The ark (Heb., te·vah'; Gr., ki·bo·tos') was a rectangular chestlike vessel presumably having square corners and a flat bottom. It needed no rounded bottom or sharp bow to cut rapidly through the water; it required no steering; its only functions were to be watertight and to stay afloat. A vessel so shaped is very stable, cannot be easily capsized, and contains about one third more storage space than ships of conventional design. There was a door provided in the side of the ark for loading and unloading the cargo.
In size the ark was 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. Conservatively calculating the cubit as 44.5 cm (17.5 in.) (some think the ancient cubit was nearer 56 or 61 cm), the ark measured 133.5 m by 22.3 m by 13.4 m (437 ft 6 in. × 72 ft 11 in. × 43 ft 9 in.), less than half the length of the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2. This proportion of length to width (6 to 1) is used by modern naval architects. This gave the ark approximately 40,000 cu m (1,400,000 cu ft) in gross volume. It is estimated that such a vessel would have a displacement nearly equal to that of the mighty 269-m (883 ft) Titanic of this 20th century. No cargo vessel of ancient times even slightly resembled the ark in its colossal size. Internally strengthened by adding two floors, the three decks thus provided gave a total of about 8,900 sq m (96,000 sq ft) of space.
The passenger list of the ark was quite impressive. Besides Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives, living creatures of every sort of flesh, two of each, were to be taken aboard. Male and female they will be. Of the flying creatures according to their kinds and of the domestic animals according to their kinds, of all moving animals of the ground according to their kinds, two of each will go in there to you to preserve them alive. Of the clean beasts and fowls, seven of each kind were to be taken. A great quantity and variety of food for all these creatures, to last for more than a year, also had to be stowed away.Ge 6:18-21; 7:2, 3.
The kinds of animals selected had reference to the clear-cut and unalterable boundaries or limits set by the Creator, within which boundaries creatures are capable of breeding according to their kinds. It has been estimated by some that the hundreds of thousands of species of animals today could be reduced to a comparatively few family kindsthe horse kind and the cow kind, to mention but two. The breeding boundaries according to kind established by God were not and could not be crossed. With this in mind some investigators have said that, had there been as few as 43 kinds of mammals, 74 kinds of birds, and 10 kinds of reptiles in the ark, they could have produced the variety of species known today. Others have been more liberal in estimating that 72 kinds of quadrupeds and less than 200 bird kinds were all that were required. That the great variety of animal life known today could have come from inbreeding within so few kinds following the Flood is proved by the endless variety of humankindshort, tall, fat, thin, with countless variations in the color of hair, eyes, and skinall of whom sprang from the one family of Noah.
These estimates may seem too restrictive to some, especially since such sources as The Encyclopedia Americana indicate that there are upwards of 1,300,000 species of animals. (1977, Vol. 1, pp. 859-873) However, over 60 percent of these are insects. Breaking these figures down further, of the 24,000 amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, 10,000 are birds, 9,000 are reptiles and amphibians, many of which could have survived outside the ark, and only 5,000 are mammals, including whales and porpoises, which would have also remained outside the ark. Other researchers estimate that there are only about 290 species of land mammals larger than sheep and about 1,360 smaller than rats. (The Deluge Story in Stone, by B. C. Nelson, 1949, p. 156; The Flood in the Light of the Bible, Geology, and Archaeology, by A. M. Rehwinkel, 1957, p. 69) So, even if estimates are based on these expanded figures, the ark could easily have accommodated a pair of all these animals.
