515 Feet and 300 Cubits: Measuring the Durupınar Formation Against Genesis 6:15

Ask anyone who has heard of the Durupınar formation why it is linked to Noah’s Ark, and you will usually get one number: 515 feet. Hold that figure up to Genesis and it is easy to see why the hillside has fascinated people for more than sixty years.

“The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.”Genesis 6:15, KJV

But a careful look at the numbers shows that the match is both more interesting and more complicated than the headline suggests. Here is the math, with sources, so you can judge it yourself.

The formation

The Durupınar formation lies near the village of Üzengili in eastern Türkiye, about 29 km (18 miles) south of the summit of Greater Mount Ararat. Turkish Army Captain İlhan Durupınar spotted its outline in an aerial photograph in 1959, and it has carried his name ever since.

Its length is most often given as 157 meters, or 515 feet. That is the figure used by the team that ran radar surveys and core drilling there in 2026 (see our report on this year’s work). Not every survey agrees. Wikipedia’s article on the site records that David Fasold’s team, which surveyed it in 1985, measured it at 164 meters (538 feet). Ancient Content, reporting in September 2026, describes it as “around 160 meters from end to end and 48 meters at its widest, with one end pointed and the other rounded.”

Even a critic grants the length

The most striking thing about the length match is who concedes it. Geologist Lorence G. Collins of California State University, Northridge, has argued for decades that the formation is natural. In a 2011 paper he wrote that the evidence for the Ark consists only of the boat-shaped outline, and that this evidence is circumstantial because:

“its 515-foot length matches the 300-Egyptian-cubit length of Noah’s ark.”Lorence G. Collins, “A supposed cast of Noah’s ark in eastern Turkey,” 2011

In the same paper’s glossary, Collins defines the Egyptian cubit as “a length of about 20.6 inches.” Multiply 300 by 20.6 inches and you get 6,180 inches, or exactly 515 feet.

Which cubit did Moses mean?

Here is where it gets harder. A cubit was the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, and it was never one fixed number. According to Wikipedia’s summary of ancient measures, the common cubit was 24 “digits” long, the royal cubit 28 digits, and these cubits “typically ranged from 44.4 to 52.92 cm.” Surviving Egyptian royal cubit rods measure between 52.35 and 52.92 cm. Ancient Content gives a similar working range of roughly 45 to 52 centimeters.

So what does 300 cubits come to?

Cubit used	Cubit length	300 cubits
Short end of the ancient range	44.4 cm (17.5 in)	133 m (437 ft)
Common cubit, often rounded to 18 inches	45.7 cm (18 in)	137 m (450 ft)
Egyptian cubit as defined by Collins	52.3 cm (20.6 in)	157 m (515 ft)
Longest surviving Egyptian royal cubit rods	52.92 cm (20.8 in)	159 m (521 ft)

(Our own arithmetic, using the cubit values cited above.)

In other words, the length “matches” if Moses used a long, Egyptian-style royal cubit, and falls about 65 feet short of the formation if he used the common 18-inch cubit. There is an old argument for the longer one. Wikipedia notes that the church father Origen (c. 182–c. 251), answering a critic who doubted the Ark could hold all the animals, argued that Moses, raised in Egypt, would have used the larger Egyptian cubit.

Modern creationists have had to choose, too. When Answers in Genesis built its full-size Ark Encounter in Kentucky, it considered twelve possible lengths for the cubit, according to Wikipedia, and settled on a design 510 feet long, 85 feet wide and 51 feet high. That is within a few feet of Durupınar’s usual length, but it is a reconstruction of the biblical Ark, not a claim about the formation.

What about the width and height?

Length is only one of three numbers in Genesis 6:15, and the other two are less often mentioned.

• Width. Fifty cubits comes to 75 feet (about 23 m) with an 18-inch cubit, or about 86 feet (26 m) with Collins’s 20.6-inch cubit. Ancient Content describes the formation as 48 meters (about 157 feet) at its widest, nearly twice the biblical breadth on either cubit.
• Height. Thirty cubits is about 45 to 52 feet. The formation today is a low feature. A 2007 geological paper by Turkish geologist Murat Avci, quoted by Answers in Genesis, describes it as a “150 m x 50 m x 4 m high ship-like feature.” Supporters would answer that a buried, collapsed or eroded vessel would not keep its full height, which is fair, but it means height cannot be used as evidence either way.
• Shape. Genesis gives box-like proportions and says nothing about a pointed bow. The Durupınar outline is pointed at one end and rounded at the other.

Supporters of the site have long offered explanations for these differences, such as a hull that spread or deformed as it was buried. Those explanations may be right, but so far they are proposals rather than measurements, and we have not found them tested in published work.

Why the length still matters

None of this makes the length match meaningless. A natural ridge that happens to fall within the range of 300 ancient cubits, in the region Genesis names, is worth investigating, and that is exactly what the 2026 expedition set out to do. Collins himself calls the outline circumstantial evidence, not no evidence.

What the dimensions cannot do is settle the question. A good match on one number, with a poor match on the other two, is a reason to test the site, not a reason to declare it the Ark. That testing is now under way: core and soil samples from the 2026 season went to laboratories in Ankara, and Arkeonews reports that important lab findings are expected in the winter of 2026–27.

The bottom line

• The usual 515-foot length equals 300 cubits of about 20.6 inches, the Egyptian cubit, as even critic Lorence Collins acknowledges.
• With a common 18-inch cubit, 300 cubits is 450 feet, and some surveys measure the formation at 538 feet.
• The formation is far wider than 50 cubits and much lower than 30 cubits today.
• The numbers are a reason to look closer, not a verdict. The lab results are what to watch.

Want both sides of the debate in one place, including the creationist geologists who reject the site? Read Could the Durupınar Formation Be Noah’s Ark?