Facts: Noah' s Ark is exactly where the Bible said it was..( Genesis 8 v 4). The Mountains of Ararat are on the Turkey/ Russia border.
I concur .. but I'm not sure it was called Ararat at the point of Authoring (1446-1406 bce) the Hebrew says 'rrt (no vowels) which could also be Uraratu .. the name of the Empire/country which Ararat was located .. nonetheless, I think that is exactly where it is ..
Marco Polo's Account:
The information for this section has been taken from the book, Marco Polo The Travels, Ronald Latham has translated the story from the Italian version. Marco Polo was born 1254 the son of a Venetian merchant. Marco joined his father on a journey to China in 1271. They spent the next twenty years traveling in the service of Kubilai Khan. Marco was a prisoner of war in Genoa in 1289 - 1290 and met Rustichello of Pisa. Together they wrote The Travels; a product of an observant merchant and a professional romancer. Marco Polo died in 1324 and left his inheritance to his three daughters. Here is a quote from his book with regard to Noah's Ark:
"In the heart of Greater Armenia is a very high mountain , shaped like a cube (or cup), on which Noah's ark is said to have rested, whence it is called the Mountain of Noah's Ark. It [the mountain] is so broad and long that it takes more than two days to go around it. On the summit the snow lies so deep all the year round that no one can ever climb it; this snow never entirely melts, but new snow is for ever falling on the old, so that the level rises."
Record of Josephus:
5. After this,
the ark rested on the top of a certain mountain in Armenia; which, when Noah understood, he opened it; and seeing a small piece of land about it, he continued quiet, and conceived some cheerful hopes of deliverance. But a few days afterward, when the water was decreased to a greater degree, he sent out a raven, as desirous to learn whether any other part of the earth were left dry by the water, and whether he might go out of the ark with safety; but the raven, finding all the land still overflowed, returned to Noah again. And after seven days he sent out a dove, to know the state of the ground; which came back to him covered with mud, and bringing an olive branch: hereby Noah learned that the earth was become clear of the flood. So after he had staid seven more days, he sent the living creatures out of the ark; and both he and his family went out, when he also sacrificed to God, and feasted with his companions.
However, the Armenians call this place, (GREEK) The Place of Descent; for the ark being saved in that place, its remains are shown there by the inhabitants to this day.
6.
Now all the writers of barbarian histories make mention of this flood, and of this ark; among whom is Berosus the Chaldean. For when he is describing the circumstances of the flood, he goes on thus:
"It is said there is still some part of this ship in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyaeans; and that some people carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they take away, and use chiefly as amulets for the averting of mischiefs." Hieronymus the Egyptian also, who wrote the Phoenician Antiquities, and Mnaseas, and a great many more, make mention of the same. Nay, Nicolaus of Damascus, in his ninety-sixth book, hath a particular relation about them; where he speaks thus: "There is a great mountain in Armenia, over Minyas, called Baris, upon which it is reported that many who fled at the time of the Deluge were saved; and that one who was carried in an ark came on shore upon the top of it; and that the remains of the timber were a great while preserved. This might be the man about whom Moses the legislator of the Jews wrote." Antiquities, Book I.
note: the Cordyaeans or Cordya or Kords are the Kurds of today ..
Lieutenant Roskovitsky, Russian Aviator's Account of the Ark on Ararat:
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. The following excerpts were taken from Berlitz.In Roskovitsky's words (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. "The investigation officers sent photographs and reports by courier back to Petrograd, to the personal attention of the Tsar. But Nicholas II apparently never received them during the breakdown of communications that followed the February and October Revolutions of 1917. The results of the investigation have never been found or reported.. A rumor says the results and pictures of the Ark came to the attention of Leon Trotsky, who either destroyed them or placed them in a file destined to be kept permanently secret. And the courier who delivered the news, his silence was sealed with his execution.
George Hagopian:
George Hagopian has first hand knowledge of the ark. As a young child, he walked along the Ark's planks with his uncle. Artist, Elfred Lee, drew this picture of the Ark as directed by George Hagopian. 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.
While they stood alongside the Ark his uncle shot into the side of it but the bullets bounced off as if it were made of stone. He then tried to cut off a piece of the wood with a sharp knife and was equally unsuccessful. On this first visit to the Ark they spent two hours there looking at it and eating some of their provisions. When Hagopian returned to his village eager to tell the other boys about his adventure they replied, rather anticlimactically, "Yes, we saw the Ark too."
Hagopian died in 1972. Since he was unable to read maps with any accuracy he was unable to pinpoint on a map of the mountain where it was that he had seen and climbed on the Ark. He consistently told his interrogators that if he could get back to Mount Ararat he could lead a party to the Ark. Although his testimony was successfully approved by voice-stress analysis, it is not unusual that reports such as this , from a single person, even if firsthand, have been discredited because of lack of corroboratory evidence from others."
and then of course there is the NASA pictures ..
