Irving Finkel — A scholar of ancient languages and curator at the British Museum for over 45 years. He is a world expert on cuneiform script, Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian, as well as Mesopotamian magic, medicine, literature and ancient board games.
The gist
Irving Finkel traces how writing emerged in Mesopotamia around 3500 BC and argues the genius leap was encoding sound rather than pictures. He explains how cuneiform was deciphered via the trilingual Bisutun inscription and how he himself decoded the Ark Tablet, a 1700 BC Babylonian flood narrative predating Noah by at least a thousand years that describes a round coracle-style ark. Finkel contends much of what scholars assume is 'all there was' is only a raindrop of a lost waterfall of ancient knowledge, and challenges several orthodoxies in Assyriology. He also discusses reconstructing the rules of the Royal Game of Ur from a late tablet, the role of the divine and monotheism, and the mission of the British Museum. Throughout, he insists ancient people were intellectually indistinguishable from us.
Big reveals
- Finkel argues the true genius of writing was encoding sound, not drawing pictures, and controversially doubts the standard claim that pictographs came first before phonetic writing.
- He points to a green seal stone at Gobekli Tepe (around 9000 BC) as possible evidence of a writing system thousands of years before Mesopotamian cuneiform.
- Finkel claims the famous Nineveh library of Ashurbanipal was likely carried off intact by the conquering Babylonians, and what was found are only duplicates and broken leftovers.
- He disputes Henry Rawlinson's title 'Father of Assyriology,' crediting Irish clergyman Edward Hincks as the actual decipherer of how cuneiform works.
- Finkel describes decoding the Ark Tablet, a roughly 1700 BC Babylonian flood narrative predating the biblical Noah by at least a thousand years, which uniquely specifies a round boat (coracle).
- George Smith's 1872 discovery of three birds released from the ark in the Nineveh Gilgamesh tablet, matching Genesis, proved the flood stories are linked by literary dependence, not coincidence.
- He proposes the Hebrew Bible's creation and flood narratives were written during the Judean exile in Babylon, recycling Babylonian ideas, with 'sin' substituted for the Babylonians' 'noise.'
- Finkel reconstructed the rules of the Royal Game of Ur from a 2nd-century BC tablet found 2,300 years after the earliest boards, and the game is now played again worldwide, even in Iraqi cafes.
Things worth remembering
- Mesopotamians invented lexicography early in the third millennium, standardizing and cataloguing signs so the system stayed stable for over three millennia.
- Clay tablets survive so well in the ground that while hundreds of thousands sit in museums, millions more likely remain buried awaiting excavation.
- Babylonian (Akkadian) is a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Arabic, but Sumerian is unrelated to any known language and is the sole survivor of its lost family.
- Mesopotamian omen texts (e.g. 'if a lizard runs across the breakfast table, the queen will die') were never read as literal certainties; modal nuance like 'could' or 'might' had to be implied because Akkadian grammar could not express it.
- Finkel calls the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary America's greatest cultural achievement, joking its only rival is the electric guitar.
- The Ark Tablet's 60 lines read like a blueprint, giving the boat's round shape, materials, and exact quantities needed to build it.
- Finkel helped build a one-third-scale replica of the round ark on a lagoon in Kerala, India, coated in bitumen, joining its maiden voyage.
- The Royal Game of Ur spread across the ancient world for nearly 3,000 years (found from Egypt to Crete to Tutankhamun's tomb) with no written rules and despite players sharing no common language.
- The British Museum holds about 130,000 cuneiform tablets, and Finkel frames the museum's mission as serving the unborn by stockpiling artifacts for future understanding.
- One surviving Babylonian joke: a fly lands on an elephant's back and asks, 'Am I too heavy for you?'
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Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle (inferred)
“I am a great believer in Sherlock Holmes as a teaching system for intelligence and rationality and logic in thinking. I read those stories a million times when I was a kid” — Irving Finkel 00:17:44Find it on Amazon
The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
University of Chicago Oriental Institute (inferred)
“It's the most salient and important thing that came out of America in all its history, is the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary” — Irving Finkel 00:51:30Find it on Amazon
Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford University Press (inferred)
“Have you ever in your life opened a full-size volume of the Oxford English Dictionary? It's about that thick. I have a whole set. I love them.” — Irving Finkel 01:58:44Find it on Amazon
The Royal Game of Ur
Irving Finkel
“they play in Iraq in cafes. Because after it's come back to life, it's on the internet, people play, there are different rules. The ones I invented are pretty much regular.” — Irving Finkel 01:40:42Find it on Amazon