Ron Wyatt's Claimed Discoveries

What Was Claimed

R. Wyatt was an American amateur explorer, without archaeological training, who from the late 1970s until his death in 1999 announced a long series of biblical discoveries. The best known are three. First, that a boat-shaped formation in the mountains of eastern Turkey, some twelve to fifteen miles from the summit of Greater Ararat and known as the Durupinar site, is the remains of the ark; he promoted it from 1977 onward. Second, that chariot wheels and other remains of Pharaoh's army lie on the sea floor at a crossing point in the Gulf of Aqaba. Third, and most consequential, that he excavated a chamber beneath the stone escarpment near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem and found the ark of the covenant there, with dried blood above it which he said he had had analysed.

The account given by his own organisation is worth reading, because it is more candid than most of what is said on his behalf. Its telling of how the search for the ark of the covenant began describes him pointing at a rubbish dump and saying words he had not consciously decided to say — an experience he understood as supernatural. And the page introducing the whole account opens with a sentence that no critic wrote: for now, it says, we cannot provide conclusive evidence of his claims, and it asks the reader to withhold judgement until conclusive evidence can be seen. That was written by the people who believe him.

This article exists because those claims are still in circulation — in sermon illustrations, in church video nights, in the confident memory of people who saw a documentary twenty years ago. A reader who first meets the correction here has probably heard the claims from someone they trust and have no reason to doubt. That is worth saying, because the point of this article is not to make anyone feel foolish.

The Reasons, Not Just the Verdict

Take the ark site, because it is the one that has been examined most carefully, and because the most thorough published examination came from an evangelical creationist ministry rather than from a sceptic. Answers in Genesis published a claim-by-claim evaluation, written by the geologist A. Snelling, and files it under arguments Christians should avoid using. The findings run this way. The metal-detector hot spots said to trace iron ribs and deck lines are randomly distributed, reach only about thirty centimetres deep, and correspond to the basalt boulders that lie everywhere in the mudflow at that site — basalt containing iron oxides that a beach-type detector reads positively against the dead mud around it. The instrument used to map the supposed regular pattern was not a standard survey instrument. The boat shape itself is a known geological formation in a mudflow, first noticed after an earthquake in 1948 and brought to world attention when an aerial photograph of it was published in 1960.

The second finding in that report is the one that should weigh most with a Christian reader. Several of the scientists whose early, cautious interest was quoted in support of the site later examined it properly and reversed their position — the geophysicist J. Baumgardner, who had worked with Wyatt at the site in the mid-1980s, came to hold firmly that it does not contain the ark — and their earlier remarks continued to be used after they had withdrawn them. The astronaut J. Irwin and the geologist J. Morris both inspected the site and were not persuaded. People were quoted as supporting a conclusion they had come to reject.

The Jerusalem claim fails on something simpler than geology: nothing has ever been produced. There is no excavation report, no photograph anyone can examine, no artefact, no laboratory that will confirm the blood analysis, and no permit anyone can inspect. Archaeological excavation in Jerusalem requires a licence from the state, and his own organisation's account of the affair has a local authority he had fallen into conversation with offering to furnish permits, rather than a permit anyone has since been shown. A claim to have found the most significant object in the Hebrew Bible, unaccompanied by anything a stranger can inspect, is not a claim that anyone can evaluate — and being unable to evaluate it is not the same as it being unfalsifiable in an impressive way.

How to Hold This Kindly

It is possible to say all of the above without saying that R. Wyatt lied. This article does not say it, and the evidence does not require it. Human beings are extraordinarily good at seeing what they hope to see, and the record of biblical archaeology is full of trained professionals who did the same thing with better equipment. What can be said, and should be, is that none of these claims has been substantiated, that the checks which would substantiate them have not been passed, and that the people best placed to check — including believing scientists who wanted the ark to be there — went and looked and came back with a different answer.

There is a positive point buried in the negative one, and it is the reason this belongs in a Bible study app rather than in a debunking blog. The reason Christians can be relaxed about losing the Durupinar site is that nothing in the faith was ever resting on it. The flood narrative, the exodus, the ark of the covenant: these stand or fall on the text and on the ordinary historical questions about the text, exactly as they did before 1977. An apologetic that leans on unverifiable relics is fragile in a way the thing it is defending is not — and every reader who eventually discovers that the chariot wheels were never produced learns to distrust whoever showed them the video.

So the practical counsel is unglamorous and it applies far beyond this case. When a claim about the Bible arrives with a video, a personal testimony and no report, ask three questions: what was found, who else has examined it, and where is the publication. Scripture itself commends exactly that habit — the Bereans are praised for checking daily whether what they were told was so, and Paul tells a whole church to test everything and hold on to what is good. Those instructions were not written for archaeologists. They were written for ordinary people being told remarkable things.

Scripture references

• Genesis 8:4 — The ship rested on the mountains of Ararat — a region, not a named peak
• Exodus 14:28 — The waters cover the chariots and the horsemen of Pharaoh's army
• Jeremiah 3:16 — A day when no one will say 'the ark of Yahweh's covenant' or miss it — the prophets' last word on the object
• Acts 17:11 — The Bereans examined the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so
• 1 Thessalonians 5:21 — Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good

Sources

• Holding institutionA. Snelling, "Special Report: Amazing 'Ark' Exposé" — Andrew Snelling, geologist, for Answers in Genesis - published under 'arguments to avoid' · First published in Creation magazine, 1992. A claim-by-claim evaluation by a creationist ministry that would have every reason to want the site to be genuineSupports: The metal-detector findings, the basalt explanation, the history of the site from 1948 and 1960, and the scientists who withdrew their support
• Primary textWyatt Archaeological Research, "The Ark of the Covenant" — The organisation founded by R. Wyatt, publishing his account as he told it · The claim in its own words, including the statement that conclusive evidence cannot at present be provided and the reader is asked to withhold judgementSupports: What was actually claimed, and the organisation's own acknowledgement that the evidence has not been produced
• ReferenceAnswers in Genesis, "Has the Ark Been Found?" — Answers in Genesis · The ministry's standing summary of ark claims, including the Durupinar siteSupports: The rejection of the site by Christian geologists and archaeologists who have visited it

Further reading

• Answers in Genesis: a claim-by-claim evaluation of the Durupinar site

Reflect

Someone you trust may have shown you one of these. Correcting a claim is not the same as correcting the person who repeated it. How would you want to be told?