Irving Finkel Returns! Voices Out of the Darkness
Dr. Irving Finkel returns to Zoom for a talk hosted by Archaeology Now about the “people between the rivers” — the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers, that is. Were the people of ancient Mesopotamia so very different from us? Did they enjoy a good dinner, rejoice in love, fling curses at a faithless spouse, and quake in fear at the wrath of gods? We are fortunate because we have their most intimate thoughts, inscribed in clay thousands of years ago, still accessible to us. Dr. Finkel, a renowned expert, unlocks their writing in cuneiform, opening a dramatic window into the ancient Mesopotamian world, revealing lives that are every bit as complex and human as are our own lives today.
About Irving Finkel
“Irving Finkel: The Man History Made”
Irving Finkel makes you want to trash the future in favour of the past, says Roshni Nair as she interacts with the historian, philologist and board game expert and comes away enchanted
Darwin, Dumbledore, Engels, Gandalf, Santa. Like the men he is often nicknamed after, the 65-year-old leaves an indelible mark on his audiences. More famous writers and polymaths have attended the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), but few kindle the degree of warmth Irving Finkel does. The ID tag around his neck swings as he prances on stage, firing cannonballs of history into an audience as mesmerised with his untamed hair and beard as they are with tidbits on ancient board games.
Rocking the boat
He's on the editorial board of Board Game Studies, but Finkel is better known as the British Museum's eminence grise on all things cuneiform, the oldest script known to humankind. For almost 40 years, he has read, translated and preserved 1,30,000 clay tablets that once called Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq, Kuwait and Syria) – the cradle of civilisation – home.
This makes Finkel privy to revelations that irk custodians of Abrahamic faiths – for some of these are origins of the fabled flood myth. Mesopotamia had not one, but three flood stories that predate the biblical version by a millennium: the epics of Gilgamesh, Atrahasis and Ziusudra.
"The most painstaking to decipher was the one I wrote the book about," he says in a post-session interview, referring to the palm-sized clay tablet that birthed The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood. This tantalising goldmine of information not only describes animals being taken onto a coracle in pairs, but has specific instructions for building the whopping 3600sqm contraption.
The tablet, damaged on the reverse, has no duplicate or parallel, so Finkel painstakingly squeezed the most out of every syllable and wedge. "Fascinating details lay in damaged parts, but I got bits about animals going 2x2 – which is in the Old Testament. This had never been discovered," he says headily.
Irving Finkel's childlike gusto, coupled with animated skull sessions on the wonders of cuneiform, can border on comical. But it's the kind of delivery one wishes more academicians would adopt. Too caught up in the gravitas of their discoveries or theories, they often forget that history can be as much a joy ride as it can the equivalent of watching paint dry. Finkel makes you want to trash the future in favour of the past. More so when he regales with tales of Mesopotamian medicine and magic – subjects of his Ph.D thesis.
"They had spells, pharmacopeia and oil applications for fever, stomachaches and sores. And pregnancy tests too. Records dating to first millennium BC show women urinated on a barley shoot to see if it sprouted. If it did, it meant they were pregnant..."
"...and yes, the tests were remarkably accurate," he says, a twinkle in his eye.
-Roshni Nair
Excerpted from an article published in DNAINDIA. https://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-irving-finkel-the-man-history-made-2172055
Jan 31, 2016