The ark of bulrushes was a container which, according to the episode known as the

finding of Moses The Finding of Moses, sometimes called Moses in the Bullrushes, Moses Saved from the Waters, or other variants, is the story in chapter 2 of the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible of the finding in the River Nile of Moses as a baby by the daughte ...

in the biblical

Book of Exodus The Book of Exodus (from grc, Ἔξοδος, translit=Éxodos; he, שְׁמוֹת ''Šəmōṯ'', "Names") is the second book of the Bible. It narrates the story of the Exodus, in which the Israelites leave slavery in Biblical Egypt through ...

, carried the infant Moses. The ark, containing the three-month-old baby Moses, was placed in reeds by the river bank (presumably the

Nile The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered the longest riv ...

) to protect him from the Egyptian mandate to drown every male

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

child, and discovered there by Pharaoh's daughter.

Analysis

The ark is described as being daubed with asphalt and pitch, and the English word "ark" is a translation of the

תֵּבָה (''tevah'', modern ''teiva''), the same word used for

Noah's Ark Noah's Ark ( he, תיבת נח; Biblical Hebrew: ''Tevat Noaḥ'')The word "ark" in modern English comes from Old English ''aerca'', meaning a chest or box. (See Cresswell 2010, p.22) The Hebrew word for the vessel, ''teva'', occurs twice in ...

. According to

Irving Finkel Irving Leonard Finkel (born 1951) is a British philologist and Assyriologist. He is the Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum, where he specialises in c ...

, the word ''tevah'' is nearly identical to the Babylonian word for an oblong boat (''ṭubbû''), especially given that "v" and "b" are the same letter in Hebrew:

bet Black Entertainment Television (acronym BET) is an American basic cable channel targeting African-American audiences. It is owned by the CBS Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global via BET Networks and has offices in New York City, Los ...

(ב). The " bulrushes" ( ''gome'') were likely to have been papyrus stalks (''

Cyperus papyrus ''Cyperus papyrus'', better known by the common names papyrus, papyrus sedge, paper reed, Indian matting plant, or Nile grass, is a species of aquatic flowering plant belonging to the sedge family Cyperaceae. It is a tender herbaceous perenn ...

''), daubed with bitumen and pitch (which probably refers to the sticky mud of the Nile). A similar but earlier story is told of

Sargon of Akkad Sargon of Akkad (; akk, ''Šarrugi''), also known as Sargon the Great, was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC.The date of the reign of Sargon is highl ...

References

Reed boats Moses Book of Exodus Hebrew Bible objects Egypt in the Hebrew Bible

Bibliography

*{{citation , last=Finkel , first=Irving L. , author-link= Irving Finkel, title=The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood , year=2014 , publisher=Hodder & Stoughton , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lScWAwAAQBAJ&q=tablet&pg=PT274, isbn=9781444757071

Analysis

See also

References

Bibliography