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Irving Finkel
History & Commentary
Irving Finkel is an English philologist, Assyriologist, and British Museum curator who specializes in deciphering ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform clay tablets and historical scripts.
Biography
Irving Leonard Finkel is an English philologist and Assyriologist who was born in 1951. He works at the British Museum as the Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures within the Department of the Middle East. In this position, he specializes in studying and deciphering cuneiform inscriptions preserved on ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets.
Recognized as an authority on ancient Mesopotamia, Finkel engaged in significant research after a member of the public brought a modest Babylonian clay tablet to the museum in 2008. Dating from approximately 1850 BC, the palm-sized tablet contained a copy of the Babylonian Story of the Flood, providing instructions for building a large boat to survive a flood.
Through his decoding of the symbols on this four-thousand-year-old artifact, Finkel offered a radical new interpretation of the flood myth. His discoveries enabled him to analyze ancient documents and reveal unanticipated revelations surrounding early flood accounts.
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Books by Irving Finkel
The Ark Before Noah
The Ark Before Noah details how decoding a 4,000-year-old Babylonian cuneiform tablet from 1850 BC yielded ancient instructions for building a flood-surviving boat, offering a radical new interpretation of the flood myth.