Mount Ararat
Mount Ararat ("Ağrı" in
Turkish, "Արարատ" in
Armenian, "آرارات" in
Farsi, "אררט" in
Hebrew), the tallest (16,940 feet, 5,166 m) peak in modern
Turkey, is a snow-capped dormant
volcanic cone, located in the far northeast of Turkey, 16 km west of
Iran and 32 km south of
Armenia. A widespread traditional misconception has it that the Book of
Genesis identifies this mountain as the resting place of Noah's Ark after the "great flood" described there.
A smaller (3896 m) cone, Little Mount Ararat, rises just southeast of the main peak. The lava plateau stretches out between the two pinnacles. Technically, Ararat is a stratovolcano, formed of lava flows and pyroclastic ejecta.
Vessel-shaped features interpreted in aerial photographs of Ararat caused a stir in the late 1950s (see pseudoarchaeology), though expeditions found the features to be landslides and lava flows.
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