The Iraqi Museum has recently released this English Translation
of an ancient transcript found buried for thousand of years.
BAGHDAD, (Feb.27th) - We here at the Arab Broadcasting Company interrupts the scheduled program to bring you this special report from our foreign correspondent, Geraldo Rivera I, who has been camping over-night near the summit of Mount Ararat in eastern Armenia. Geraldo! Can you hear us up there on top of that 17,000 foot mountain?
Yes, Greta, it is now 8 o’clock in the morning and the sun is shining brightly for the first time in many months. We are located about 300 yards below the summit of Mount Ararat and are staring at this large ship that is sitting directly above us. It is about half the size of a cruise ship and is covered with black tar from one end to the other. From here it appears to be nearly 450 feet long. On the upper deck are cabins with many windows and we can see people moving about up there. Our Armenian guide says a ship shaped like a box is called an ark, but he has never seen one this size before. He also tells me it arrived here last month when the water receded.
We didn’t get much sleep last night. There were strange noises coming from inside the ark, like someone laughing. My camera man says that when he was living in Kenya there was an animal near his village that made the same laughing sound. He called it a hyena. This morning we were wakened by a rooster crowing and we assume that the rooster was somewhere on the upper deck of the ark as hens and roosters do not normally live at this high altitude.
Hold it! I see four men up on the top deck of the ark putting something together. They are now lifting it over the railing. It is a long ladder and it is now touching the ground. The ladder must be at least 45 feet long and there is an old man getting ready to climb down the ladder. We want to be able to talk to him so I am going to move my microphone up closer to the bottom of the ladder. I am having difficulty walking as the ground is very slippery from all the rain we have been having lately. (pause)
I am now at the ladder and hope to talk to this old man when he is on the ground. Right now he is standing on the bottom rung and lighting a stump of a pipe. He is dressed in a rather dirty looking red robe. He has a long white beard; his cheeks are like roses, his nose like a cherry. The next voice will come from this plump old man as he steps down from the ladder.
“Ho! Ho! Ho! That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
“Sir, can you tell us your name?”
“Speak up sonny! My hearing has gotten worse since my 600th birthday.”
“What is your name?”
“That’s better! I can hear you now. My real name is Neil Armstrong, but my family just calls me NOAH. That an acronym for Nice Old Absent-minded Hebrew. Who the devil are you? I thought everyone drown in the flood.”
“I’m Rivera from ABC and we would like to be the first to interview you, Mr. Noah.”
“Well, it will have to be a short interview as I have a lot of work to do getting this ship unloaded. Wait a minute while I talk to my oldest son. Ahoy Shem, can you hear me? You can start opening the end doors at the bottom level. Use the two elephants to push the doors open, but be careful not to step on the penguins. Those little rascals keep getting in the way.”
“Elephants! Penguins! What else do you have in that ark?”
“Let me see, by my calculations when I started out a year ago I had seven pair of clean animals and one pair of every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl. I’d say I have about 7,000 species altogether.”
“Amazing! How were you able to feed them all?”
“Oh, that wasn’t the biggest problem. Keeping them separated and not eating each other was a major effort for my three sons, Shem, Jepheth, and Ham.”
“Well, I realize that you have a lot of work to do so I won’t keep you any longer. Is there one last statement you would like to make after your historic voyage?”
“Yes, I’m mad as hell. I told those corrupt government officials they were not building those levees high enough. After 40 days of rain, the levees failed. It’s their fault we had this terrible flood. And by the way, stop around tomorrow so that I can show you the inside of my ark. I’ll even let you taste a new grape beverage I invented called ‘wine.’ I like it better than beer and it has fewer calories and is less filling. My wife serves it with all our meals. Shalom!”
“This is Geraldo Rivera reporting from atop Mount Ararat where the ark has just landed.”