המילה הנסתרת ורזי הכתיבה : תֵּבַת נֹחַ                                                                      

The Ark of NoaCh: The Veiled Word,                                                                    and the Secret Ambiguity of Writing

 

Ark of Noah - Woodcut made by Francois de Belleforest 1575                                                              

To begin with, the Ark of Noah תֵּבַת נֹחַ TeVaT Noach is the symbolic vessel whose appearance is assumed by the מבול Mabul, the great flood that must forever remain unperceived and unknown. At the same time, the Ark has become an expression of the act of selection: After all, the very act of separation is always already a process toward division - that is, a Writing that simultaneously fulfills and destroys its own Reading.

However, in the wake of the unveiling of the Epic of Gilgamesh, followed by PaRaShaT NoaCh, we are forced to confront a world in which radical politics are always implicated in platitudinous or reactionary values, whether moral or aesthetic.

This, however, brings us Back-to-Back with the Western idea of the symbolic מַבּוּלMaBUL, the Great Flood - for it is already etched into our imagination through the Ark of NoaCh תֵּבַת נֹחַ TeVaT NoaCh. Please note that the Hebrew word תבה TeVaH means, among other things, an ark or wooden vessel, as well as a group of words: A certain Writing, a vessel made not of wood, but of language. Perhaps, then, the written text itself is an Ark - תבה TeVaH - and yet, at the same time, that very same Ark is not simply in the Writing: It emerges through the gesture of Reading - the shelter made of words that carries us through the making-ready of MaBUL. Thus, the gesture of Reading becomes a symbolic unveiling of TeVaH within the Writing, for the Writing becomes TeVaH only when Reading begins.

So let us remember: On 3 December 1872, when George Smith publicly exposed his decipherment of Abūbu, the Flood narrative in Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an older Reading emerged from the depths of antiquity, revealing a story that would profoundly resonate through the biblical account of NoaCh to this very day.

 

The Deluge Tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh 

The Epic of Gilgamesh was compiled, and transmitted over several centuries, with the Standard Babylonian version generally dated to the late second millennium BCE. In it, the Flood becomes a story of selection, devastation, survival, and, above all, the limits of human existence - namely, the impossibility of escaping death. 

According to the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim is secretly warned by the god Ea of the coming Flood, and instructed to build a great boat, the Māgillu, in which forms of life are selected, preserved, and carried through the catastrophe. The boat thus establishes a distinction between what will perish, and what will be permitted to survive the Flood sent by the gods.

As the waters recede, we are told that Utnapishtim releases three birds - a dove, a swallow, and a raven - to search for dry land. The dove, and the swallow return, while the raven does not, signaling that the waters have receded, and that the earth has once again become habitable. Similarly, through Utnapishtim, Gilgamesh learns that mortality is an unavoidable condition of being human. He is then told of a plant at the bottom of the sea that can restore his youth. Gilgamesh dives down, retrieves the plant, and plans to use it to regain his youth. However, while he is resting, a snake steals, and eats the plant. [The snake then sheds its skin, symbolizing the paradoxical relationship between renewal (birth) and death.]

After Gilgamesh’s journey through loss, fear, and the search for immortality, he returns to Uruk transformed - not because he has conquered death, but because he has come to recognize that the meaning of human life lies not in escaping mortality, but in confronting its inevitability. In other words, the possibility of becoming immortal becomes visible through the written tekst - the TeVaH - that which both conceals, and unveils.

Eventually, the parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which Utnapishtim is the survivor of the Flood, and the much later PaRaShaT NoaCh become so striking that one almost suspects a shared archetype extending even into our own political time.

There is no secret here: the symbolic MaBUL is a representation of catastrophe. Hence, the symbolic destruction of the world becomes an act of preserving a select group of plants, animals, and humans - a remarkable rationality through which the possibility of catastrophe is anticipated, and prepared for, as an act of selection.

Thus, in relation to NoaCh and Utnapishtim, the path toward renewal can emerge only from the ruins of global destruction. The Ark, in this sense, becomes more than a תבה TeVaH of survival. It becomes a vessel for the continuity of Writing: The continual, fragmented Reading through which the possibility of a better future is preserved while everything familiar disappears beneath the Words. The MaBUL has thus become a symbolic paradox, for it is simultaneously a moment of annihilation, and an instrument of renewal, reminding us that what survives a catastrophe may ultimately determine what kind of world emerges afterward.

And so, the question remains, as unsettled as ever: Who has the power to choose? Who possesses the means to survive the catastrophe? Who is worthy of a place upon the TeVaH, and who is condemned to disappear beneath the MaBUL of history? And who will emerge from the ruins to renew what has been lost?

In this sense, the TeVaH carries not only the promise of salvation, but also the terrible act of selection - the veiled power that decides who crosses the threshold of survival, and who is left behind to be swallowed by the MaBUL.

So, perhaps the TeVaH is not simply an Ark that contains the chosen. Perhaps it is the configuration of words that carries us.

To be sure, in the biblical narrative, the MaBUL is more than an enormous quantity of water. It is a collapse of the distinctions between Writing and Reading. Here, then, against the MaBUL stands the TeVaH, not as a means of exposing the catastrophe, but as a vessel for preserving something within it. And so the question becomes: What do we carry through the MaBUL? What do we preserve from destruction? And who has the power to decide the future of our shared life?

Finally, as the waters began to recede, NoaCh himself released two birds: First, the raven, which went to and fro: And then the dove, which he released three times. The first time, the dove returned without finding a place to rest: the second time, it returned with an olive leaf in its beak: And the third time, the dove did not return. The dove would eventually become a symbol of peace.

 

The dove, and an olive branch – 

Fresco from the Catacombs of Saints Peter, and Marcellinus, Rome, late 3rd century

All in all, the arbitrary interchange between תבה TeVaH, and מבול MaBUL reveals itself to be inseparable - a sacred relation between the political, and the act of selection, hidden beneath the waters of what is seen.

Joseph Sassoon Semah - AT THE FUNERAL OF WAR 1978/2026

At the Funerall of War                                                                                      Toward Perpetual Peace: Noah > St.  Augustine > Kant > the Guest: The ending of each WAR.....then, can be read in two different ways -either as the despair of total destruction, or else as the despair of a certain 'Kindness' which is always already present.   

Signed here  

Joseph Sassoon Semah