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Irving Finkel from the British Museum, spoke about the discovery of the pre-biblical Babylonian tablet, from about 1750 BC, which is inscribed with assembly instructions for Noah's Ark:

"One day a member of the public came in with this tablet, which had been in his family, no-one had ever read it before, and he showed it to me and said can you tell me what this is? So I had a good look at it, started to read it and I realised rather quickly that this tablet was one of the Babylonian versions of the flood story. We鈥檇 had some already, two or three before, from the 19th century but this was something new."

Irving Finkel, whose job is to read ancient inscriptions, described its appearance as a "Weetabix-looking clay tablet that fits nicely in the palm of the hand so you can read the instructions". He said the tablet is "remarkable" as it has specifications of how to build the boat:

"It鈥檚 part of what was already an ancient story, and the scribe who wrote it described the flood was going to come and that a boat had to be built, but in this case the god up in heaven told the good Babylonian, who is like Noah in the Bible, that when he built his boat it had to be round. And he told him all he would need to build it, the amount of materials, what he had to do, and the instructions were laid out in Babylonian language."

As part of a documentary about the Ark, which will be aired later in 2014, Irving Finkel, who is the assistant keeper in Mesopotamian languages at the British museum, said his role was to get the animals to go onto the boat: "My job is to smack the rhinos on the bum and make them go on-board."

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