gone. This seemed quite out of proportion, as even today, ships seldom have doors even half that large ...."
He then told his captain who wanted to be flown over the site. The captain stated that it was Noah's Ark and explained the reason for its survival as "frozen up for nine of ten months of the year, it couldn't rot, and has been in cold storage, as it were, all this time .... "
The captain forwarded a report back to St. Petersburg resulting in orders from the Tsar to send two engineering companies up the mountain. One group of fifty men attacked one side, and the other group of one hundred men attacked the big mountain from the other side. Two weeks of hard work were required to chop out a trail along the cliffs of the lower part of the mountain, and it was nearly a month before the Ark was reached. Complete measurements were taken, and plans drawn of it, as well as many photographs, all of which were sent to the Tsar.
From the magazine article: "The Ark was found to contain hundreds of small rooms, and some rooms that were very large, with high ceilings. The unusually large rooms had a fence of great timbers across them, some of which were two feet thick, as if designed to hold beasts ten times the size of elephants. Other rooms were also lined with tiers of cages, somewhat like what one sees today at a poultry show, only instead of chicken wire, they had rows of small iron bars along the front. Everything was heavily painted with a waxlike paint resembling shellac, and the workmanship of the craft showed all the signs of a high type of civilization. The wood used throughout was oleander, which belongs to the cypress family and never rots; which of course, coupled with the fact of its being frozen most of the time, accounted for its perfect preservation."
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Captain Schwinghammer
In late spring or summer of 1960, pilot from the 428th Tactical Flight Squadron based in Adana, Turkey were on routine observation flights.
Captain Gregor Schwinghammer and another pilot had flown around Mount Ararat with a Turkish liaison officer when they saw "an enormous boxcar or rectangular barge visible in a gully high on the mountain." He states that "... the Ark we saw was about 4000 feet from the top (13000 feet altitude) on the southeast slope, perhaps four o'clock from due north."
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Wyatt/Fasold
In 1959, the Turkish Air Force was conducting an aerial survey of the Ararat region. Seventeen miles south of Mount Ararat's peak, on the lower slopes (6300 feet), a photograph was taken by Lieutenant A. Kurtis revealing the outline of a ship. Its dimensions were later found to be 500 by 150 feet and its protruding height, 45 feet. (Biblical dimensions are 450 by 75 feet and 45 feet in height.)
In 1960, dynamite charges were placed on the wall of the Buried Ark and exploded by the Turkish army. No inner chambers or clear evidence of beams were discovered. Bits of decayed wood were found in the remaining debris.
In 1984, Ron Wyatt smuggled 8.6 pounds of stones, sand and earth from the Buried Ark to New York for exhibition. The Turkish government was outraged over his lack of consideration for their national customs and regulations. This incident interrupted other expeditions on the mountain.
In 1985, Wyatt returned with David Fasold and CAT scanned the Buried Ark. They found traceable lines of iron which crisscrossed the mound at equal intervals. Ron Wyatt was immediately convinced that the Ark had been found.
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Dr. Arslan says, "I believe enough people have seen it (the Ark) within the last fifty or sixty years to establish the truth of the legend. It will probably be found right where it is supposed to be - between 14,000 and 15,000 feet up, following the right-hand side of Ahora Gorge right up to the front of Parrot Glacier. There is a huge flat plateau there, as big as a football field, a hundred yards deep in ice. This is where, during melting periods, the Ark has been seen and pieces of it have been taken away, and this is where the remains of the Ark will be found."
http://www.arkdiscovery.com/317nark.jpg
