thumb|250px|A [[reliquary displaying a piece of wood at the museum of Etchmiadzin Cathedral in Armenia, said to be from Noah's Ark. By tradition Jacob of Nisibis received the wood from an angel during his search for the Ark.]]
Searches for Noah's Ark have been reported since antiquity, as ancient scholars sought to affirm the historicity of the Genesis flood narrative by citing accounts of relics recovered from the Ark.
In 2020, the young Earth creationist group the Institute for Creation Research acknowledged that, despite many expeditions, Noah's Ark had not been found and is unlikely to be found. Many of the supposed findings and methods used in the search are regarded as pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology by geologists and archaeologists.
Antiquity
thumb|Cast of a rock relief of [[Sennacherib carved at Mount Judi. The Talmud suggests he visited Noah's Ark in the 7th century BCE.]]
At the end of the Genesis flood narrative, when the flooding subsides, the Ark is said to come to rest "on the mountains of Ararat." The Book of Jubilees specifies a particular mountain, naming it "Lûbâr". The Torah does not describe any particular holiness about the Ark, and so little attention is given to its fate after Noah's departure.
According to the Talmud, the Assyrian king Sennacherib found a beam from the Ark and, reasoning that it was the god who delivered Noah from the flood, fashioned the wood into an idol. This expands upon the biblical account of Sennacherib worshiping in the temple of Nisroch, interpreting the god's name to be derived from the Hebrew word neser ("beam"). A Midrash regarding the Book of Esther says that the gallows erected by Haman was built using a beam from the Ark. The targumim for Genesis 8 interpret "Ararat" as "Qadron" and "Kardu" (i.e., Corduene). In his recounting of the Flood, Josephus seeks to link the story of Noah to the Sumerian flood myth as described by Berossus, Hieronymus of Cardia, Mnaseas of Patrae, and Nicolaus of Damascus, thereby placing Noah's Ark on a mountain in Armenia, where he says relics from the ship are exhibited "to this day." However, Josephus later describes Carrhae as the location of the Ark, again claiming that the locals would show the remains to visitors. Jerome of Stridon translated "Ararat" as "Armenia" in the Vulgate, whereas the Armenians themselves associated Noah's Ark with Corduene until the 11th century. Epiphanius of Salamis wrote: "Thus even today the remains of Noah’s ark are still shown in Cardyaei." Similarly, John Chrysostom proposed to ask non-believers: "Have you heard of the Flood—of that universal destruction? That was not just a threat, was it? Did it not really come to pass—was not this mighty work carried out? Do not the mountains of Armenia testify to it, where the Ark rested? And are not the remains of the Ark preserved there to this very day for our admonition?" Agathangelos relates a similar story, although not directly related to the Ark, in which the 3rd century Armenian king Tiridates scales Masis and brings back eight rocks to use in the foundation of new churches.
Middle Ages and early modern period
In the 7th century, the Etymologiae states "Ararat is a mountain in Armenia where the historians testify that the Ark came to rest after the Flood."<!-- We need a source to an English translation. --> The Quran describes the Ark landing on "al-jūdī," which is understood to refer to Qardu, now known as Mount Judi. Heraclius is reported to have scaled Mount Judi to visit the site of the Ark in either 628 or 629. One legend claims that Omar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb removed the Ark from a site near Nisibis and used the wood to construct a mosque.
Despite the longstanding association of Armenia with Ararat in Western Christianity, Christians in Armenia did not adopt the idea of Masis as the landing site of the Ark until the arrival of Crusaders in the late 11th century. Thereafter, Armenians adopted the Western identification of Masis as "Mount Ararat", and relocated the Jacob of Nisibis legend to that peak. Regardless of this cultural impediment, other travelers claimed the summit was physically inaccessible, due to the permanent snow line and an abundance of precipices.
Late medieval reports from Ararat often mentioned the survival of Ark fragments, but there was less consensus about whether the vessel itself survived. Petachiah of Regensburg simply declared "the Ark is not there, for it has decayed." Just over a century later, however, Hayton of Corycus claimed that "on the mountain's summit something black is visible, which people say is the Ark."
19th century
thumb|300px|Mount Ararat
The first recorded ascent of Ararat was led by Friedrich Parrot in 1829. In his account of the expedition, Parrot wrote that "all the Armenians are firmly persuaded that Noah's Ark remains to this very day on the top of Ararat, and that, in order to preserve it, no human being is allowed to approach it." On his ascent, he discovered "a piece of wood about four feet long and five inches thick, evidently cut by some tool, and so far above the limit of trees that it could by no possibility be a natural fragment of one." Bryce cut off a portion of the wood to keep, and later argued that it might plausibly be a remnant of Noah's ark. Although he admitted another explanation for the wood had occurred to him, he determined that "no man is bound to discredit his own relic." As an April Fools' Day joke, George McCullagh Reed, writing as "Pollex" for his opinion column in the New Zealand Herald, claimed that the avalanche had revealed the remains of Noah's Ark. Reed's story largely takes the form of a dispatch supposedly received from the Levant Herald in Constantinople, which he believed to have ceased operations several years earlier; in fact the paper had by that time relaunched as the Eastern Express. The report describes the findings of "Commissioners appointed by the Turkish Government", including a nonexistent English scientist named "Captain Gascoyne", which had already been submitted to Sultan Abdul Hamid II and the German ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. A reference to "an enterprising American traveller" seeking to purchase the Ark for exhibition in the United States was intended by Reed to be recognized as P. T. Barnum.
Over the next several months, Reed's prank was picked up by newspapers around the world. While some publications presented the story tongue-in-cheek, others uncritically reprinted much of what Reed originally wrote, attributing it (as he had) to a correspondent in Constantinople. On 24 November, Reed wrote another column apologizing for the hoax and expressing amusement that the story had spread so far: