Download "Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah's Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487"
%3Aformat(webp)%2Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi_webp%252F_bBRVNkAfkQ%252Fmaxresdefault.webp&w=1139&q=75)
Similar videos from our catalog
%3Aformat(webp)%2Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi_webp%252F-HzgcbRXUK8%252Fmaxresdefault.webp&w=1139&q=75)
%3Aformat(webp)%2Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi_webp%252FCEQam0pVLx8%252Fmaxresdefault.webp&w=1139&q=75)
%3Aformat(webp)%2Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi_webp%252FF2Mx-u7auUs%252Fmaxresdefault.webp&w=1139&q=75)
%3Aformat(webp)%2Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi%252FGXgGR8KxFao%252Fmaxresdefault.jpg&w=1139&q=75)
%3Aformat(webp)%2Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi_webp%252FMyLUiE-XfQI%252Fmaxresdefault.webp&w=1139&q=75)
%3Aformat(webp)%2Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi_webp%252FRpvf1BQzJeg%252Fmaxresdefault.webp&w=1139&q=75)
%3Aformat(webp)%2Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi_webp%252FTlRcjjQdyXw%252Fmaxresdefault.webp&w=1139&q=75)
%3Aformat(webp)%2Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi_webp%252Fcp1lprZUQcE%252Fmaxresdefault.webp&w=1139&q=75)
%3Aformat(webp)%2Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi_webp%252ForMtwOz6Db0%252Fmaxresdefault.webp&w=1139&q=75)
%3Aformat(webp)%2Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi_webp%252FseBndOROJt4%252Fmaxresdefault.webp&w=1139&q=75)
Video tags
Subtitles
00:00:00
- The following is a conversation with Irving
Finkel, who is a scholar of ancient languages.00:00:03
He's a curator at the British Museum for over 45 years,
and is a much admired and respected world expert.00:00:11
He's an expert on cuneiform script and more generally, on
ancient languages like Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian.00:00:19
He's also an expert on ancient board games,
Mesopotamia magic, medicine, literature, and culture.00:00:27
I should also mention that both on and off the mic,
Irving was a super kind and fun person to talk to.00:00:35
He has an infectious enthusiasm for ancient history that
of course I already love, but fell in love with even more.00:00:41
This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it,
please check out our sponsors in the description.00:00:45
You can also find links to contact me,
ask questions, get feedback, and so on.00:00:49
And now, dear friends,
here's Irving Finkel.00:00:56
Where and when did writing
originate in human civilization?00:01:00
Let's go back a few thousand years.00:01:05
- The first attempts at writing that we could call
writing go back to the middle of the fourth millennium,00:01:09
say around 3500 BC, something like that.00:01:16
There were people in the Middle East, individuals
who lived between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers.00:01:20
They had clay as their operating material for
building and all sorts of other purposes.00:01:24
Eventually, as a writing support, they somehow developed the idea
of the basis of writing, which means that you can make a sign.00:01:31
People agree on it, on a surface that another person,
when they see it, they know what sound it engenders.00:01:40
That is the essence of writing, that there's an agreed
system of symbols that A can use and B can then play back,00:01:47
either in their heads or literally with their
voices, a bit like a gramophone record.00:01:51
So, when it really began is a terribly, terribly awkward question for us,
because the truth of the matter is, we have no idea when anything began.00:02:02
All we can say is that the oldest evidence we have is around 3500 BC, but
whether that was anywhere near the time or the stage when this started off00:02:13
for the first time seems to me very, very unlikely. So, among
these Mesopotamians around 3500, they started to do this.00:02:25
They made up signs which everybody understood and
they could write simple pictographic messages.00:02:29
Foot is a foot, leg is a leg, and barley is barley. Then very, very
gradually, they had the idea of how you could represent numerals.00:02:41
They also had the idea that the pictures could also represent sounds,
and once they had the idea that you could write sounds with pictures,00:02:49
that's the crucial thing, that a picture of a foot not only
meant foot, but it meant the sound of the word for foot.00:02:53
Once this happened, some probably very, very imaginative and clever persons
had a kind of light bulb moment when they realized that they could develop00:03:04
a whole panoply of signs which could convey sound. And once
you had that, you're liberated from pictographic writing00:03:15
into a position where you can record language.
So language, grammar, and all the rest of it,00:03:23
and before long, proverbs and literature, and
all the other things that got written down.00:03:27
So it was a pretty gigantic step whenever it was taken,
but we really have no idea when it was first taken.00:03:35
But the first evidence we have presents a sort of clear-ish picture.
It was simple and it got more complicated, then it became magnificent.00:03:43
So that with all the signs, a fluent, well-trained
scribe could not only write down the Sumerian language,00:03:51
which was one of the native tongues of Iraq, or the Babylonian language, which
was the other main language of Iraq, but also any other language he heard.00:04:02
if somebody came speaking
French ahead of their time and00:04:05
spoke out loud, he could record
with these signs the sound of00:04:09
French. And we have examples of
funny languages in the world00:04:13
around in the Bronze Age, which
were written in cuneiform purely by00:04:17
ear. And often sometimes
the scribes who recorded by00:04:20
dictation or by something, wrote
stuff they couldn't understand,00:04:24
but somebody else could read and
understand it. So, what you have00:04:28
is long before the alphabet, when the
alphabet was not even a dream, a complex,00:04:35
bewildering-looking, off-putting writing
system, which was actually very beautiful, very00:04:39
flexible, and lasted for
well over three millennia,00:04:43
probably closer to four millennia. And
it took a long time for the alphabet,00:04:46
which anybody would say was much, much
more useful and much more sensible, to00:04:50
displace it. So it's one of the major
stages of man's intellect, because quite00:04:57
soon after writing first took off,
the signs began to proliferate00:05:05
and someone said, "Hey, we haven't got a sign for
this sound," or, "We haven't got a sign for this00:05:09
idea." And so it began to swell
out. And at some extremely00:05:16
remarkable stage, one,
probably only one person00:05:19
suddenly realized that
if there was no control,00:05:23
they would grow exponentially
until it was all00:05:27
nonsense and everybody had their own writing. And
the second thing is that no one could remember00:05:31
them unless they were written down
in a retrievable way. So they00:05:34
invented not only writing,
they invented lexicography,00:05:38
which means that early in the
third millennium, they put down00:05:42
all the things that were made of wood
and all the things that were made of00:05:46
reeds and all the names of colors and of countries
and all the gods and everything. They made a00:05:50
systematic attempt to standardize
these signs and to make them00:05:56
retrievable, and of course
to teach them. And having00:06:00
exercised that rigor from
the outset, it meant00:06:04
that the thing became
streamlined and stayed00:06:08
more or less as it was all the way
through, for three millennia or00:06:12
more. Because the stamp
put on it by those early00:06:16
visionaries, not only who came up
with the system and how it would00:06:20
work, but to preserve it
and to safeguard it, was00:06:24
fantastically effective. So, it
means that there were scholars in00:06:27
Babylon in the third century or the
second century, when Alexander was00:06:31
there, for example. If somebody dug
up a tablet in very early writing,00:06:36
they would have a pretty good idea what it meant. They
would recognize the signs, even though they were so00:06:40
ancient, and they'd see the relationships
between them. So, you have a00:06:43
fantastically strong system
where the spinal cord00:06:50
was structured in a
lexicographic, regular system.00:06:54
So, lexicography and
what the signs were was00:06:58
jealously safeguarded and protected,
and it lasted fantastically.00:07:04
- We should say that the name of that system
that lasted for 3,000 years is cuneiform.00:07:10
- Yeah. So, in the 19th century, about 1840,00:07:13
1850, they started to find
these things on excavations in00:07:17
Iraq, the big Assyrian cities
and sometimes further south,00:07:21
the Babylonian cities. They found
these clay tablets, which in the00:07:25
ground lasted unimaginable lengths of00:07:28
time. And they were all written in
what we call cuneiform script. And00:07:33
the cuneiform part of
it means wedge-shaped,00:07:37
because cuneus in Latin means
wedge. And when they first saw00:07:41
these signs, they realized
that a cluster of marks00:07:45
broke down into different arrangements00:07:49
of triangular shapes. And it's
most clear on the Assyrian00:07:53
reliefs, where the writing is
very big and you can easily00:07:56
tell that they were that shape. On
a tablet, the wedge is not quite so00:08:00
predominant. So, that was it. So,
they first called them cuneatic00:08:04
or cuneiform, and the word
stuck. And of course,00:08:09
growing up in the British Museum and reading
these things for a living becomes a kind of00:08:14
lifetime's work to make sure that everybody
in the country knows what cuneiform means.00:08:18
Because once in a while you meet somebody who
never heard of the word at all, and this is00:08:21
appalling. So, people do
survive, however. But it's an00:08:25
important mission because such
an achievement by man and00:08:29
so much knowledge was encapsulated in00:08:33
these lumps of clay, because they
used it for everyday things like00:08:37
letters and business documents and
contracts. This is one thing. And then the00:08:41
kings wrote00:08:43
long, elaborate accounts of their campaigns
and their military activities. And00:08:47
then there was proper literature,
history, and magic and medicine and00:08:53
all other genres of literature
that we would naturally list on a00:08:57
sheet of paper in alphabetic
writing, what you would use writing00:09:00
for. They basically did.
And it had the unexpected00:09:04
quality that most of these clay
things lasted in the ground00:09:08
until now. So, however many hundreds of00:09:12
thousands of tablets are in the world's
museums and collections, there must be00:09:16
millions of them in the
ground awaiting excavation.00:09:19
So, in a way that's a comforting thought,
'cause they're safe there and protected.00:09:26
- You said that the development
of cuneiform, of these00:09:29
tablets, of written language is
one of the greatest, probably00:09:33
the greatest invention in
human history. How hard do00:09:37
you think it was to come up
with this? And we should make00:09:41
clear that that very specific
element of encoding sound00:09:49
on the tablet, that's the genius
invention. Drawing a picture makes00:09:53
sense. Okay, here's, you
know, barley. Here's the00:09:57
sun. Here's whatever, the actual object.00:10:00
- Exactly. - But to actually write down
sound is a genius invention.00:10:05
- Well, I think it's rather
paradoxical, because the first00:10:09
generation or so of tablets that we
have are written in these pictographic00:10:13
signs where each sign means
what it looks like. So, this00:10:17
is a very limited method of
recording messages, and it00:10:20
doesn't lend itself to recording
grammar. And then the secondary phase,00:10:24
as we understand it from archeology,
is the perception that you00:10:28
could take these signs, still
meaning what they look like but also00:10:32
what the words sounded like. So,
then you have all these wonderful00:10:36
ice cubes which express all the
sounds of the language from which you00:10:40
can record words and, and
grammar and everything00:10:44
else. Now, the thing is,
the received law from00:10:48
Assyriology is it was that way round, that00:10:51
first we had pictures and
secondly we had sound.00:10:55
Well, I have to say, I
find this very hard to00:10:59
believe, because if you
had a group of people00:11:03
in an environment where it was compellingly
necessary to make a system that you made00:11:09
marks on a surface which everybody
could understand and use,00:11:13
why wouldn't you start
out with signs that made00:11:17
sounds? Because everybody speaks
the same language, right? So00:11:21
you... they didn't have A, B, C, D,
E, F, G, but they could easily work00:11:25
out all the vowels and consonants
without naming them as00:11:29
vowels and consonants, but they're
component parts. So, they could have had00:11:32
signs that started out... Because
if you decided you had...00:11:36
We have 26, let's say they had
50 signs that would create the00:11:40
sound, they could write anything
without any further trouble. So, I00:11:44
find it very bewildering that
they started off with the least00:11:47
flexible and the least adaptable system00:11:51
of pictographs, and then they moved
on to the sound. I don't know why00:11:55
they bothered with it.
And my hunch is that the00:11:59
archeological evidence that we
have on this score is ultimately00:12:02
misleading, because I think
this, that probably for a00:12:06
very, very long time before
the Sumerians, people in the00:12:10
world, the world of what we
call the Middle East, were in00:12:13
contact, they traded, they probably
even had wars, and they had00:12:17
messages between them. And I think
there was a long running system of00:12:21
communication between people
who didn't share a language.00:12:27
for whom pictures would
suffice. So, if merchants come00:12:31
and they have three sheep to
sell, so they draw three little00:12:34
sheep. You know how much it is
and what they are and so forth.00:12:38
And so I think that what happened
with the Sumerians, with their00:12:42
pictographic signs, is that those signs
are right at the end of a very, very, very00:12:50
long period of time, when
somebody thought, "What we00:12:54
can do is take these stupid inhibited
no smoking signs and write language."00:13:00
That is what I think happened.
That's what I think happened.00:13:04
- Is this a controversial statement?00:13:05
- Highly controversial. Many
Assyriologists would leave the room.00:13:12
But I'm not scared of controversy because
it's natural. I mean, if you think00:13:16
about it, it's natural because00:13:19
you don't have to have an alphabet
to divide your word into sounds,00:13:24
see? For example, in
Sumerian, you have a funny00:13:28
system of writing, you have a root, like
du, which means to go. And then you00:13:32
have prefixes, like E or Mu or00:13:35
Ba, and one's a passive, one's an active,
and this and this. So when you have a00:13:39
sentence, you have one of
the Mu, Ba, or E prefixes,00:13:43
then you have the root, and then you
have things at the end. So it is called00:13:46
agglutinative by people who like to make
things look more important than they are.00:13:50
So you have the central thing, you slap stuff on
the beginning, slap stuff on the end, and each00:13:54
particle creates a bit of meaning. So you
have a long verb which tells you, "He00:13:58
would've done it if he could, but he
couldn't," kind of thing, in the form of the00:14:01
verb. But the thing is, if you wanted to write
down, you and I decided to write down, so the first00:14:05
thing we would do is have a
sign Mu, and then we'd have Ba,00:14:09
and then we'd have E, because every
five minutes people made those noises.00:14:15
You see what I mean?00:14:16
- Yeah, absolutely. Do you think it's
possible we might find much, much older--00:14:23
- I do00:14:24
- ... cuneiform type tablets?00:14:26
- Or, or pictographic type tablets,
before the cuneiform and00:14:30
it's drawing type, and I'll tell you why.00:14:32
Because there's this marvelous site
in Turkey called Gobekli Tepe.00:14:36
- Oh yeah? - Do you know about Gobekli Tepe?00:14:37
- Yes, of course. - Well, everybody knows about
the buildings and the00:14:41
architecture and the... everybody
knows about it. If you go00:14:45
all the way through the photographs,
which the archaeologists unwisely00:14:49
put online, you will find
in the middle of one color00:14:53
plate with lots of other things,
a round green stone like a00:14:57
scarab from Egypt. That's to say,
it has an arched back and a flat00:15:00
bottom. And on the flat bottom, there
are hieroglyphic signs carved in the00:15:04
stone, right? No one said
anything about it at00:15:08
all, but it's clear to me, A, that this was a stamp to ratify
where the carvings of the signs on clay or some other sealing00:15:15
carvings of the signs on
clay or some other sealing00:15:19
material would leave an impression. It
must be that. So this is about 9000 BC.00:15:26
Now when I was a boy at university
my professor said to me that00:15:30
the reason writing evolved in
Mesopotamia, because they had00:15:34
complex cities with ziggurats
and big buildings and lots of00:15:38
people and they had to organize everything,
and so they invented writing to cope with00:15:42
it. Well, if they had to
cope with that in Sumer in00:15:46
3000 BC, they sure as hell
had to do it at Gobekli00:15:50
Tepe because they've hardly even begun
to finish excavating the sites of-00:15:54
... Gobekli Tepe. They go on and
on like Manchester and Newcastle00:15:58
United. And really the old rule would be
you could not have architecture like that,00:16:06
that... without the... planned and
built according to principle with all00:16:10
the different people. You couldn't
have that without writing in southern00:16:14
Iraq. So how come
suddenly then 7,000 years00:16:17
earlier, they do it there?
That, and that green stone00:16:21
shows that they had writing.
That was an official who00:16:25
sealed this, got the stuff or whatever
it was, or it was his dad's name00:16:29
or whatever it is, got a wiggly
snake and a wiggly this. That is00:16:32
pictographic writing. Maybe even as
phonetic writing, I don't know, but it00:16:36
was writing thousands of years before00:16:40
in the south. And that's what I think
it is. You know, people came with00:16:44
metal from, or precious stones
from Anatolia. They knew that00:16:48
in the south they had lots and lots of
stuff, they wanted to trade, they had to00:16:51
communicate. And it's
basically like having a00:16:55
cigarette with an X through the middle.
Everybody in the world knows what00:16:59
that means. They don't know what the word
for cigarette is in this language or00:17:02
cancer or filter or tobacco,
it doesn't matter. That's00:17:06
pictographic writing.
We still use it. And,00:17:10
and it's, it's, it's above all kinds of
mess. And I think that was the prevailing00:17:14
system because I honestly believe
that the people at this time were00:17:18
not stupid. They weren't gorillas.
They weren't less advanced than00:17:22
we are. They were probably
indistinguishable from what we are. So you00:17:26
have merchants and wanderers and
people who say, "Let's go down the00:17:29
river and see where we end up." And
people looking for money, looking for00:17:33
women, looking for everything. I mean, and
that's surely how it was. But if you look at00:17:37
those Gobekli buildings with a skeptical00:17:40
eye, how it could be. I
mean, the finish of it is00:17:44
astonishing, the structure of
it, the vision of it. So the00:17:48
workforce and the tools
and the organization, you00:17:52
know, what did they do it with? A megaphone?
"Your breakfast!" And all that kind of stuff.00:17:55
No way. No way.00:17:57
- So that's a really
controversial statement that...00:17:59
- It is really controversial00:18:00
- ...at the time of Gobekli Tepe, there
may have been already a writing system.00:18:04
- There was, because the thing
is about it, that it's a seal00:18:08
to ratify... it's not just a
squiggle on a pot and you can00:18:12
say, "Oh, that's just a piece of..." This
is a finished thing with a flat surface.00:18:16
You press it down, so you have some contract,
you have some building arrangement,00:18:19
some... that we're paying for these
bricks, whatever it was. And the official00:18:23
person had to squash it down and it
leaves the impression. I mean, I am00:18:27
a great believer in Sherlock Holmes...00:18:30
...as a teaching system for
intelligence and rationality00:18:34
and logic in thinking. I read those
stories a million times when I was a kid,00:18:38
and the thing about them, one of the things
which impresses me most of all, was this00:18:42
point quoted by Holmes, not
original to him, that it is00:18:46
theoretically possible to infer
the Niagara Falls from a raindrop.00:18:52
- That's a powerful statement. Yeah.00:18:54
- It's a powerful statement. Well,
that seal from Gobekli Tepe is a00:18:58
raindrop from which I infer writing, and00:19:02
it's perfectly possible they all wrote on
flat leaves. After all, in many parts of00:19:06
the world, that's what happened. So
for example, in the Indus Valley,00:19:09
people write the most abject
nonsense about the Indus00:19:13
Valley writing system,
but all we have is seals,00:19:16
basically. So they are also for
ratification purposes, and they00:19:20
have the name of the owner in three
or four or maybe five signs, and00:19:24
it's probably me, son of my dad, or milkman
or whatever it is. And it's obvious,00:19:31
it's obvious that they had
writing on a perishable material.00:19:35
They can't just have had inscribed stone00:19:39
seals, and many parts
of India today write on00:19:43
palm leaf. Why should it be any different?
So people think, you know, "Oh, well,00:19:47
just 'cause it's now, it wouldn't be
then." But actually, that argument is00:19:50
utterly, utterly fallacious,
because the process of00:19:54
evolution is stymied left,
right, and center by00:19:57
inertia. Inertia is nearly as strong as00:20:01
evolution, and this is something
that the people who talk about00:20:05
progress and ideas have no idea about.00:20:07
- First of all, your whole line of work,
you're making me realize, is a kind of00:20:11
like Sherlock Holmes type of process.00:20:15
The deciphering of the
language, archeology, of taking00:20:18
those pieces of evidence and trying
to reconstruct a vision of that00:20:22
world, and now you're making me realize
that even all the cuneiform tablets we00:20:29
have is just a raindrop compared to the
waterfall of thousands of years of humans.00:20:39
- Yes, we have a lot, but it's nothing
in comparison with what existed.00:20:43
But not only that. See, we don't have
to decipher anymore. We can read00:20:47
Akkadian or Babylonian, Sumerian
pretty well fluently. That's not a00:20:51
problem. So the information
which you can get from these00:20:54
sources, especially three millennia
of sources, is very, very00:20:58
substantial. Very substantial, but it means
that Assyriologists have the in-built00:21:06
idea that what we have is something
like all there ever was, which is00:21:10
absurd. For example, there's
a period called the Ur III00:21:14
Period, where people lived
in city-states. They wrote00:21:18
very small account tablets by the
thousand, and there were two or three00:21:21
major cities where this is the way
they lived. People had to bring00:21:27
tithes and offerings, and everything
was recorded by what I always refer to00:21:31
and people sympathize with is the
ancestors of the Inland Revenue, because00:21:35
everything had to be written down so
that some schmuck could check it and00:21:39
fill out the ledger, and some other schmuck
above him could okay it, so there's no00:21:42
funny business or no mistakes. Now, the
thing is, there are thousands of those00:21:46
tablets written in about 2100 to 2000 BC,
thousands of them, about the size of a00:21:54
box of matches. So people
like to generalize about the00:21:58
Sumerians at this time of the world, but
they probably all came out of two rooms,00:22:07
because they were dumped when they
were no longer needed in some kind00:22:11
of room, and the archeologists in the 19th
century came down on these, and then all the00:22:14
locals came and they dug them up and they sold
them all over the place, and they've gone all00:22:18
over the world. Thousands and
thousands of them, out of probably two00:22:22
storage rooms, which is not
a whole culture or a whole00:22:26
country, or their whole history, or their
belief systems. So our view of it is00:22:32
skewed by the nature of the
material, and sometimes the00:22:36
material is opulent and
benevolent, but not00:22:40
always, and sometimes the
people who work with skewed00:22:43
material don't even realize
how skewed it is. I00:22:47
mean, you know, it's quite remarkable.00:22:50
- So you, in all your time
of studying cuneiform00:22:53
tablets, do you sometimes late at night00:22:57
get a glimpse of the waterfall?
Like, can you imagine?00:23:01
- Yes. I can imagine. I can
imagine easily, because00:23:05
once in a while, a library is
discovered. In the 1850s at00:23:08
Nineveh, which was the Assyrian
capital, there was a great king,00:23:12
king of the world, called
Ashurbanipal, and he had a00:23:16
fantastic library and he promoted
it. He impounded tablets,00:23:20
he had them brought to Nineveh. He
wanted all the prevailing knowledge and00:23:24
all knowledge from before under
one roof. It was kind of like00:23:27
an Alexandria thing. So he was
a trained scholar, and this00:23:31
is what he did, and they found it
in the 19th century. They dug it00:23:35
up, Layard and those people. So what
did they find? They found the tablets00:23:38
higgledy-piggledy all over the floor
of a huge room and in the corridors00:23:42
and everything- ...and lots of them
broken and lots of them burnt.00:23:48
So ever since then, until
really quite recently,00:23:53
Assyriologists who spent all their... Well,
people who work on these Nineveh tablets00:23:57
spent all their time joining the bits
together, and you have the story about00:24:01
Gilgamesh and the goddess who falls in
love with him in the garden, and she wants00:24:05
to seduce him, and you can't find the bit.
So you look for another bit and you look00:24:07
for another bit. And gradually, they piece
together the literature, and the assumption00:24:11
has always been that if you put them all
together again, you'll have the whole library.00:24:14
But it's the absolute opposite, because
what happened was that the Babylonians in00:24:18
the south, in my opinion,00:24:21
they worked hand-in-glove with the
Elamites from Iran. They had a pincer00:24:25
movement, and they beat Assyria, they
conquered Assyria. And they ran through00:24:29
the capital and they set fire to everything.
Pinched all the women and took all the00:24:34
jewelry and all the gold. And people say
that in a fit of pique, they destroyed00:24:38
the library. But they wouldn't destroy
the library because it was the giant00:24:42
brain from which the Assyrians ran
a world empire, and it had all the00:24:46
knowledge in the world. They
destroyed that? They spoke the same00:24:49
language, they had the same writing
system. They'd have taken them00:24:53
all safely home, cart after cart after
cart. And I think what's left there is00:25:00
duplicates and broken things, the things
that got dropped and everything, and that's00:25:04
everyone thinks is it.00:25:06
- Oh. - So this is also uncontroversial.
It's a controversial point.00:25:09
- You're just nonstop-00:25:10
- But it's common- - ...starting trouble.00:25:11
- It's common sense. It's common-00:25:12
- You're going to get both
of us canceled today.00:25:14
- But you see the thing. It's predicated on00:25:18
the assumption that what we
have is what there... only what00:25:22
there was. And this is such
a fallacy. It needs to be00:25:26
attacked left, right, and center.00:25:29
- So, a lot of the cuneiform
language is already deciphered.00:25:34
Can you speak to the deciphering
process? How hard is it?00:25:38
Maybe take us to this place of for00:25:43
you yourself first learning
a language. Figuring out the00:25:46
puzzle of it. How does it
feel? How does it look like00:25:50
to a brain that doesn't deeply understand
it? And how do you then piece stuff00:25:54
together? Maybe you can go
to the early days. Sort of00:25:58
the Rosetta Stone of cuneiform also.00:26:01
- That's important. Well, the first thing is,
is that how the cuneiform writing system00:26:04
works, because the crucial
point, once you see00:26:09
it, it makes a lot of things clear,
is that they wrote in syllables.00:26:14
So, if you take the English alphabet,
which of course they didn't, you have00:26:18
the letter B, G, D, P, H, and so00:26:22
forth. They couldn't write a
consonant. They couldn't do00:26:25
that. So, what they did is
they had a vowel before a00:26:29
consonant or one after.
Say you have Ab and Ba.00:26:34
But as they had four vowels, you had to have
Ab and Ba, Ib and Bi, Ub and Bu, Eb and00:26:42
Be. So you had the range of things
clustered around what we call a consonant.00:26:47
So they had all those for all the
letters, which gave them a basic00:26:51
system. There was much more to it than that,
and it was more complicated than that.00:26:54
Well, we don't have to really go into it,
but basically if you are a Babylonian00:26:59
and you want to write the word museum,
which of course is one of the most00:27:03
important words in the English language
and other languages too. So what you would00:27:07
do is you would write the syllable "mu"-00:27:09
...and then the sign "Z"
and then the sign "um".00:27:13
So you split the word up into its component
syllables. When you read it in your00:27:17
mind, you squash them together
into museum. That's the00:27:21
basic system. They had other
signs which gave you a clue as00:27:25
to the meaning and the bits around the
edge. But it's basically syllabic writing.00:27:31
So, when you go to university
to study cuneiform,00:27:36
what you have to learn is all the signs00:27:40
and all their values,
because unfortunately they00:27:44
didn't just have one for each,
they had multiple ones. And the00:27:47
reason is not that they were
mad or they wanted to make life00:27:51
hell, but because the syllables derive
from the writing of Sumerian words.00:27:59
So the Sumerian vocabulary
had a lot of words that were00:28:02
probably differentiated by tone.00:28:07
So you might have "Ba" and then a
rising "A" and then a lowering...00:28:11
And these signs all retain
the "Ba" value even though00:28:14
there were no tones. So it means if
you look at a sign list, there's a00:28:18
lot of signs. You have "Ba" number one, which
is the common. Then there's "Ba" number00:28:22
two, "Ba" number three, and you have to learn
them all. And when you read, you have to learn00:28:26
how to do it. So, in the
modern world, if you go to00:28:30
university to do Assyriology,
which I hope you and all of your00:28:34
disciples will do as soon as possible,
you actually have to cope with00:28:38
two languages: the Sumerian
and the Babylonian. Now, the00:28:41
first thing is this, that
the Babylonian language00:28:45
is a Semitic tongue, which
although it's extinct,00:28:50
is connected to or related
to Hebrew, Aramaic,00:28:54
Arabic, Ethiopic, Syriac.
All that family of Semitic00:28:58
languages which are still
alive. It's an early00:29:01
example of one of those. So
that when the decipherment came00:29:05
along, it was the Semitic
dictionary that they fell back00:29:09
on to identify words, nouns, and00:29:12
roots. The other language, which
is Sumerian, the one when you00:29:16
stick bits in the beginning and
stick bits at the end, is not only00:29:20
not Semitic, it's not related
to any other known language.00:29:25
- Oh, no.00:29:26
- Yeah, this is a bewitching thing. It's
a bewitching thing to me, and this00:29:30
is how to understand it.
Because the languages that we00:29:34
study in the world today,
linguists study, they more or less00:29:38
all fall into a language
group. So you have00:29:42
Indo-European with
Spanish, Italian, Latin,00:29:45
Hittite, and so forth, French, that's one00:29:49
group. And you have Germanic
and you have Slavonic. And most00:29:52
languages, even the far-flung ones,
fall into what can be seen to be00:29:56
maybe big and airy groups,
their family like that. There's00:30:00
not one for Sumerian.
So this means that the00:30:04
truth that languages do not exist
in a vacuum, but they're part of a00:30:08
big family, must always
have been true. So that00:30:12
when writing arrives about 3000,
say, 300 BC, to write properly.00:30:19
It means that Sumerian was recorded
just in time, but the big languages,00:30:27
maybe in China, in Russia, in somewhere else
in Asia, that were related to Sumerian,00:30:33
- Are gone?00:30:34
- ...are all gone. They're gone forever and
ever and ever, unless something amazing00:30:38
happens. So we've got the one representative
of this bizarre family. Is that-00:30:44
- Amazing. - It is. And it's a very
stimulating thing to imagine. I00:30:48
personally believe that Neanderthals
and early Homo sapiens, for sure,00:30:55
had language. For sure they talked to
one another. It's impossible that they00:30:58
didn't. The point came when
they did, they did. And00:31:02
the Neanderthals, 800,000
years of rural life00:31:06
in Europe, they had to deal with the Ice Age,
they all lived together, they bring up their00:31:09
children. You think they couldn't speak
anything? They have the same apparatus.00:31:13
And if you have a human brain,
then it responds to stimulus. And00:31:17
the more stimulus there is for
communication, I mean, the idea that you and00:31:21
I are out hunting rhino- ...and,
and, and you say, "Legs." Well, shut00:31:27
up, I'm concentrating. "Legs,
legs." And then I suddenly think,00:31:31
"Oh, I get it. You are Legs."00:31:35
Right? You only have to do that once, then
you know who I am. So I know that I'm00:31:39
me and that you are you. So
people who say that they couldn't00:31:42
distinguish ego and all that,
it's absolutely stupid. If you00:31:46
cut your hand with a knife, you sure as
hell experience... You sure as hell do. It00:31:53
hurts.00:31:54
hurts a lot. You might even bleed to
death. But it's not somebody else's hand,00:31:59
and it's your hand and it's your existence and
your life that's threatened. You think people00:32:02
weren't conscious that they were
an entity? I don't believe it.00:32:06
- And they probably had a way
to express that with sounds.00:32:10
- Well, eventually, yes. Names. I mean-00:32:13
- Names - ...names the things, and then
you have the idea that a label00:32:17
fixes to something. Then the light bulb
has gone on, and next minute you have00:32:21
rhino, and you have skin, and you
have babies, and you... Because00:32:25
I think you have an idea, and the idea then
drives the brain, and the brain has another00:32:29
idea. It works like fertility.00:32:31
- So what do you think is the motivation,
the primary driver of developing written00:32:35
language? Is it... Does it go
hand-in-hand with civilization?00:32:40
- I think that the media in which it
appears is when there's a lot of00:32:44
people living in an urban environment.00:32:47
And with rival institutions
or the king or the government00:32:51
or all those sorts of things.00:32:54
And that's why I think Gobekle
Tepe must have been the00:32:57
same thing. I read somewhere that
they're all nomads and they only came to00:33:01
Gobekle Tepe, you know, three
months a year. I mean, that00:33:05
cannot be true that they
were nomads, and they...00:33:08
Cannot be true. To get
the stone and someone has00:33:12
to draw on the ground the plan of the
building, they have to work out how thick00:33:16
it's going to be, how high it's going to
be. I mean, you can't just, you know,00:33:22
like that, like gorillas.00:33:25
- All right. So, deciphering,
the process of deciphering.00:33:28
- So when I started, there were
grammars and scientists, and00:33:32
dictionaries. Everything was marvelous. It was all
basically deciphered. All you had to do was get on with00:33:36
learning it. But at the
beginning, when the first00:33:39
tablets and bricks in cuneiform and stone00:33:42
inscriptions came to light, no one could
read them. But they knew they were00:33:46
writing, but they didn't know how to read
them. And what happened was, like you said00:33:50
before, with the Rosetta Stone,
it was something directly00:33:54
comparable, because there
was an inscription of00:33:58
one of the Persian kings halfway
up a mountain in a place00:34:01
called Bisutun, where this King Darius
had written an account of his successful00:34:08
career in Elamite and in
Babylonian and in Old Persian,00:34:16
a trilingual version. And
Old Persian, although00:34:20
it's obviously an archaic form of
the language, Persian is still00:34:23
alive. It was still alive in the
19th century. So, since the Old00:34:27
Persian was written in a very simple
style of cuneiform, they deciphered it,00:34:31
they twigged it was Old Persian,
they read it in Persian, and they00:34:35
read the names Daray awush
in Old Persian. And then00:34:39
suddenly, somebody realized that the other
two columns were about the same length.00:34:43
- Brilliant.00:34:44
- What do you know? And the thing is, it said,
"I am Darius the great king, king of the00:34:48
world, king of the... son of... grandson of..."
So there's a whole paragraph with repeated things00:34:52
in the Persian which they could understand.
So what do you know? They're reiterated00:35:00
passages in the other two
languages. So that was the key,00:35:04
that kind of... the chisel that opened up00:35:07
cuneiform writing proper.
And the thing was, they soon00:35:11
twigged that the language of
the Babylonian was a Semitic00:35:15
tongue. And this was so important. I
think the first word they discovered00:35:19
was the word for river, which is Naharu in
Akkadian and نحر in Arabic and Aramaic.00:35:27
And when they realized that the word
that corresponded to the Persian00:35:31
had this form, this was a gift, a gift of00:35:35
gold, because everybody immediately
seized their Arabic and Hebrew00:35:39
dictionaries and started leafing through,
looking for words that would fit in the context.00:35:42
And they basically deciphered
this inscription in that00:35:46
sort of way. And of course, all
the other inscriptions came in00:35:50
order, and there were lots and lots of
difficulties which had to be resolved, but00:35:54
that's the basic thing. And
without that trilingual,00:35:58
I don't know what would have
happened. I mean, I suppose it's00:36:02
conceivable that in the very
modern world, something00:36:06
might have happened. But as
it was, it was done by sheer00:36:09
brainpower, by very, very
clever persons just doing00:36:13
it. And they cracked it. The Elamite
language is much more difficult, but they...00:36:17
got a lot of it too. So, it was a
very romantic thing because the00:36:21
inscription was carved on a mountain
face far above the plain, and00:36:25
Henry Rawlinson, who was an
upstanding young British00:36:28
officer who claimed to decipher
cuneiform quite unjustifiably,00:36:32
climbed up there with some
miserable kid and made00:36:36
squeezes of the whole thing overlooking
the plain, thousands of feet up in the00:36:40
air, and brought those back, and they
were used in the decipherment. So,00:36:45
it's very romantic.00:36:46
- Wait a minute. A more controversial
statement from today. Henry00:36:50
Rawlinson doesn't deserve
the credit for that?00:36:52
- No, I don't think he does. He's called
the Father of Assyriology, but I00:36:56
think he's the Stepfather of Assyriology
because when he first got these00:37:00
inscriptions, he wrote a long book about
it, which was almost entirely wrong.00:37:05
And there was a clergyman in Northern
Ireland called Edward Hincks00:37:10
who lived in a place called Killyleagh
and had five daughters and ran this00:37:13
church, who was possibly a card-carrying
genius, if not jolly, jolly00:37:20
close. And what happened
with him was this. There was00:37:24
an ongoing competition...
well, an ongoing challenge to00:37:28
decipher hieroglyphic writing, which
Champollion usually gets the credit00:37:31
for, and Hincks was very
interested in trying to00:37:35
decipher hieroglyphic ahead of the French.00:37:39
And he ran into a sort of dead end at one
stage, and he thought he'd have a look at00:37:42
cuneiform to see if it was helpful.
And at the same time, he cracked it.00:37:50
He worked out how it worked. He realized
that one sign can have more than one value00:37:55
of sound and of meaning because they
are multivalent, the signs. I tried to00:37:59
shelter you from the horrible news. But
it actually, it's not a walk in the00:38:04
park. It takes about five years to you
probably do it in about four, probably.00:38:11
- That is a compliment. I think
you just complimented me. Thank00:38:15
you. Thank you very much.00:38:19
So, you're saying one sign that looks
exactly the same might have different00:38:23
sounds, given the context?00:38:24
- Yeah, and you have to
choose the right sound, and00:38:28
also different meaning as well.
Because for example, if you have a00:38:32
sign for "hot," the word "hot,"
right? You can't really have a00:38:36
picture sign for "hot."00:38:39
It doesn't make sense, but what they
did is they did a drawing of a kind of00:38:45
complex thing with a brazier inside
another sign which meant "hot."00:38:49
So that sign existed, but it also meant
other things as well, and you had to choose00:38:53
the right one for the context. All the
context do matter. I mean, it really00:38:56
is quite a matter for despair
when you start cuneiform, because00:39:00
on top of everything else, they
didn't leave gaps between the words.00:39:04
And that's really... - So they're all connected?00:39:05
- That's really mean. Yeah. So when you read
what you have to do, you start with the00:39:11
first sign, and you think of
the sign, and you go through00:39:15
the values in your mind,
and there's the next sign.00:39:18
And if one is "ba" and the next
one is "ab" among other readings,00:39:22
"ba-ab" sounds like a syllable structure
for a word, and you go on like that.00:39:26
So there are two things about it. One
is that if you want to, you can master00:39:30
it. The other thing is that
the number of variables was00:39:33
restricted. They controlled
it, so it wasn't insane.00:39:37
So in other words, if you learn the corpus and you
would learn how the signs are composed and you00:39:41
learn their different values, then you've
got it down. ...And off you go. And00:39:48
it's very beautiful, I
think. It's marvelous.00:39:51
- Can you, in all seriousness, take me back
to the time when you were learning it?00:39:55
- Yes. - What's the process of learning it?00:39:57
- Well, I had a very abnormal upbringing
because when I went to university,00:40:01
for about three years beforehand
I'd wanted to be an Egyptologist.00:40:06
So I read the grammar by Gardiner and
was looking forward very much to study00:40:13
ancient Egyptian, and what
happened was that I went up to the00:40:16
University of Birmingham where
I went to university, and00:40:22
there was a man called Rundle Clark,
who was an Egyptologist, and Rundle00:40:26
Clark came in on the Monday
and gave us one lesson about00:40:29
Egyptian sculpture or something like
that, and the next day he died.00:40:36
Bang. So, the professor called
me into his room and said,00:40:42
"Look, it's going to take me a while
to get an Egyptologist. They don't00:40:46
grow on trees, but there's another
person in this department who00:40:50
teaches another ancient language,
called Lambert, and he teaches00:40:53
cuneiform. So what I suggest
is you go and do a bit of00:40:57
cuneiform with Professor Lambert, and
then when I get an Egyptologist, you can00:41:01
convert back." So I go and knock on
the door. "Yes?" I went in and said,00:41:09
"I want to learn cuneiform."
And Professor Lambert, who was00:41:14
rather a Sherlock Holmes kind of figure,
aesthetic, bony, sarcastic, cruel.00:41:20
- Cruel. - Cruel, absolutely terrifying, and I said00:41:24
I wanted to learn cuneiform,
and he wasn't at all pleased00:41:28
because this was a time in
Britain when professors00:41:34
resented having students to teach because
it butted into their research time.00:41:39
It was that sort of arrangement.00:41:40
- Yes. - Anyway, I started it off and
after about, I don't know,00:41:44
maybe one or maybe two lessons, I knew
this was going to be my life's work. So00:41:48
that's what happened to me. It was
an amazing thing. So he gave me a00:41:52
list of signs to learn, basic signs.00:41:56
So I did, in the next couple of days, and
then we came in and we started reading.00:42:02
- So, given the complexity of the signs,
why did cuneiform last 3,000 years?00:42:10
The most successful writing system ever.00:42:12
- Fair question. There are several factors.
One is the famous factor of inertia.00:42:19
The second thing is that
people who could read and00:42:23
write, and were in charge
of archives, and were the00:42:27
clerks in the temple,
and the writers for the00:42:31
king and everything, commanded
a very great deal of power00:42:35
because most of the public couldn't.00:42:39
So they reserved to themselves
knowledge, understanding,00:42:44
philosophical inquiry. I mean,
no doubt it went on in pubs and00:42:47
things, but they were in charge.
They had everything under lock and00:42:51
key. And I think the
scribal schools are rather00:42:55
cliquey. They were
certainly cliquey in the00:42:59
sense of Oxford and Cambridge
being rivals, that sort of thing.00:43:02
They had that sort of idea, and
it was in no one's interest00:43:06
whatsoever. Nobody would ever
concede any interest in the00:43:09
idea of literacy for all. This would
never be thought of, and it would be00:43:16
anathema. And so if you got on a soapbox
on a Saturday afternoon and said,00:43:20
"Oh, enough of this, we have to teach the
children," they'd be taken away, I think.00:43:25
- So we're getting, in these
tablets, the output of the00:43:29
intellectual class, a very
small fraction of humans.00:43:33
So we're getting just the
Oxford and the Cambridge.00:43:35
- We are, except that when you went
to scribal school, you had to00:43:39
learn Sumerian and Akkadian, the
languages properly, and all the00:43:43
vocabulary and the grammar.00:43:45
So some boys probably had a lot of
trouble doing this. And, you know,00:43:54
they were okay, but then there ain't
gonna be no geniuses. And I think the00:43:57
situation in the school was
that the teachers farmed out00:44:01
the kids who would actually rather have
been outside playing football but could00:44:05
read and write, to earning
their living doing00:44:09
low-level reading and writing.
That's to say, writing00:44:12
contracts, letters, everyday things for00:44:16
people. Because no one could read
and write, so you had to get a00:44:19
scribe if you're gonna marry your daughter
off, and you get all the witnesses about00:44:23
the presence and all this, all that
thing had to be done for four days. So00:44:27
the writer would come and do... So your00:44:31
medium-level writers would
serve that requirement. And00:44:35
very talented or clever
or intellectual students00:44:40
would be encouraged to go into
one of the literary professions,00:44:44
which would be, so to speak,
medicine, law, working for the00:44:50
king, working for the Church,
I mean, the priesthood, so00:44:54
all those things which were dependent upon
archives and writing, they would find their00:44:58
niveau. And also architecture, because00:45:02
if a big building had to be built,
then somebody had to know about load00:45:05
bearing things and brick measurements.
And so some of them went into00:45:09
that kind of work. And also, probably
some of them went into running00:45:13
the army and you had to move
stores and animals. So they,00:45:17
they found their niveau, and
some of them were intellectually00:45:21
very able indeed, and they went into,00:45:25
the disciplines of, on the one hand,
astrology, but more seriously into astronomy00:45:32
and theoretical grammar,
because they had treatises00:45:35
about the relationship between the
two languages and how they worked and00:45:40
different parts of speech, and
they wrote learned commentaries as00:45:43
well, what words meant. So
there was an intellectual00:45:47
high-level top, and then there were
lots of professional scribes, and then00:45:51
the kids who left school as soon as
possible and did all that, like today.00:45:57
- I apologize to be philosophical,
but Wittgenstein, the00:46:00
philosopher, said, "The limits of
our language is the limits of our00:46:04
world." So to what degree did the languages
that were encoded in cuneiform define00:46:12
human civilization, would you say?
What were the things that were00:46:16
complicated to express and
therefore were not expressed often?00:46:21
- That's a really interesting question.
So in terms of richness of vocabulary00:46:30
and richness of verbal subtlety, I think
Babylonian rivals Arabic and of course00:46:37
English. In other words, you can
say whatever you want in English,00:46:41
however subtle it might be, even if
people understand the subtlety. You can00:46:45
because the tools are fantastic. And
Arabic has lots of synonyms and lots00:46:49
of devices and all the same.
Same in Babylonian. It was a00:46:53
fully-fledged literary language. The00:46:56
question about whether the
language put a stop to00:47:00
further things, which is
basically what you're asking,00:47:05
is immensely complicated. But the one
thing that strikes me as relevant00:47:12
is that a very huge proportion of00:47:16
scholarly literature in
Mesopotamia, it takes the form of00:47:19
omens, because they believed that events,00:47:23
accidental or deliberately
stimulated, had implications for00:47:27
what was going to happen.00:47:29
And they took omens from things
in the sky and things in the00:47:33
street and every single
thing. If you were a00:47:37
well-qualified diviner, it would
have this significance. Right? Now,00:47:44
there are thousands of
lines of omens, of all00:47:48
different kinds. And in
Akkadian, it says, for00:47:52
example, "If a lizard runs
across the breakfast table, the00:47:55
queen will die." So if you
translate the Akkadian this way,00:47:59
the word, "if," verb, and
everything, "If that, then00:48:02
this." So there are
thousands of, thousands of00:48:06
lines translated into many books about
omens where, "If this happens, that will00:48:10
happen." So this is how it's
understood by my colleagues.00:48:15
Well, this is absolutely impossible
because if you are the chief diviner00:48:19
for the king and you open up a00:48:23
sheep to take a liver out and
examine it according to the... And00:48:27
if the queen's going to die and the king's
there, you're not going to say, "The queen's00:48:31
going to die." I mean, you're going to look
like a fucking idiot if she doesn't die.00:48:36
And if she does die, you're going to
be responsible. So all you can ever00:48:40
do and ever, ever have been able
to do is to say, "There's a00:48:43
sign here that says that the
queen could die." Meaning,00:48:47
could die, not will die. And
therefore, the requisite00:48:51
ritual or magic must immediately
swing into action to00:48:55
defer the danger. So the point is
that A equals B is never true.00:49:02
It means that with A, B could be, might
be, ought to be, should be, could be00:49:10
true, all those subtle things.
So that the diviner who works00:49:14
for the king must have been a philosopher00:49:18
who looks at the king, he
looks at the king and he00:49:22
knows what the king wants him to
say. So he has to tell the king00:49:27
what he wants to hear. He has to tell the
king if it's bad news in such a way that he00:49:31
doesn't mind it or he won't worry. It's
the most beautiful thing. It's so subtle.00:49:36
It's, it's like a violin concerto. It
can never have been A equals B for a00:49:43
minute. So the medical texts
say, "If a man has this,"00:49:47
doo-dee-dee-doo, you know? "You do this,
your drink's..." He'll get better. Right?00:49:50
He says, "You'll get better."
Have you ever met a doctor00:49:54
who will say, "You do this, you'll
get better"? No. They say, "All00:49:58
being well, you'll be back on your feet."
Or, "I've seen this kind of condition many00:50:02
times, everything should go fine. You should
get better, you should be better soon." But00:50:06
never, "You will get better," because
what happens if you die? Where are you?00:50:10
- The lawyers will show up.00:50:12
- Absolutely. So this means that not
expressible in Akkadian grammar are these00:50:19
modal verbs. ...Could, might, should,
ought. They can't be expressed00:50:24
grammatically, but it is
impossible that it was such00:50:28
a magnificent literary
language, where they00:50:33
didn't have these subtleties.
It's utterly impossible. And00:50:37
if you translate, "He will," in a literary00:50:40
text, "He might," then the whole text is
different. The whole text is different.00:50:45
- Yeah, absolutely.00:50:46
- And they don't... My colleagues
translate... It says in the grammar books,00:50:49
like that, automatically. There's no
self-appraisal of the folly of it.00:50:57
- You have said the translation is part
archeology, part detective work, part00:51:00
poetry. Can we just speak about
translation and the art of it a bit more?00:51:05
- Yes.00:51:06
- I mean, it's such an
incredible discipline.00:51:10
Just like you said, hinted
at, just a subtle variation00:51:14
in a single word can change everything.00:51:16
- Well, you know, the truth
about translation is that00:51:20
you never really have a word in one
language which precisely equates another.00:51:26
You never do. They're always a kind of the00:51:30
best you can do. And sometimes it makes no
difference and sometimes it's really quite00:51:34
misleading. And so00:51:36
what people do when they learn Akkadian, is
they learn the Akkadian word and they learn the00:51:40
English translation, right?
You have, "To divide."00:51:44
So whenever you have the verb,
it's some form of divide or00:51:48
division. But actually it's
not, because divide is like the00:51:52
primary root, but there's maybe 1000:51:55
nuances of what that can mean
in English, where the one at00:51:58
the bottom and the one at the top, you'd hardly
know they were connected. And the Chicago00:52:02
Dictionary, which is such a magnificent
thing, when you come to the museum and00:52:06
see me, I'll show you this. It's
the most salient and important00:52:11
thing that came out of America in
all its history, is the Chicago00:52:15
Assyrian Dictionary, which is
this long. There's only one00:52:19
rival to it for cultural importance,
which is the electric guitar, of00:52:22
course. But the two of them, I think, are
your countrymen's greatest achievement.00:52:29
- It's the pride of our nation.00:52:31
- I think so. - ...those two things.00:52:32
- The very thing.00:52:33
- Chicago dictionary. Can you... I'm sorry to take
the attention. What is the Chicago Dictionary?00:52:37
- It started in the '20s, and they made a
dictionary of the Babylonian language.00:52:42
- Ah. - A to Z, so to speak. And it's as long
as this table. It's a magnificent00:52:46
thing, and this big. And
the people who worked on00:52:50
it were real translators, so they
knew that it wasn't lexically A00:52:54
means B, but they had... So
if you have something in a00:52:57
proverb, the meaning is gonna
be a little bit different00:53:01
from in their letter. And, you
know, so people really, really00:53:05
understand Akkadian, they really
do. But this thing about the modal00:53:09
verbs is an interesting
conundrum to me, because00:53:12
there's no way it's reflected
in the writing. So I can only00:53:16
assume that there was some
kind of drawing out of the00:53:20
vowel in a verb, meaning "could".
Like you were saying, it00:53:24
might do it, something like
that. Anyway, nowadays we— it's00:53:28
not the decipherment that's
the job; it's just reading.00:53:31
And if you have lots of tablets to
work on, like on a dig, it's very00:53:35
exciting if they come out of the ground and no
one's looked for them before you. It's your job.00:53:39
And if you're a competent Assyriologist,00:53:43
you should be able to
sight-read more or less.00:53:46
Except most— say, a letter or
something like that, but most00:53:50
documents have some damage, so you
have to learn how to interpret00:53:55
stuff. And also, some literature is
very difficult because of technical00:53:59
vocabulary, and then they had technical
vocabulary and unusual words.00:54:03
- So you can do all of that. You can kind
of figure out the technical complexities.00:54:09
You can figure out the noise,
meaning missing pieces.00:54:14
- Yeah. Sometimes you can calculate what it
ought to be, make a reasonable suggestion.00:54:19
And this dictionary, which I was talking
to you about, is such a fantastic00:54:23
tool, because a lot of people
worked on it. It was for00:54:27
the National Endowment for the
Humanities, and it was for00:54:31
decades and decades of work.
And most of the world's best00:54:34
Assyriologists collaborated on
it. So the quality of translation00:54:38
and understanding is really extraordinary.00:54:41
- What are some things you've read
from that time? Is there some00:54:45
jokes? Is there some love letters?00:54:48
- There are one or two letters
about that from a chap to a woman00:54:51
about, you know, "You are very beautiful
and your lips are like radishes and00:54:55
your ears are like walruses," and
things. But there are some things like00:54:59
that. And then there's a kind of
street drama in Babylon, in 4th00:55:03
century BC, something like
that, when there must have been00:55:07
actors who did this in the
street. And it's Marduk and00:55:14
Sarpanitum, his wife, and another woman.
Marduk's having an affair with this other—00:55:21
- Oh, no. - goddess. And Sarpanitum is
jealous, and these women00:55:26
fight in the street and hurl insults at one another,
and, you know, "slop bucket" and all this kind of00:55:30
stuff. It's hilarious, and it must
have been a bit like a, sort of00:55:33
Verdi opera without the music,
I suppose. I don't know. But00:55:37
anyway, it starts off when00:55:41
Sarpanitum is in the room and Marduk's
in bed with this other goddess00:55:44
on the roof and she can hear. You could
say it was an eternal human issue.00:55:50
- Yeah, yeah, love, heartbreak,
jealousy, all of that.00:55:53
- And between deities also.00:55:55
Because deities are only modeled
on human beings, after all, so...00:55:58
- Yeah, deities is a grandiose
way of expressing human00:56:02
affairs, human behaviors,
human ways, yeah.00:56:06
In the writing, what was their
relationship to the divine?00:56:10
- Relationship with the divine,
well, the first thing to00:56:13
say is that they had a large pantheon of
gods. So there were three gods at the00:56:19
top, sometimes called
Anu, Enlil, and Ea. There00:56:23
were three gods at the top and
hundreds of other gods and00:56:27
goddesses. And you have the situation00:56:31
that I think lots of small
villages and towns had their00:56:35
old, ancient gods, and eventually they
were all worked into a kind of theological00:56:39
system like a phone book. And the
lesser, minor gods were amalgamated00:56:43
and then they were given jobs in
the households of the big gods.00:56:47
So there was a sort of structure.00:56:51
So you have this in the background, a big, sweeping
theology, like you have in the world today in00:56:55
some parts of the world, and
this was the main system.00:56:59
And the main gods were concerned
with the ruler and the fate of the00:57:02
country, and another god was
concerned with illness and...00:57:10
and the dead and what happens to the
dead, and they had other specialties,00:57:14
and they all had their own temples.
And when a baby came into the world,00:57:19
probably this was universally
true, the baby was put00:57:23
under the tutelage of one
or other of the gods.00:57:27
Sometimes, you know, the royal family,
they were the big shots, but sometimes00:57:31
not, or the ones that were in the
family or something like that. So00:57:34
people had grown up with the
idea that among all of them,00:57:38
there were special ones for the
family and they had a special one who00:57:42
was supposed to look after them.
That's the sort of basic idea.00:57:46
But the trouble is, since gods
are, as you say, human beings on a00:57:50
larger scale, they can be
forgetful or uninterested00:57:54
or on holiday, and there are lots of
ways that you have to prompt your.00:57:58
Make little sacrifices and little
bribes so they do their job and keep an00:58:02
sacrifices and little bribes so
they do their job and keep an00:58:06
eye on you. So they had that kind
of slightly practical view of gods,00:58:09
that they were a bit unpredictable, "Great
when they were there but not always there"00:58:12
sort of idea. And I also believe this,
that a lot of people in the world today00:58:16
idea. And I also believe this, that
a lot of people in the world today00:58:23
who did not have the disadvantage
of growing up in a stifling00:58:27
religion, but are just normal
people, get a lot more interested00:58:30
when they're really ill or
when they have a big disaster.00:58:35
All of a sudden, God or gods seem
a lot more important than they do00:58:41
normally, so that few people walk about
in a state of religious awe, and a good00:58:49
proportion of clergymen I've ever
met don't do that either. It's a00:58:53
kind of conception that's not
actually based on reality, that00:58:57
the individual's response
to religious stimuli00:59:01
fluctuates and is varied and
is often a response to need.00:59:05
It doesn't come from nothing. I
mean, people don't suddenly feel,00:59:09
"I've got to thank the Lord for the
rainbow," or something like that.00:59:13
I think it's probably true
today. I mean, when you read00:59:16
the investigations they make of religion
today, Christianity in this country00:59:20
is on the decline, because people
who are supposed to be Christian00:59:24
say they aren't anymore, they're
atheists. And people who say,00:59:28
"I go to church and I believe in everything," it
is a relatively small number of people saying00:59:32
now this is the situation, which
is quite remarkable if you think00:59:36
about it. Lord knows what the consequence
will be for the human race, whether00:59:40
religion will balance out, whether
it will die off. Who knows?00:59:45
- I think it's an ancient
technology that has proven across00:59:48
millennia to give a set of tools to humans
to contend, as you said, with suffering.00:59:56
That's a part of life. So
when those rare moments come01:00:00
when you have to deal with deep pain, loss,
suffering, heartbreak, all those things...01:00:08
...looking up to the sky
and asking questions and01:00:11
trying to figure out the answers in
your conversation with the divine...01:00:15
- I think that's true, but I
think in Mesopotamia it was01:00:18
different in terms of its
potency and immediacy01:00:22
because there's no skyscrapers in
Iraq. You know, if you live in01:00:26
Southern Iraq and you sleep on
the roof, there are no lights at01:00:30
night. You're under the stars, you
can see everything 'cause of no smog01:00:34
and everything like that. And
the idea that the gods are there01:00:38
watching, it's not like
a big artifice like01:00:42
it is here. It just doesn't ring
true here. You can't come to it01:00:46
and really believe in it, whereas
these people didn't have to01:00:50
really believe in it because it was it.01:00:53
- It's the obvious practical part
of life. They're right there.01:00:58
- But it's not they didn't believe in
ghosts, they took them for granted.01:01:02
And they didn't believe in the gods, they
took them for granted. This is a different01:01:06
mechanism, because nobody here in the
world today takes those things for01:01:09
granted, just the opposite. But I think
that's how it worked. So you didn't01:01:13
have people wrestling with the
idea of whether the gods really01:01:17
exist or whether they really care about
me. They gave them a nudge when it was01:01:21
necessary, and they might offer
this, they might offer that, but it01:01:26
was the system, it was
the prevailing system.01:01:30
And I think it's an important
difference. And also that thing about01:01:34
ghosts is, that is clear from the
inscriptions, all of them that01:01:38
I managed to find, that
nobody ever asked themselves,01:01:42
"Do these things exist or
not?" Or, "Did I really see01:01:46
them or not?" They just took
it all for granted. Granted.01:01:50
- What are ghosts? Is it usually ancestors?01:01:54
- Well, everybody who died
in bed naturally or01:01:57
peacefully, what we call
their ghost, went down to the01:02:01
netherworld, and there they were. So they
buried people jolly quick for obvious01:02:08
reasons, and like they
do in Islam and Judaism01:02:12
today, it's the same kind of idea.
And the spirit of the person01:02:19
went down through the gates of
the netherworld and stayed there.01:02:24
So that's the basic situation.
And people in their houses had01:02:28
actual burials under the courtyard,
and they had a thing where you01:02:32
pour stuff down a hole, fluid and food,
kind of symbolic offerings to them.01:02:39
- So isn't that a way to lessen
the impact of mortality?01:02:44
- I don't know, because you
know that everyone's going01:02:48
to die. I think the real tragedy
would be if we're not supposed01:02:52
to. That would be the tragedy.
But every single person01:02:58
is going to die. So all relationships
have this finite clause in them. So if01:03:06
you're very fond of somebody or
you love somebody and they die,01:03:10
it's kind of infantile to whine about01:03:14
it ever after. Because what do you
think was going to happen? Either01:03:17
you or them. You know, I
always see it like that. I01:03:21
don't feel grief when people die.01:03:24
- It is infantile, but I've got to
tell you something about human01:03:26
beings. We're all kind of
infantile all the way through01:03:30
from, you know, we don't stop being
infantile after we're infants.01:03:34
It's- it's one thing to know it,01:03:37
you know, theoretically, and it's
another thing to know it know it. Like01:03:41
this thing ends, this ride ends.01:03:45
- But that's the pain, it's the
fact that the whole thing ends.01:03:49
And when people fall off the
edge, they fall off the edge.01:03:54
- So yeah, the knowledge that it ends is the
painful thing, not the actual moment of the01:03:58
ending. Many times what makes moments
really precious is that they're going to be01:04:02
gone. I think that's not a
trivial thing for us humans to01:04:06
really contend with. I
think religion, religious01:04:10
thought, the divine, I
think help with that.01:04:12
- I think the big mistake for
mankind was the creation of01:04:16
monotheistic religions, because
they brought evil into the01:04:20
world. Because if you believe in
a monotheistic religion, that01:04:24
means I'm right and you're wrong. If you
don't. So it's already on that footing.01:04:31
- It's very dogmatic. Yeah.01:04:32
- Dogmatic, and it's led to
everything. There are inquisitions01:04:36
and this, you know, all this kind of stuff.
It's all a result of it, that one religion is01:04:40
superior and the others should be stamped
out and all that. And in my opinion,01:04:45
monotheistic religion has
generated the most fantastic01:04:48
amount of non-religious
feeling. Whereas when you01:04:52
have all the different gods and they have
different specialties, and the ones you like and01:04:56
the ones that everybody likes, and they
have their temples and their offerings.01:05:00
It was very interesting to
me to go into a temple in01:05:04
Kolkata when I went there with
my wife, Joanna, we went into01:05:09
the temples and saw how they were, and I
think they must be very much like the ones in01:05:12
Mesopotamia. So there was never
anything about them which01:05:15
affronted people's individuality, or01:05:19
or, I mean, there's no religious
prejudice or even racial01:05:23
prejudice in antiquity. All
these things are modern01:05:26
disadvantageous matters. If you
think what's done in the name of01:05:30
religion, it is absolutely staggering.01:05:33
- So let's go to literature,
'cause we didn't really mention01:05:37
literature much, except you did
briefly mention Epic of Gilgamesh.01:05:41
So that was written in cuneiform. It's
one of the earliest works of literature.01:05:45
- That's right. - Can you tell me about this work?01:05:47
- Yeah. Well, we know it best from
this Assyrian library set of01:05:51
tablets. There are 12 of them. It's
a 12-tablet work, so it's quite01:05:54
long. And Gilgamesh is the hero of it.01:05:58
But the literature, we know
it from earlier texts.01:06:02
And we know that Gilgamesh lived.
He was a real person, he was a king01:06:07
in Uruk, and he was one
of those people who lived01:06:11
after their death in the
world, like Alexander, for01:06:14
example. So there were stories
about Gilgamesh when he was alive.01:06:17
There were stories about him
afterwards. And firstly, they were oral01:06:21
literature, not written down at all.01:06:25
And then around the 1800s, people
started to write them down in01:06:29
Sumerian or Babylonian. So there
was a corpus, and eventually01:06:33
they were woven into this long
12 Homeric-type thing about the01:06:37
adventures of Gilgamesh. So
it is certainly literature,01:06:41
and it's to do with humanity and immortality,
and man in the hands of the gods, and01:06:48
incorporates lots of interesting and exciting
stories. It's very Hollywoody kind of01:06:52
thing. And you can see within it, even in
the sophisticated Nineveh version, its01:07:00
roots are in oral literature.
Because when somebody speaks,01:07:04
it says, "Gilgamesh opened his mouth
to speak and addressed his friend01:07:07
Enkidu," and then there's a speech.
"And then Enkidu opened his mouth and01:07:11
addressed his friend Gilgamesh." Well,
when you're reading a story, you don't01:07:15
need that, and that must be because of when
there was an enacting of an oral thing,01:07:21
a narrator would say and it suddenly
got frozen into the text. So it's a01:07:28
very strange thing, because if you're
reading it, it's obvious that one person01:07:32
speaks and the other person
speaks, and they always have this01:07:35
complicated thing stuck in
the text. So it must be an01:07:39
echo of... presumably you have your
protagonists enacting their timeless01:07:46
matter with a... And the
person who's writing it01:07:50
down says, "And then Gilgamesh
said..." you know, like in a script.01:07:55
- I mean, what can you say about this,
the telling of stories in written form01:08:01
during that time? Do you think
that, too, stretched back in time?01:08:06
- I do. I think the fireside narrative01:08:10
matter. You know, when we were
kids it would be twerps with a01:08:14
guitar sitting around
a fire on holiday. But01:08:18
that mechanism, when people gather
after dark when there is a fire and01:08:22
talk, is the sort of environment where,01:08:25
narrative accounts flourish
naturally among human beings.01:08:30
- Stories, telling of story. It doesn't
have to be pragmatic, it could be--01:08:33
...literary in a way.01:08:35
- Yeah. Either a human
person like Gilgamesh or,01:08:39
stories about the gods, and
someone sees the Milky Way and01:08:42
they think, "There's a god riding a chariot
up it," and then they have a story about01:08:46
you know, and all those sorts of things.
Whatever it would be. But I think01:08:51
probably you have to allow
for a strong creative01:08:56
principle surfacing in homo
sapiens at a quite early01:09:00
age, because the paintings
on cave walls...01:09:04
You try drawing a running
antelope in color on a wall.01:09:08
I mean, the quality of the workmanship,
of the artistic ability, is01:09:15
unsurpassable. It's not just good. So,01:09:19
how is that an explicable thing
at this very early date? It means01:09:24
that among all the population,
you have imbeciles and01:09:28
Einsteins, and somewhere along
the line you have Rembrandts.01:09:32
And I imagine that half
the cave paintings in01:09:36
Europe were done by one person. I mean,
you get the impression every family01:09:40
had a genius painter. It's impossible. Probably
there was a person who went from place01:09:44
to place doing these paintings
because they were so... could draw01:09:48
straight away accurately
like that. But they are a01:09:52
distillation of creative artistic ability01:09:55
plus skill. So this is
right at the pretty early01:09:59
stage, is it not, the cave
painting material? So,01:10:03
if you consider the human stock which
encapsulates such ideas ever after,01:10:10
then you have to reckon with that.
You have to reckon with that. Very01:10:13
creative, very creative people. So the
function of stories to tell the young and01:10:21
about what happened and about
famous battles or when the flood01:10:25
came, or how people learned to
make fire, or you know, how we01:10:32
invented the wheel. All those sorts
of things everybody puts down as,01:10:36
but that's presumably what absolutely
happened. And you have the01:10:40
capacity for people to
adore and to respect01:10:44
among their own kind, people of
astounding ability. There must have01:10:48
been hunters who were
ferociously quick and,01:10:52
you know, wrestled with polar bears
and all that kind of thing. And01:10:56
all this stuff would be grist to the
narrator's thing. And as things got01:10:59
more complicated and more
sophisticated, so lessons might be01:11:03
incorporated or lessons might come
out of them unintentionally. Because01:11:07
if you tell a story without a
moral, there is usually a moral if01:11:11
you think about it.01:11:13
- And many of those stories are sadly
lost to time or not yet found.01:11:19
You mentioned floods, and speaking
of stories that have been01:11:23
lost and found, you're well-known
for a lot of things. One of them is01:11:27
decoding the so-called Ark Tablet.01:11:29
- Yeah. That was a challenge,
because it's really hard to read.01:11:32
- You've got to tell me the story. This
ancient Babylonian clay tablet dating 170001:11:39
BC, which contains a flood
narrative that predates the01:11:43
biblical story of Noah
by a thousand years.01:11:45
- At least.01:11:46
- At least. Okay. Well, you
gotta tell me the full story.01:11:50
- So the full story is like this.
Visitors used to come to the01:11:53
museum to ask questions of the experts who01:11:57
worked there, and one would
be on duty periodically, and01:12:00
sometimes people would bring objects,
sometimes they'd ask questions. And somebody01:12:04
once came in with a whole load of objects,
including this tablet, which, to cut a long01:12:08
story short, I identified pretty
much straight away as being01:12:12
part of the flood story. It
was a tablet about eight01:12:16
inches by three. Not the whole
flood story, which is a complex01:12:20
narrative which ended up in the
Gilgamesh narrative much, much later,01:12:24
but this one was an early
narrative in which the point01:12:28
was taken up where the
gods in heaven had decided01:12:32
that the population of
Mesopotamia needed to be wiped01:12:36
out because they were so noisy.01:12:40
This was the expression. And
the gods couldn't sleep after01:12:44
lunch, sort of thing. So they decided
they would wipe them out and create01:12:47
something quieter that worked harder. So
this was the basic mechanism, and they had01:12:55
different ways of doing it. And then the most
effective one was they were going to send a01:12:58
flood to wipe them all out. And one
of the gods, the number three in the01:13:02
triumvirate, thought this was a deplorable
idea. So he took it upon himself to warn01:13:08
this person called
Atra-Hasis, who lived in01:13:11
Mesopotamia, to build a boat to rescue life
when the waters came. And in it, he told01:13:19
him the shape of it and the materials
he would need and how much he would01:13:23
need of the materials.01:13:24
So he could do it safely. And in the
60 lines of the tablet, all this01:13:28
stuff was there. It was like a
blueprint to build this boat. And01:13:33
it was just extraordinary
because it was round, the01:13:36
boat. And everybody who knew their
Bible, the ark's a coffin shape kind of01:13:42
affair. And nobody thought of
it being a round boat. And01:13:49
the fact is that round boats were01:13:53
used in Mesopotamia on the rivers,
coracles that's to say, because01:13:57
for transporting things, and they
would never sink. They were very01:14:02
appropriate. And so in this
story, it was decided it was01:14:06
going to be a giant coracle, a
really, really big one that would01:14:10
never sink, and the male and female
animals could go in and Atra-Hasis'01:14:17
wife and his three sons and so forth,
could go in and everything would be there01:14:21
and it would float on the water.01:14:23
And when it came down, they said,
"We'll start all over again." So01:14:26
it's got very many points
in common with the01:14:30
description of the flood in Genesis. And
of course, so did the one in Gilgamesh. So01:14:34
in 1872, there was a serologist in
the British Museum called George01:14:42
Smith, and he was a very, very talented01:14:45
reader. And in 1872, he
discovered that one of the01:14:49
tablets from the Nineveh library
we were talking about before01:14:53
had on it a passage which ran
in parallel with Gilgamesh01:14:58
about the waters coming
and the boat and everybody01:15:01
floating. And even to
the point that when the01:15:05
rain stopped and the ark came
to rest on a mountain, that01:15:09
the hero of this thing in
Gilgamesh, who was called01:15:12
Utnapishtim, released a bird three01:15:16
times to see whether the trees had come
up, and the first one came back and01:15:20
the second one, and the third one
didn't. So he knew that... So this01:15:23
was not only in the Epic of01:15:27
Gilgamesh, but it was also in the
book of Genesis. So what it meant01:15:31
was that it wasn't...
You couldn't have two01:15:33
stories... It wasn't two stories about the
same thing. It was literary dependence.01:15:40
It was literary dependence. One was locked
into the other. The text of the Hebrew01:15:44
Bible from whenever it was written down, of
course, nobody knows quite when, but whenever it01:15:48
was, it was about the
same time as the one from01:15:52
Nineveh, about the 7th century,
6th century, something like that.01:15:56
The time interval between
the Gilgamesh version from01:16:00
Nineveh and the Hebrew Bible
is not like a big expanse of01:16:03
time. So there was an argument that
one goes this way and one goes that01:16:07
way. But then when this tablet
came in, a thousand years01:16:10
older, nobody believes the Bible was
written in 1700 BC. So the primacy of the01:16:18
Mesopotamian matter was established. And
it's important because you never get01:16:25
floods in Jerusalem. You just don't.01:16:29
But in Mesopotamia, they had floods. The
rivers, sometimes there wasn't enough01:16:33
water, sometimes there was too much,
sometimes there was far too much water.01:16:37
So the mechanism that the waters
could be used as a destructive force01:16:41
by the powers that be is
a plausible Mesopotamian01:16:44
mechanism and is based in
a sort of sense, in my01:16:48
opinion, in reality. I think
there must have been some tsunami01:16:52
once most people were drowned and
those who survived were in boats,01:16:56
obviously. And then afterwards,
nobody ever forgot it.01:17:00
And it went on and on and on.01:17:01
- So, you mean there actually could have been
a catastrophic event of a large scale?01:17:04
- Yeah, not the whole world,
because people were-01:17:07
- But just enough to imagine.01:17:08
- Yeah, sweeping down to the Persian Gulf and,
you know, the flat plains, everything would be01:17:12
destroyed, all the houses would be
destroyed, animals would be drowned and...01:17:16
- This is an incredible discovery. Do you
think it's possible that this is the01:17:20
original? There are flood
myths in many cultures.01:17:24
- I believe this. The Mesopotamians had a
deep-seated horror of dependency on water01:17:32
when they couldn't control it. They were
fearful of it. And they had a rainbow in01:17:38
Babylonia, like in the Bible,
as a proof that the disastrous01:17:42
flood would never happen again. But
I think there must have been one01:17:45
episode of this kind, maybe01:17:49
5,000 years before the tablet, 10,000,
it doesn't matter. Because with the01:17:53
passage of time, nothing happens in that
part of the world. So something will be01:17:57
alive, grandfather to grandson,
before you go to sleep, "And01:18:00
remember, my boy, you know, you
only have to be careful because01:18:04
otherwise..." and all that
stuff. For sure, bogeyman01:18:08
stuff. It never quite died out
in their conscious minds. So01:18:14
I think that when the
Judeans from Jerusalem,01:18:18
after the destruction of the
temple by the Babylonians and the01:18:22
rout of the priesthood and everything,
the king and the others went over01:18:26
land to Babylon as refugees,
and they had to live there01:18:30
for three generations of time
under Nebuchadnezzar's reign.01:18:33
So I believe that the text
of the Bible was written01:18:37
then, because if you read the
Bible attentively, which I01:18:41
can't say I do on a regular basis, but
if you do read it dispassionately,01:18:45
you have the mechanism that the
only books that the Bible explain01:18:49
to the reader how it is that
these people are in such a01:18:53
mess. Because they're supposed
to be the chosen people01:18:57
doing all that. And, look, they haven't got a
temple, they haven't got a country, they're washed01:19:01
up and everything like that. So
I think that what happened was01:19:07
it's, it's a complex thing,
but the Judeans from01:19:11
Jerusalem, they spoke
Hebrew, but they also spoke01:19:14
Aramaic, right? The two languages,
they're sister languages. And the01:19:18
Babylonians spoke Babylonian,
and they also spoke Aramaic. And01:19:22
they all wore the same kind of clothes,
and they all had brown skin. And01:19:26
when all these refugees
from Jerusalem were milling01:19:30
around in Babylonia, they
would have intermarried and01:19:33
disappeared within no time
at all. And the authorities01:19:37
who were there prevented this by drawing
up a kind of charter of their history,01:19:45
explaining things from the
beginning of time up until01:19:48
now, how it happened and what
happened, and it was all intentional.01:19:53
So that is, in my opinion, the
driving force behind the Hebrew01:19:57
text. And the thing about
it is that they didn't01:20:00
have in Jewish philosophical
tradition stuff about01:20:04
creation and the beginning
of the world. And they01:20:08
took Babylonian ideas, which
they learnt when they were01:20:12
there, and they recycled them.01:20:16
So whereas the Babylonians
decided that the gods were gonna01:20:20
wipe out the noisy
persons, when the Jewish01:20:24
philosophers got this
narrative to recycle about,01:20:27
about the vengeful Almighty in the
Old Testament a very unpleasant and01:20:31
vengeful person, it was because of
sin. It wasn't because of rocket01:20:35
and playing the radio, it
was sin. So they took one01:20:39
narrative and they recycled
it for their own purposes.01:20:43
- The flood is a useful tool to
punish people for whatever X is?01:20:49
- That's exactly right. And something
else is this. Something else is01:20:53
this, right? You have five days to build
the ark or whatever it is, or two weeks to01:20:57
build the ark, so the clock goes
tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And01:21:00
about a third of the films that come out
of Hollywood are the world's gonna be01:21:05
demolished by aliens, and you've got 24
hours to think of a cure, tick, tick, tick,01:21:09
tick, tick, tick, tick. So
it's the... that narrative is01:21:13
irresistible, that one
man can save the world,01:21:17
if he's lucky, in time from
disaster. So it starts off with01:21:21
Utnapishtim, and then it goes on to
Noah, and then it goes on to Hollywood.01:21:27
- Do you think this ark in the tablet
actually was ever built? You did01:21:33
build a replica one third the size.01:21:36
And people should check out, you
tell the story of that wonderfully.01:21:40
What did you learn from building
this replica? And do you think the01:21:44
actual ark existed?01:21:46
- No, I don't think so. I think it's
a literary construction out of the01:21:49
reality that people who
did survive were on boats.01:21:53
I mean, they had boats for
sure, and you might wake up01:21:57
in the Persian Gulf and never know what
happened, but, you know, it's a literary01:22:04
moral principle teaching
narrative. And look, missionaries01:22:08
take it all around the world. That's
the other thing. See, there...01:22:12
this is, this is the mystery of it,
that you have flood stories everywhere,01:22:16
and some of them are from meddlesome missionaries
who have all these innocent little kids01:22:20
sitting on benches and, "I'm
going to tell you a story."01:22:24
like that. So it moves into this consciousness,
then it gets recycled and it gets01:22:28
recycled. So this is one thing.
And then also, there probably are01:22:31
spontaneous ideas, because
it's not so complicated01:22:35
or so amazing that independently people
would have such a narrative. After01:22:39
all, you know, like the great river
in China floods and everybody gets...01:22:43
so that, that's not at all surprising.
But what was so shocking for George01:22:47
Smith, who was such a clever
person, is to read for the01:22:51
first time on this tablet
from Nineveh, long01:22:54
before the one that I discovered
came to light, about the three01:22:58
birds being released one after
the other. And that, that was01:23:02
the clincher that the two stories
were locked together. And lots of01:23:06
clergymen got very miserable about it
and didn't know what to make of it.01:23:10
- So that's, that's a definitive
proof that those are liter-01:23:13
- A literary, I think
literary link. I think so.01:23:18
- And I mean, these puzzles that are then
connected, but the ark, you discor-01:23:24
1,000 years. So that means that
story of the flood has been01:23:32
told many, many times across
that span to, you know-01:23:37
... "Do your homework or
the flood is gonna come."01:23:40
- That's right. - Do all that can... oh.01:23:42
- That's right. And every time
somebody built a coracle and they01:23:46
didn't do the waterproofing right,01:23:49
you know what will happen? You'll be out on
the river and that will be your lot, you know?01:23:53
I, I think so. I think it was a...
I, I... there's a certain amount of01:23:56
evidence that in Mesopotamian society,
people talk about the time before the flood01:24:05
and after the flood. And
it's like when I was a01:24:09
boy, people used to talk about, "Before
the war, we used to..." And now,01:24:16
we, we do this. It's, it's a kind of
cataclysmic cut across history which provides01:24:23
a, a, a ruler, so things are
either before it or after01:24:27
it. Because there's a king
list, for example, where they01:24:31
wrote down the names of all the kings, all the way
back to the beginning, including kings before the01:24:35
flood. They knew about that... they
have their names and their great01:24:39
regnal years, or thousands
of years. Fascinating.01:24:42
- So there's a guy named Graham Hancock
who talks about the Younger Dryas01:24:45
hypothesis, 10,000 BC, that there was an
asteroid that hit Earth and melted the ice01:24:53
sheets, and that created a
flood in North America. So that01:24:57
means an actual cataclysmic
global event, that01:25:01
then as all the different
civilizations sprang up,01:25:05
they all carried that knowledge, that01:25:09
memory. That's his idea. What
probability would you assign to that?01:25:13
- I would say negligible, because I
regard it as a literary matter,01:25:18
which is not predicated on the
existence of flood in people's01:25:22
minds. But I do believe that
the story in Mesopotamia owes01:25:26
its inception to a disastrous
flood, but nothing global.01:25:30
Nothing that touched America
or China or Birmingham. So01:25:34
But people have made drilled cores and then they... I do
that all the... I'm not interested in all that stuff.01:25:38
I do that all the... I'm not interested
in all that stuff. It's, to my mind...01:25:42
- It's a literary device.01:25:43
- It's a literary top-off of great potency,01:25:47
of irresistible potency, because
everybody identifies with the idea01:25:51
of being in bed and someone knocks on the
door, says, "Get up, you got to build a boat,01:25:55
and this is what you're going to need, and you
got to get on with it, sunshine, or we're all01:25:58
sunk." I mean, what are you going to
do? The most interesting thing is01:26:02
this Atrahasis in the 1700 text. He wasn't a
king and he wasn't a sailor or a boat builder.01:26:08
and he wasn't a sailor or a boat
builder. So, how comes this clever god01:26:12
who wants to find someone to
build... Wouldn't you go for a look01:26:16
in the Yellow Pages for a boat-building
company, say, "Listen, fellow, I got a deal..."01:26:20
No. He had to tell him, "This is the blueprint, this
is the shape, you need all this, you need all that,01:26:24
you need all this, you need all that,
you got to measure it and all that."01:26:28
It's a very interesting thing.01:26:30
- I mean, yeah, that's a great story. You
don't go to the great boat builder, go-01:26:35
- Taxi driver or something like that.01:26:36
- To the taxi, and then
that's that hero's journey.01:26:40
That's the stuff of great myths, yeah.01:26:43
- It is. It is a great myth.01:26:45
- A little detail would be really
cool about the replica, like...01:26:49
- Of the boat? - What did you... Of the boat, yeah.
One-third replica, of course.01:26:51
- That was something else. There
were three blokes who did it.01:26:57
And they were specialists in
reconstructing medieval Arab boats.01:27:03
Because quite often, they're found in the
mud or bits, or they have information.01:27:07
So they were at home in it. And we
built it on a small lagoon in Kerala.01:27:11
in a small lagoon in Kerala. It was just
the most unbelievably wonderful thing,01:27:15
the most unbelievably wonderful thing, because
they used the instructions as a blueprint.01:27:19
They made it about a third of the size
of the original, a pretty huge thing.01:27:23
But they made it because it
had wooden ribs, you see?01:27:28
And they could get wood ribs. They worked out
by computer the maximum size they could do it01:27:31
the maximum size they could do it when it
would work. Beyond it, it would be impossible,01:27:35
Beyond it, it would be impossible,
because once they built the curved ribs,01:27:39
and then they stuffed woven all around it,01:27:43
it had to be covered in bitumen, which is
also very heavy, to make it waterproof.01:27:46
So they calculated the
size, and it worked.01:27:50
So they built this thing on rollers and
it was pushed out into the... It was just01:27:54
just the most unbelievable... I went out there
with my dear wife for the last few days,01:27:58
and was on the maiden voyage. And they had
trouble with the bitumen, because Indian bitumen01:28:02
because Indian bitumen is
really not up to scratch.01:28:05
And they couldn't get Iraqi bitumen, because
its cultural property is carcinogenic.01:28:09
They wouldn't export a tanker load of
Iraqi. So we had to use the Indian stuff.01:28:13
But the thing is this, the bitumen which they
coated it with was okay, but it wasn't perfect.01:28:17
So when it went out...01:28:21
into the waters, there was a bit of
a leak, water had to be bailed out.01:28:25
So, they said, "Ah," you see,
and I said, I s- I said,01:28:29
"Okay, listen, sunshine," I said to this
producer, "You ever been in a rowing01:28:32
boat without water in
the bottom? Excuse me?"01:28:35
- Oh, you're saying that's
a feature, not a bug.01:28:37
- That's the feature of the thing,
yeah. That's the feature.01:28:40
That thing could've gone to ports.01:28:41
- So it's authentic.01:28:43
- Absolutely right. We had
such an adventure with that01:28:46
thing. They made a documentary film.01:28:50
in various languages. And you know
what they did? You know, I was in it01:28:54
a bit- a bit, and they had people saying,
"Oh, I don't think it was this, I01:28:58
don't think it was that," you know, and they didn't let
me go back and say, "What the hell are you talking about?01:29:01
I did it, I know what... I can read, you know,
... you." They didn't have, they didn't do01:29:05
it. I- I couldn't get my own back. I
was really annoyed. Really furious.01:29:10
- So you're saying that there are
some inaccurate things to it.01:29:13
- I am saying there are some inaccurate
things. Yeah, somebody in Iraq said, "Oh, it01:29:17
couldn't have been that, they probably had lots
of little coracles all tied together." Did they01:29:21
f*ck? I mean, I, you know, he couldn't
read the stuff. I mean, it's really,01:29:25
really, really annoying. I mean, you should have
a chance, shouldn't you? You know, if you're01:29:28
gonna have a fencing match, you both
have to have a rapier, wouldn't you say?01:29:32
- Yeah, and you're the OG. You're
the person that decoded it.01:29:37
- Well, I can read. Yeah. But the thing
is this, the proportions of the01:29:40
material were accurate. This is
the crucial thing, that, um-01:29:47
what had happened was, is they took
the information about how you make01:29:51
a real coracle, which is usually enough,
two people- ...and a few sheep and goats-01:29:56
- Got it - ...and they bumped them up- ...so
that it worked. And I know why that01:30:01
is, because it goes back
to your question about01:30:05
oral literature, because
there must have been times01:30:08
when people went to villages
and told them about the01:30:11
flood, and when they got
to the question of the01:30:15
boat, they'd say something
like this, "And Enki01:30:19
said, 'You've got to build the biggest
coracle you've ever seen.'" Like01:30:23
that, right? Well, I mean, if you
do this in a cinema in Guildford,01:30:27
people will say, "Well, that's fine,"
but if you do it to a whole load01:30:30
of river people who use coracles and make01:30:34
build, they're not gonna take that, they're
not... "So how big was it then? Come on, how01:30:38
big was it?" So what do they
do? They go to a coracle01:30:42
place and they work out the
proportions of material.01:30:46
and then they bump it up so that
the actor who reads this, for the01:30:50
first few times, he has in his pocket how
much it is. But after a while, he knows it by01:30:54
heart so that none of these people
get angry. "You can't expect us,01:30:58
big enough for all this." So then he'd
have all the stuff and he'd do it01:31:02
this way, "And you need all this, and
you need all this," and they'd all be01:31:06
hypnotized by it. That, I
think is, it's actually,01:31:10
regarding your question,
it's on the cusp of01:31:13
purely oral literature to purely literary01:31:18
literature. It's actually
there because you can see that01:31:22
it was molded in the environment
when people were still talking.01:31:26
- Yeah, you gotta make it authentic
to really connect with people.01:31:29
- Well, you couldn't pull it w- over
their eyes. I mean, you know?01:31:32
- Yeah, well, I wish many of the films
in Hollywood today would have the01:31:36
same level of rigor.01:31:37
- Rigor is one of the things
lacking in the world.01:31:40
- By the way, I forgot to ask, why was
the flood myth focused on noisy people?01:31:45
- Well, it can't really be noisy. I'll
tell you what the explanation is, it's-01:31:49
it's something quite different. Before the
flood, the gods had not created death.01:31:58
So I think the noise was a
reflex of the fact there01:32:02
were just too many
animals, too many people,01:32:06
and they had to do something
about it. So it's a sort of01:32:09
euphemism, so to speak,
because after the flood, at01:32:13
the end of the tablet... Not my tablet,
but the other ones, where it's still01:32:16
broken. It says, there's a
tantalizing thing where they create01:32:22
barren women and who can't have children
and men who can't have children01:32:26
and people who... Princesses who
don't have children, and they01:32:29
institute in society some figures who01:32:33
will not reproduce the species.
So it's actually a rather01:32:37
sophisticated Malthusian
kind of philosophical01:32:41
position. It's remarkable. So that
the noise means there's so many of01:32:45
them, not that they're actually so noisy
that we can't hear ourselves think.01:32:50
- You have to tell me about the-01:32:53
the world of ancient games. Maybe we can
start with the ancient Royal Game of01:32:57
Ur. What is it and how were you
somehow able to crack the rules of it?01:33:05
- Well, the Royal Game of Ur is a board
of 20 squares in a rather idiosyncratic01:33:12
form. And it was pretty much unknown
until the 1920s when Sir Leonard Woolley01:33:19
was digging at the site of Ur, and in
the graves of the royal family, Sumerian01:33:26
rulers, they found four or five boards
of this pattern, together with dice and01:33:33
pieces, which showed that it was popular
among them at this time, and also that01:33:40
wherever they were going in the world
to come, they would want to be playing01:33:43
it. And so that was one thing, and
we had the number of pieces and some01:33:50
dice. So lots of people
had ideas about how01:33:53
it might have been played, and
that went on like that for a01:33:57
very long time. And
thereafter, boards for this01:34:01
game turned up in most of
the countries of the Middle01:34:04
East, sometimes quite a lot of them. And-
and the one from Ur dates to about 260001:34:12
BC, and from then down to the end
of the first millennium, there's01:34:18
examples of boards from Mesopotamia itself
and from Egypt Syria, Lebanon, Jordan,01:34:26
Turkey, Greece, Crete, all over the
place. When you put all the boards01:34:34
together, you realize that you're dealing
with a board game which was extremely01:34:42
widespread and extremely popular.01:34:44
- Across space and time.01:34:46
- across space and time. So it
lasted for nearly 3,000 years01:34:50
and it was played all over the place. So
it's one of those games which is like01:34:57
chess or backgammon, which
you can say are world01:35:02
conquerors. Because the way I see
the issue is that human beings,01:35:10
for a very long time, have
been, shall we say, hungry for01:35:18
things to do, because all through the
Bronze Age and the Iron Age, there was no01:35:23
television, you know? There was
nothing, and kids played with pull01:35:29
along things and adults had board games
and they're kind of embedded in culture01:35:36
from a very early time. And this game was01:35:40
so widespread. You know,
Tutankhamun, for example, in his01:35:44
tomb, there were two or three boards
for it with the pieces. So it arrived01:35:48
in the middle of the second
millennium in Egypt and01:35:52
even the Pharaoh played it. So you
have a game, which the interesting01:35:56
point about it is that it
spread across the known world01:36:04
without written rules and without people
necessarily knowing the same language.01:36:11
So a merchant would go, end up in a bar,
you know, come from India, or I don't know01:36:18
where, start seeing these guys playing,
have a go himself, and it looks01:36:22
rather interesting. You go home and try and remember
what it looked like and try to work out how01:36:26
to, you know, be transported
this way and the other. And01:36:31
so you can see that the board has 20
squares. So you have a block of four01:36:35
by three and then a bridge
of two and then a second01:36:39
three by two thing at the end. So01:36:42
it's difficult to describe the
actual shape. But what happened was01:36:46
after about 2000 BC, the squares at
the far end, which were two on one01:36:54
flank and two on the other,
were all put at the end of the01:36:58
central avenue. So you end
up with 12 squares down the01:37:01
middle. So all the boards
after the period of Ur have01:37:05
12 squares down the middle, and
then four on each side at one end.01:37:09
Mm. So it meant then that when you
play the game, you have dice to move01:37:13
the pieces, you have pieces all the
same, and you obviously put them on01:37:19
your first corner and you turn the corner
and you go up the middle and off the end.01:37:22
And it was a race game of the kind that
everybody knows from their own childhood.01:37:26
And some squares which had rosettes
on were either safe squares or01:37:30
you had another throw, and you
could maybe put two on one01:37:34
square, we don't know. You
could try and block people. But01:37:37
anyway, the crucial thing
is that the widespread01:37:41
distribution of this idiosyncratic
shape, and it's a lasting thing,01:37:45
shows it must have been a very good game,
if people more or less played the same01:37:52
thing on it everywhere. I mean, it may
be that they were completely different01:37:56
games, but probably not. So
this is the thing, it makes01:38:00
you wonder what it is about
it that would fit so well01:38:04
with a wide appetite from different
persons, different types of01:38:07
person. And the thing is that although it's
a race game where you're at the mercy of01:38:14
dice and lucky squares
and unlucky squares, the01:38:19
process of getting your pieces on and
off the board as a winner is primarily01:38:26
fortuitous. But it has built within it,
is the way I understand the game plays, a01:38:34
measurable quota of
strategy. It's a mix of01:38:38
probability and strategy.
So most games are01:38:41
either just probability
like Snakes and Ladders,01:38:45
like Chutes and Ladders is just a thing
like that. Or you have a game like chess,01:38:49
which is pure strategy. It's a mix.
And the grownup game in the modern01:38:54
world where fortuity or chance and01:38:57
strategy have a good balance is
backgammon, which is a sort of01:39:01
grownup version of this sort
of game. Where nevertheless,01:39:05
if you play according to the most
rational interpretation, its01:39:08
strategy is a major factor.
So what happened was that01:39:12
many people had ideas how it was played,
and the route followed, and I did too.01:39:16
And then I discovered this tablet
in the British Museum, which was01:39:20
written at a very late period in
the second century BC. So 2,30001:39:27
years after this object
existed, and it had on it01:39:31
the names of the pieces and
what the pieces were like and01:39:35
various things about the throws.
And it was obvious that it was,01:39:40
the rules were to do with a game
which was derived from this01:39:44
simple early game. And that
working backwards from01:39:48
it, you could reconstruct the
game in accordance with its later01:39:51
incarnation that might be workable.
And it jolly well turned out01:39:55
to be workable because people
play this all over the world now.01:39:59
And they even play in Iraq in cafes.01:40:03
Wait, now? They do. Oh, wow. Because
after it's come back to life, it's on01:40:07
the internet, people play, there are different rules.
That's amazing. The ones I invented are pretty01:40:11
much regular. So if you
have a good balance between01:40:16
chance and strategy and it's a fair game,01:40:20
and doesn't take four days to play like
modern board games. So you could have a01:40:24
go and if you're lucky, you win fast and
then you have another go, maybe best01:40:28
of three or something like that. It
works out rather well. And once I was in01:40:35
in California, in the01:40:38
Getty, and I had to give a talk about this with
all the information, and because there's lots of01:40:42
things to say about it.
And the lady who ran the01:40:46
Friends of the Getty had a brilliant
idea, so what she brought in01:40:51
20 or so commercial copies of this
game, and they had small tables with01:40:55
chairs. And after the lecture I was supposed
to say to everybody, "Okay, this is what01:40:59
you have to do, this is how you play." Because
you can get the rules down in like three minutes.01:41:03
So I said, "Okay, first you have to do
this, first you have to do that, so off you01:41:07
go." So there was silence,
and then after a while01:41:11
someone said, "I hate you!
I'm never playing this01:41:15
game with you again." When they'd
never played it before, when somebody01:41:19
had escaped at the last minute, cleaned
up just when they thought they were gonna01:41:23
get. And it provokes that salutary,01:41:31
which all good board games do. And
they were happily married couples who01:41:34
were, at the end of the afternoon, phoning
their respective lawyers to discuss the01:41:38
future, that kind of thing. Do you
think games are... our desire to play01:41:46
games, a mix of chance, a mix
of strategy, it's a part of01:41:50
human nature? Do you think that's
always been there? I do. I do, yes.01:41:56
I think, um... I mean, you can say that,01:42:00
In communities, you have
rivalry, hostility, and01:42:04
who's the best, who's the fastest, who's
the strongest and things. And if you play01:42:08
a board game like that, all the reality
of it is sublimated into a safe01:42:12
terrain. Yes, the safety of it, where you
can nevertheless get angry, but it's not01:42:16
like that. That's one thing. But
more significantly, I believe01:42:20
is the question of what in
India people call time pass.01:42:27
Mm-hmm. Which is not quite the same as past
time. Time pass is the question of what you01:42:30
time. Time pass is the
question of what you do when01:42:34
it's too hot to do anything,
which is true a good01:42:38
part of the day and a good part of
the year. And grandmothers sit under01:42:42
trees with their grandchildren and
they tell stories and they do this01:42:46
and they do that. And time pass is a very
useful catch-all phrase for the existence of01:42:53
board games. And in India, there are many
board games. Chess, of course, is the famous01:43:01
three-in-a-row type games or
fox-against- geese games, and01:43:05
wolves against sheep and all those sorts
of things which come out of the landscape01:43:09
in miniature and were
played for pleasure. And01:43:12
also in a kind of way, it doesn't really
matter who wins, because you might play01:43:16
matter who wins, because you might play
and it goes round and round and round,01:43:20
eventually somebody wins and then they
have another game. So it's a sort of01:43:24
that kind of rather
graceful, valid function for01:43:28
not wasting time, doing something
which is stimulating and01:43:32
beneficial without it being overpowering
in either way. So I think it is a human01:43:40
matter.01:43:42
- Of course, we humans also sometimes mix
in gambling into the whole thing, to01:43:45
mix in gambling into the whole thing, to
add some money on top of it, which I'm sure01:43:50
sometimes was involved here.01:43:52
- I think so, but probably only
late on, because money as such,01:43:58
of course, that doesn't appear till
quite late. But there are... We know in01:44:05
Mesopotamia, it's a rather interesting
thing, there's a school tablet01:44:09
with three or four lines quoted from
one literary thing and three or four01:44:13
from another literary thing.
And one of them, it has this01:44:20
"Oh my astragal, oh my
astragal, woe is me, woe is01:44:27
me." And that's all we have. And I think
this is an example of a genre of literature01:44:30
this is an example of a genre of
literature called the gambler's lament.01:44:36
Because they used knuckle bones
or astragals as dice. And01:44:40
I'm sure there were people
who bet a sack of this or01:44:45
a roomful of that on the throw
of the knuckle bones. And01:44:48
this extract in the school text is
probably from a literary tablet01:44:52
in which somebody lost everything,
even though there weren't01:44:58
coins, because I think you're
right that it's a natural-01:45:02
it's a natural thing for it to accrue. And
also maybe men and women played differently,01:45:06
also maybe men and women played
differently, because there are01:45:10
some games which were played in harems among
girls, you know, woman on a hot afternoon01:45:13
girls, you know, women on a hot
afternoon where nobody was gonna01:45:17
win anything. But the rules tablet, which01:45:21
gives this kind of backhanded
information about it,01:45:25
is couched in such a way that
it talks about people in a bar.01:45:31
Because the movement of the
pieces is calculated in terms of01:45:36
food and drink and women, what you win.01:45:40
So the landscape in which the
rules are couched for credibility01:45:45
are for just exactly that setup.01:45:49
- As you mentioned, you are01:45:52
the curator at possibly the greatest
place on Earth, the British Museum.01:45:57
- Oh, yes.01:45:58
- Can you tell me, what are some of
the incredible magical aspects01:46:02
of the British Museum?01:46:04
- Well, the British Museum is a magical
place, and it's a special case01:46:11
because there's a lot of flurry
and dispute now about what museums01:46:15
are, and what they're for, and why they exist,
and whether they should ever have existed,01:46:19
and all these sorts of issues
which people go on about. But the01:46:23
British Museum is unlike almost
all museums in the world,01:46:27
because it's to do with the achievements
of mankind from the beginning01:46:32
onwards. So it's a kind of celebration01:46:36
of art and more, but it's not
an art museum. It's to do01:46:40
with the struggle of the
human race against all the01:46:44
things that beset it and how it
has triumphed, and how marvelous01:46:48
it is and the things that have happened.
And not turning a blind eye to01:46:52
all the contrasting horrible things
that have happened. But it's the01:46:55
narrative of the human race, as I see
it, as discernible in objects. So it01:47:03
means that we serve two very important
horizons. One is that we represent, as far as01:47:11
we can, the whole world with no injudicious
attention paid to any one or other01:47:18
culture, that they're all to
us one. So there's no favoring01:47:25
any religious group, any
country group, anything of the01:47:29
kind. It's the human species. We try01:47:33
to tell the narrative of, in its
own right, and how it overlaps with01:47:40
its neighbors and what it's
learned from what came before.01:47:44
All those features together is
really what the concern of the01:47:48
museum is. And of course,
to collect everything01:47:52
we... or has been to collect
everything we can to tell those01:47:55
narratives, and also to look after them01:47:59
according to scientific
principle. So, all those things01:48:03
at once are the task for the British Museum.
And the second horizon it serves is the01:48:10
unborn. So,01:48:14
babies yet to be born, and their
children, and their children, and their01:48:18
children. And it seems to me that
the task of the museum is of such01:48:22
cultural significance and
such, so to speak, sacred01:48:26
validity, that it shouldn't
have to put up with01:48:30
people carping about
this or that or saying,01:48:33
"Museums are sinful and wicked
and should be demolished,"01:48:37
because the people who say these
things don't really have any01:48:41
idea of actually what it really does
stand for. And it's a kind of lighthouse01:48:47
in a universe where we are surrounded
by darkness, ignorance, stupidity,01:48:54
uninterest, disinterest, skepticism,
ignorance, and so forth.01:49:02
about the very issues that
we're interested in. And01:49:06
it's one of the places in the world
where you can talk about truth and01:49:10
beauty and elegance and
intelligence without01:49:14
it being an affront to people who have
none of those qualities, and without it01:49:18
being the kind of speech that people
shudder or they think you're being,01:49:22
Naive about it, because those
are the crucial things. And also01:49:27
about religion, that we don't
favor a religion and we don't01:49:30
sponsor a religion. We try to look at
them for what they are and to assess01:49:37
their relationships and what they offer.01:49:40
Perhaps with less acerbity
and less criticism01:49:44
than I would if I was the director,
I would try to put them down the01:49:48
wrong end of a microscope and look at
them for what they are and what they have01:49:52
done and what's been done in the name of
religion. You probably would never get01:49:56
away with that, but maybe one day
that will be an important part01:50:00
because it's a major contributive
factor to what's happened to the human01:50:04
race, which has never really articulated01:50:07
sharply about what religion
has done to us and where we01:50:11
might have been without it. Because not
having religion does not mean not having01:50:15
law or morality or sensitivity or01:50:19
consideration or love or any
of those things. None of those01:50:23
things depends on religion,
and those are the01:50:26
things which are important.
So I think it's people01:50:30
say, "Oh, you say this 'cause you work there
and you, you know, you're a curator, you01:50:34
wouldn't say that, that the British Museum is a
special place." It's nothing to do with that.01:50:38
It is actually a special place
because you cannot point01:50:42
to another museum in the
world with the same task.01:50:46
For example, the Louvre
is basically a museum of01:50:51
art, basically a museum of
art, not a museum of ideas.01:50:54
And the Met is definitely a museum of
art. It's called the Museum of Art01:50:59
and that's their priority.
Design and color and01:51:02
shape. To us, to my mind,
it's the British Museum.01:51:06
factor among many others. And we're
not an art museum and we're not a01:51:10
local museum, we're not a museum
of the history of the bicycle,01:51:14
we're not a celebration
of evil. We are, as it01:51:17
were, doing, as I see it, the best we
could do if, for example, a whole load of01:51:25
Martians arrived in the Great Court and01:51:30
burst through the front door
and said to us, "Tell us01:51:34
tell us all about this place. Tell us
about the world. Can you do it fast01:51:38
'cause we got to leave?" And if
you took them round and said,01:51:42
"Look at this, look at this, look at this,
look at this," they'd get some picture which01:51:46
wasn't insane. The only thing they
wouldn't get is a recording of01:51:50
Jonny B. Goode by Chuck Berry, but
apparently one's been put into01:51:54
space. Yeah. I've heard about it.
So this is a very comforting thing.01:51:58
- But that's kind of what... The task of the
British Museum is to do that but for the entirety01:52:02
of human history. - Yeah. It can be done.01:52:03
- It would be a store of artifacts-01:52:05
- Yes01:52:06
- ...that are the raindrops from which
you can reconstruct the waterfall.01:52:09
- Precisely so. And it's
not a valid criticism01:52:13
to say to us that most of the
stuff is not on exhibition, which01:52:17
is what everybody says. "It should go here,
it should go there 'cause it's not on01:52:20
exhibition." But we're not doing it for any
other reason than stockpiling for future01:52:27
examination. See, this is the important
perspective that nobody considers.01:52:31
Because the thing is, when you have
something which is contemporary,01:52:35
contemporary, if you're a clever01:52:38
journalist or a clever thinker, you can write
essays about it, you can talk about it,01:52:42
and you can see it, but you can only see it
from the perspective from which you operate.01:52:46
And with the passage of time, the
significance of objects, what they stand for,01:52:49
time, the significance of
objects, what they stand for,01:52:53
what they meant and what they can still
mean shifts. And the further back you go,01:52:57
the sharper you can understand things,
especially in terms of their own precedent01:53:01
and their own modern contemporary parallels.
So the benefit of distance, storage,01:53:05
and contemplation is
inestimable. Inestimable.01:53:13
- There are so many questions I want
to ask you. What wisdom do you think01:53:20
the people from whom
these artifacts came had,01:53:24
that we modern-day humans may have
lost or lost in part or in whole?01:53:28
So it's often, as you've spoken about, we
see the ancient peoples as lesser, dumber,01:53:32
more primitive. And you've spoken
about how they are basically the same.01:53:40
more primitive. And you've spoken
about how they are basically the same.01:53:46
- I think if you put them on a bus, all
wearing the same clothes, you wouldn't know.01:53:50
That's my feeling.01:53:51
- But there is some, I'm sure there's some
greater wisdom they had about certain things,01:53:55
as we have greater wisdom about
others. Thanks to Einstein,01:54:00
we've figured out the curvature of space-time.
Which they didn't know about. But...01:54:07
- They knew quite a lot about astronomy,
though. Quite a lot about astronomy.01:54:11
- They stared at the stars.01:54:12
- Yeah, and they measured them, and they made
calculations. And when the Greeks went to Babylon,01:54:16
they thought, "Hey man, this is really cool."
And they wrote it all down and went home.01:54:19
Yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, I
think it's a hard question to answer.01:54:26
I think it's, it's, it's a hard
question to answer. But one01:54:30
But one of the things is that they were spared things
which have cluttered up the essence of humanity.01:54:38
Because I think that the modern adherence to the
electronic universe is disastrous for humans,01:54:45
and because it reduces the
vitality of the human component.01:54:52
I think it's restrictive in a way that
people don't realize until it's too late.01:54:56
that people don't realize
until it's too late.01:54:59
Like drugs, if you take drugs now and again,
you think, "Oh, it's fine, it's fine."01:55:03
Then suddenly, you realize you're
addicted to heroin. It's a bit like that.01:55:07
People use the electronic world like an addictive
drug, and they can't get through without it.01:55:11
And I think this is a very recent thing.
But I suppose I'm not a Luddite and say,01:55:15
"We shouldn't have railway engines
and we shouldn't have kettles."01:55:19
But I think one of the things about the ancient
world was that people never went anywhere01:55:25
unless they were merchants or soldiers.
They never went anywhere. Probably people01:55:29
born and died in a village, and then their
children born and died in the village,01:55:33
and they never knew anything about
the outside world. Maybe very little.01:55:37
anything about the outside
world. Maybe a very little.01:55:41
about the outside world. Maybe a very little. Sometimes
there'd be a message, but in principle, they had01:55:45
no idea about other
countries, other languages,01:55:48
or how big they were or anything.
So I don't think they had wisdom01:55:52
in a way that you could type out
following precepts will make life better.01:55:55
Because they told lies, and they esteemed the truth,
and they fell in love, and they committed adultery,01:56:03
and they committed adultery, and they
did murder. They did all the things.01:56:07
I think in a way the ancient world allowed human
beings to behave more naturally than it does now.01:56:11
world allowed human beings to be- to behave more
naturally than it does now, the world in which we live.01:56:19
world in which we live. I mean, if you do live in a
rustic environment or by the sea, or you're a fisherman,01:56:23
in a rustic environment, or by the sea, or you're a fisherman,
or you... I mean, all those normal, real kind of things,01:56:28
normal, real kind of things, then it's probably all
right. But most people who live crammed in the cities01:56:32
But most people who live crammed in the
cities live a very, very artificial life01:56:35
artificial life, where the principles, which they regard
as ineluctably crucial, are not ineluctably crucial.01:56:39
crucial are not ineluctably crucial. They're not in...
You know, one example is this ghastly thing on mobiles.01:56:43
You know, one example is this ghastly thing on mobiles,
where you get a short clip from a real program.01:56:47
where you get a short
clip from a real program.01:56:50
I think it's utterly, utterly wicked.
So you have children all over the world01:56:54
who cannot articulate, spell, or make meaning clear,
using the best, most literary, and most beneficial01:57:02
most literary, and most beneficial language
that's ever been created, which is English.01:57:06
They have to save their lives, and they
use a word... I'll give you an example.01:57:14
Right? Like, "I went."01:57:16
- Like I went.01:57:17
- Like I went.01:57:18
So difficult to define that grammatically.
Difficult. Like, "I should have gone,"01:57:22
I should have gone. Where "I went" or
"I should have gone" means to speak.01:57:26
gone means to speak. Now, how would it be
if when we see the verb "to go" in Sumerian01:57:30
be if when we see the verb "to go" in
Sumerian, it actually meant to speak?01:57:34
actually meant to speak? How... Where
would we be? Where would we be?01:57:39
- I mean, we should probably say that even at
that time, there was probably slang, right?01:57:43
there was probably slang, right?
It just wouldn't end up written.01:57:45
- Yes, there were dialects. There were words that
sailors used. For sure, all those things--01:57:50
things. - But they wouldn't end up in writing.01:57:52
- Sometimes they do.01:57:53
- We have to remember that Cambridge and Oxford
speak in a certain way that's proper and formal01:57:57
and very smart, but there's most of the people in
bars. Sailors have a different way of speaking.01:58:04
sailors have a different way of speaking.01:58:06
- They do. - So they would probably say, "Like,
I went," and have emojis, and...01:58:13
- But the thing is, you have to
moderate your vocabulary--01:58:16
if you talk to people of a certain age, because
they don't know what the f*** you're talking about,01:58:20
you're talking about, if you use language exactly. And
the thing that was just so exquisite about English01:58:24
exquisite about English is, like with a barrister,
you can make a case which is absolutely wonderful01:58:28
you can make a case which is absolutely
wonderful, because it says exactly what it means,01:58:32
because it says exactly what it means, and
there's no wiggle room. And the conversation01:58:36
it... The conversation should be like that, with no
wiggle room. It's not just a matter of spelling,01:58:40
not just a matter of spelling, but the
basic vocabulary. You know, something...01:58:44
You know something very interesting, people
say they know English or they speak English.01:58:48
Have you ever in your life
opened a full-size volume of01:58:52
the Oxford English Dictionary?
It's about that thick. I have a01:58:55
whole set. I love them. So this
is it, you take a volume off the01:58:59
shelf and you open the
book and you run your01:59:03
forefinger down the various columns
of writing. You might have to turn01:59:07
several pages before you find
a single word you've ever01:59:11
heard before, because English is unimaginably
rich. I grew up in a house where01:59:18
everybody read literature all the
time. I had three sisters and01:59:22
a, and then a brother, and we all
read literature. We went to the01:59:26
library every week, read lots and lots and
lots of books. So we all had really good01:59:30
vocabulary.01:59:34
That's how you get vocabulary. Otherwise
you don't, because in conversation,01:59:38
"Do you want more tea?" All this sort of stuff,
you don't learn new vocabulary. You have to01:59:42
get it from reading and
listening to proper stuff.01:59:46
- Which is a very important aspect of vocabulary,
why it's important to know a lot of01:59:50
words and to speak clearly,
because those words01:59:53
also define the quality of your thoughts.01:59:56
- Sure - at the end of the day.01:59:57
- That's exactly right. I
must say, I think it is a02:00:01
pity if having produced such wonderful
languages in the world, that02:00:05
their use is so inhibited.02:00:08
- I think the right way to think about it is
the way the British Museum thinks about it.02:00:12
So you're commenting on
the ephemeral, on the02:00:16
thing that is in the moment right
now, that is happening. The02:00:20
reality is, only a few select things will02:00:24
last a hundred, 200 years from now
about this moment in time. And so02:00:30
we have to sort of think with the big picture
perspective and the slowness of time.02:00:38
Yes, in the moment there are these
catastrophes, there are changing ways02:00:42
of speaking, the technology02:00:45
tearing apart the fabric of society.
But when you zoom out, you will think02:00:49
about the grand ideas of
Einstein, the battle of02:00:53
ideologies with Communism and Nazism of the
20th centuries. The bad, the triumphant,02:01:01
the rockets. Humans started launching
rockets, going to the moon, maybe to02:01:04
Mars. Those things. And we
won't be thinking about emojis02:01:08
and any of that. And in some sense, that's02:01:12
the stuff you're looking at
with cuneiforms. It's the02:01:19
things that stand the test
of time, that are there.02:01:23
- That's true. But I think that02:01:27
language, properly used, is a crucial
human tool for communication.02:01:32
- Absolutely, yes. Speaking of which,
I have to ask some more about the02:01:36
cuneiform tablets. At the British
Museum, when you're surrounded02:01:40
by so many... And by the
way, how many cuneiforms?02:01:45
- About 130,000.02:01:47
- That is so cool.02:01:48
- It is. It's pretty cool.02:01:49
- What are some of the most
beautiful to you? Maybe ones we02:01:53
don't know about cuneiform.
Like, that make you smile?02:01:59
- Well, there are not many
jokes. You asked about jokes.02:02:01
- Yeah. They lost their sense
of humor in cuneiform.02:02:04
- Yeah, I think there is.
There's one I can remember.02:02:09
A fly or a mosquito lands on
the back of an elephant and02:02:14
says, "Am I too heavy for you?" Or
something like that. That's sort of a02:02:17
Babylonian joke. You wouldn't use it
in the pub or anything like that.02:02:21
- Yeah, yeah. You had to be there.02:02:24
- But then also, do you like Tom Lehrer?02:02:26
- Of course.02:02:27
- Okay, that's good. That's good.02:02:31
I once went to America on a lecture
tour and I ended up in the town02:02:37
where Dr. Wernher von Braun, Ended up
running the American rocket- ... industry.02:02:48
- It doesn't matter?02:02:49
- Once the rockets are up, who
cares where they come down?02:02:51
- Where they come down, yeah.02:02:52
- "That's not my department,"
says Wernher von Braun.02:02:55
- That guy, I mean, I could tell where your
wit comes from, the fact that you know02:02:59
Tom Lehrer.02:03:00
- But he's such a- the way he
plays the piano is fantastic.02:03:04
I think my dad recorded them off the radio on
a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and I learned02:03:08
them all by heart because they were so
fantastic. But I- I knew a Harvard professor who02:03:12
I stayed with once who was a Sumerologist.
And his wife said that she knew Tom02:03:16
Lehrer when he was in the math department-02:03:18
and they used to have parties and he always
played the piano in the corner of the02:03:22
room. He's just amazing, that man.02:03:25
- Yeah, I mean, he had a real-02:03:27
You have that. I've watched a lot
of your stuff. Your whole way of02:03:31
being, the wit. There's something about
that, like, biting wit. It's a bit02:03:38
of humor, bit of sadness in it. It just
kind of feels like it really quickly02:03:45
gets to the complexity of
what it means to be human.02:03:49
- I think so. But the paradoxical
thing about Tom Lehrer is02:03:53
that when he's talking about the
bomb and all that, and devices, and02:04:02
international trouble, it's so unchanged.02:04:07
And- and same with Dr.
Strangelove. It's just, it's very02:04:11
remarkable. Anyway, next time you're here or
when you're here, you should come and see me02:04:15
in the museum-02:04:16
- I will - and I'll show you some of these
confounded things for yourself.02:04:21
I'll show you the Chicago Dictionary
and give you a grammar book to learn.02:04:26
- Irving, you're a remarkable human being.02:04:28
- Well, I'm very glad we met. I-02:04:29
- It's truly an honor to
meet you, to talk to you.02:04:31
- Me too. It's been very interesting.02:04:33
- Irving, thank you so
much for talking to me.02:04:34
- It's been a big pleasure
for me, Lex. Be well.02:04:38
- Thanks for listening to this
conversation with Irving Finkel.02:04:42
To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description, where you can also find02:04:46
links to contact me, ask questions,
give feedback, and so on.02:04:50
And now, let me leave you with some
words from Ludwig Wittgenstein,02:04:54
"The limits of my language
means the limits of my02:04:57
world." Thank you for listening.
I hope to see you next time.Description:
Irving Finkel is a scholar of ancient languages and a longtime curator at the British Museum, renowned for his expertise in Mesopotamian history and cuneiform writing. He specializes in reading and interpreting cuneiform inscriptions, including tablets from Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian contexts. He became widely known for studying a tablet with a Mesopotamian flood story that predates the biblical Noah narrative, which he presented in his book "The Ark Before Noah" and in a documentary that involved building a circular ark based on the tablet's technical instructions. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep487-sb See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. *Transcript:* https://lexfridman.com/irving-finkel-transcript *CONTACT LEX:* *Feedback* - give feedback to Lex: https://form.jotform.com/lexfridman/lex-fridman-survey *AMA* - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://form.jotform.com/lexfridman/lex-ama *Hiring* - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring *Other* - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact *EPISODE LINKS:* Irving's Instagram: https://www.facebook.com/unsupportedbrowser The Ark Before Noah (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IBZ3ZAS Irving Lectures Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYXwZvOwHjVcFUi9iEqirkXRaCUJdXGha British Museum Video Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0LQM0SAx603A6p5EJ9DVcESqQReT7QyK British Museum Website: https://www.britishmuseum.org/ The Great Diary Project: https://thegreatdiaryproject.co.uk/ *SPONSORS:* To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: *Shopify:* Sell stuff online. Go to https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep487-sb?focus=shopify *Miro:* Online collaborative whiteboard platform. Go to https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep487-sb?focus=miro *Chevron:* Reliable energy for data centers. Go to https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep487-sb?focus=chevron *LMNT:* Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep487-sb?focus=lmnt *AG1:* All-in-one daily nutrition drink. Go to https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep487-sb?focus=ag1 *OUTLINE:* 0:00 - Introduction 0:58 - Origins of human language 7:04 - Cuneiform 14:17 - Controversial theory about Göbekli Tepe 25:29 - How to write and speak Cuneiform 30:48 - Primitive human language 32:31 - Development of writing systems 33:25 - Decipherment of Cuneiform 45:57 - Limits of language 50:56 - Art of translation 56:06 - Gods 1:01:31 - Ghosts 1:11:19 - Ancient flood stories 1:21:26 - Noah's Ark 1:32:49 - The Royal Game of Ur 1:45:48 - British Museum 1:53:13 - Evolution of human civilization *PODCAST LINKS:* - Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lex-fridman-podcast/id1434243584 - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 - Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips *SOCIAL LINKS:* - X: https://x.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.facebook.com/unsupportedbrowser - TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unsupportedbrowser - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Telegram: https://t.me/lexfridman - Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman
Mediafile available in formats
* — If the video is playing in a new tab, go to it, then right-click on the video and select "Save video as..."
** — Link intended for online playback in specialized players
Questions about downloading video
How can I download "Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah's Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487" video?
http://univideos.ru/ website is the best way to download a video or a separate audio track if you want to do without installing programs and extensions.
The UDL Helper extension is a convenient button that is seamlessly integrated into YouTube, Instagram and OK.ru sites for fast content download.
UDL Client program (for Windows) is the most powerful solution that supports more than 900 websites, social networks and video hosting sites, as well as any video quality that is available in the source.
UDL Lite is a really convenient way to access a website from your mobile device. With its help, you can easily download videos directly to your smartphone.
Which format of "Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah's Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487" video should I choose?
The best quality formats are FullHD (1080p), 2K (1440p), 4K (2160p) and 8K (4320p). The higher the resolution of your screen, the higher the video quality should be. However, there are other factors to consider: download speed, amount of free space, and device performance during playback.
Why does my computer freeze when loading a "Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah's Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487" video?
The browser/computer should not freeze completely! If this happens, please report it with a link to the video. Sometimes videos cannot be downloaded directly in a suitable format, so we have added the ability to convert the file to the desired format. In some cases, this process may actively use computer resources.
How can I download "Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah's Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487" video to my phone?
You can download a video to your smartphone using the website or the PWA application UDL Lite. It is also possible to send a download link via QR code using the UDL Helper extension.
How can I download an audio track (music) to MP3 "Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah's Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487"?
The most convenient way is to use the UDL Client program, which supports converting video to MP3 format. In some cases, MP3 can also be downloaded through the UDL Helper extension.
How can I save a frame from a video "Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah's Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487"?
This feature is available in the UDL Helper extension. Make sure that "Show the video snapshot button" is checked in the settings. A camera icon should appear in the lower right corner of the player to the left of the "Settings" icon. When you click on it, the current frame from the video will be saved to your computer in JPEG format.
How do I play and download streaming video?
- in video formats, hover your mouse over "Streaming Video**";
- right-click on "Copy link";
- open VLC-player;
- select Media - Open Network Stream - Network in the menu;
- paste the copied link into the input field;
- click "Play".
- copy the video address (URL);
- select "Open Network Stream" in the "Media" item of VLC player and paste the link to the video into the input field;
- click on the arrow on the "Play" button and select "Convert" in the list;
- select "Video - H.264 + MP3 (MP4)" in the "Profile" line;
- click the "Browse" button to select a folder to save the converted video and click the "Start" button;
- conversion speed depends on the resolution and duration of the video.
For this purpose you need VLC-player, which can be downloaded for free from the official website https://www.videolan.org/vlc/.
How to play streaming video through VLC player:
To download streaming video via VLC player, you need to convert it:
Warning: this download method no longer works with most YouTube videos.
What's the price of all this stuff?
It costs nothing. Our services are absolutely free for all users. There are no PRO subscriptions, no restrictions on the number or maximum length of downloaded videos.