Archaeological Evidence of the Flood

It is no coincidence that today we run into traces of most of the communities which are said in the Qur'an to have been destroyed. Archaeological evidence yields the fact that the more suddenly a community disappears, the more likely it is that we will come across some of its remnants.

In the case of a civilisation suddenly disappearing, which can happen as a result of a natural disaster, sudden emigration or war, the traces of this civilisation can often be preserved much better. Houses in which people lived and tools they once used in daily life are buried under the earth in a short time. Thus these are preserved for quite long periods untouched by human hand and they yield important evidence of the past when brought into daylight.

This is how a great deal of evidence for Nuh's Flood has been uncovered in our day. Thought to have been occurred around the 3rd millennium BC., the Flood put an end to a whole civilisation in a moment, and later caused a brand new civilisation to be established in its stead. Thus the apparent evidence for the Flood has been preserved for thousands of years so that we may take warning.

Many excavations have been made in investigation of the flood which covered the Mesopotamian plains. In excavations made in the region, in four main cities there are found traces of what must have been a particularly large flood. These cities were the important cities of Mesopotamia: Ur, Erech, Kish and Shuruppak.

The excavations made in these cities reveal that all four of these were subjected to a flood around the 3rd millennium BC.

First let's take a look at the excavations made in the city of Ur. The oldest remains of a civilisation unearthed in the excavations made in the city of Ur, which has been re-named "Tell al Muqqayar" in our day, date back as far as 7000 BC. As one of the sites which has been home to one of the earliest civilisations, the city of Ur has been a region of settlements in which many cultures succeeded each other.

Archaeological findings from the city of Ur show that here civilisation was interrupted after an enormous flood, and that then new civilisations later emerged. R.H. Hall from the British Museum made the first excavations here. Leonard Woolley, who took upon himself to carry on with excavations after Hall, also supervised an excavation organised collectively by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania. Excavations conducted by Woolley, which had a huge effect world-wide, lasted from 1922 to 1934.

Sir Woolley's excavations took place in the middle of the desert between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. The first founders of the city of Ur were a people who had come from North Mesopotamia and called themselves "Ubaidian". Excavations originally began to gather information on these people. Woolley's excavations are described by the German archaeologist Werner Keller as follows;

"The graves of the kings of Ur" - so Woolley, in the exuberance of his delight at discovering them, had dubbed the tombs of Sumerian nobles whose truly regal splendour had been exposed when the spades of the archaeologists attacked a fifty-foot mound south of the temple and found a long row of superimposed graves. The stone vaults were veritable treasure chests, for they were filled with all the costly goblets, wonderfully shaped jugs and vases, bronze tableware, mother of pearl mosaics, lapis lazuli, and silver surrounded these bodies which had mouldered into dust. Harps and lyres rested against the walls. "Almost at once" he wrote later in his diary, "discoveries were made which confirmed our suspicions. Directly under the floor of one of the tombs of the kings we found in a layer of charred wood ash numerous clay tablets, which were covered with characters of a much older type than the inscriptions on the graves. Judging by the nature of the writing, the tablets could be assigned to about 3000 BC. They were therefore two or three centuries earlier than the tombs".

The shafts went deeper and deeper. New strata, with fragments of jars, pots, and bowls, kept appearing. The experts noticed that the pottery remained surprisingly enough unchanged. It looked exactly like that which had been found in the graves of the kings. Therefore, it seemed that for centuries the Sumerian civilisation had undergone no radical change. They must, according to the conclusion, have reached a high level of development astonishingly early.

When after several days some of Woolley's workmen called out to him, "We are on ground level", he let himself down onto the floor of the shaft to satisfy himself. Woolley's first thought was "This is it at last". It was sand, pure sand of a kind that could only have been deposited by water.

They decided to dig on and make the shaft deeper. Deeper and deeper went the spades into the ground: three feet, six feet - still pure mud. Suddenly, at ten feet, the layer of mud stopped as abruptly as it had started. Under this clay deposit of almost ten feet thick, they had struck fresh evidence of human habitation. The appearance and quality of the pottery had noticeably altered. Here, they were handmade. Metal remains were nowhere to be found. The primitive implement that did emerge was made of hewn flint. It must belong to the Stone Age!

The Flood - that was the only possible explanation of this great clay deposit beneath the hill at Ur, which quite clearly separated two epochs of settlement. The sea had left its unmistakable traces in the shape of remains of little marine organisms embedded in the mud. 1

According to archaeological finds, Nuh's Flood took place on the Mesopotamian plains. The plains had a different shape then. In the above diagram, the current borders of the plains are denoted with a red cut line. The large section lying be hind the red line is known to have been a part of the sea at that time.

Microscopic analysis revealed that this great clay deposit beneath the hill at Ur had accumulated here as a result of a flood so big as to annihilate ancient Sumerian civilisation. The epic of Gilgamesh and the story of Nuh were united in this shaft dug deep under the Mesopotamian desert.

Max Mallowan related the thoughts of Leonard Woolley, who said that such a huge mass of alluvium formed in a single time slice could only be the result of a huge flood disaster. Woolley also described the flood layer that separated the Sumerian city of Ur from the city of Al-Ubaid whose inhabitants used painted pottery, as the remains of the Flood.2 These show that the city of Ur was one of the places affected by the Flood. Werner Keller expressed the importance of the aforementioned excavation by saying that the yield of city-remains beneath a muddy layer in the archaeological excavations made in Mesopotamia proves that there was a flood here.3

Another Mesopotamian city carrying traces of the Flood is "Kish of the Sumerians" which is now known as Tall Al-Uhaimer. According to ancient Sumerian sources, this city was the "seat of the first postdiluvian dynasty"4

The city of Shuruppak in South Mesopotamia, which is today named as Tall Fa'rah, likewise carries apparent traces of the Flood. Archaeological studies in this city were headed by Erich Schmidt from the University of Pennsylvania between 1920-1930. These excavations uncovered three layers of habitation extending in time from the late prehistoric period to the 3rd dynasty of Ur (2112-2004 BC). The most distinctive finds were ruins of well-built houses along with cuneiform tablets of administrative records and lists of words, indicating a highly developed society already in being toward the end of the 4th millennium BC. 5

Die The excavations made by Sir Leonard Woolley in the Mesopotamian plains disclosed the presence of a mud-clay layer 2.5 m. deep in the earth. This mud-clay layer was most probably formed by the clay masses carried by the flood waters and, in the whole world, it only exists under the Mesopotamian plains. This discovery became an important piece of evidence proving that the Flood had only occurred on the Mesopotamian plains.

The main point is that a big flood disaster was understood to have occurred in this city around 2900-3000 BC. According to Mallowan's account, 4-5 metres below the earth, Schmidt had reached a yellow soil layer (formed by flood) made up of a mixture of clay and sand. This layer was closer to the plain level than the tumulus profile and it could be observed all around the tumulus… Schmidt defined this layer made up of a mixture of clay and sand, which remained from the time of Ancient Kingdom of Cemdet Nasr, as "a sand with its origins in the river" and associated it with Nuh's Flood.6

In the excavations made in the city of Shuruppak, the remains of a flood were found that corresponded approximately to the years 2900-3000 BC. Probably, the city of Shuruppak was probably as much effected by the flood as the other cities.7

The latest place which is shown to have been affected by the Flood is the city of Erech to the south of Shuruppak which is known as Tall Al-Warka today. In this city just as in others, a flood layer is found. This flood layer is dated between 2900-3000 BC just like the others. 8

As is well known, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers cut across Mesopotamia from one end to the other. It seems that, during the event, these two rivers and many other water resources, big and small, overflowed and, by uniting with rain water, caused a big deluge. The event is described in the Qur'an;

So We opened the gates of heaven, with water pouring forth. And We caused the earth to gush forth with springs, so the waters met (and rose) to the extent decreed. (Surat al-Qamar: 11-12)

When the factors causing the Flood are examined one by one, it is seen that they are all very natural phenomena. What makes the event miraculous is their taking place at the same time and Nuh's warning his people about such a disaster beforehand.

Assessment of the evidence obtained from the completed studies revealed that the Flood area stretches approximately 160 km. (in width) from east to west, and 600 km. (in length) from north to south. This shows that the Flood covered all the Mesopotamian plains. When we examine the order of the cities Ur, Erech, Shuruppak and Kish which bear the traces of the Flood, we see that these are lined along a route. Therefore, the Flood must have affected these four cities and their surroundings. Besides it should be noted that around 3000 BC, the geographical structure of the Mesopotamian plain was different from what it is now. At those times, the bed of the Euphrates river was more to the east than it is today; this stream-line was matched with a line passing through Ur, Erech, Shuruppak and Kish. With the opening of the "springs of the earth and heaven", it seems that the river Euphrates overflowed and spread thus destroying the four cities cited above.