Irving Finkel | The Ark Before Noah: A Great Adventure
The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures4 HN recommenders · 2021–2025
5.1M views · lecture · evergreen · Uploaded 2016-07-20
Irving Finkel of the British Museum tells how a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet came to him for examination. It revealed the oldest known account of Noah's Ark and led to a book and a documentary.
HN recommends it as a funny, fascinating talk on cuneiform tablets and the ancient world by an engaging curator.
1:16:17In Search Of A Flat Earth
Folding Ideas
18:13Try to Rule Fairly and You'll Be Overthrown
CGP Grey
58:58George Lakoff: Moral Politics
University of California Television (UCTV)
43:43Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio
Principles by Ray Dalio
4:48London Swallowed a City but Couldn't Digest It.
CGP Grey
12:08Why Some Diseases Only Traveled One Direction
CGP Grey
2:27:498. The Sumerians - Fall of the First Cities
Fall of Civilizations
1:18:02The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire | The Secret World of Finance
Independent POV
5 comments from Hacker News
Great talk for those interested in clay tablets and technology: [VIDEO] In my opinion, I would bet that those old civilizations had more technology that we give them credit for. The only thing they lacked was to have a long lasting medium to share that knowledge. Whimsical stories or songs could've been a way to share advances. We're lucky to have one civilization picking clay tablets as a medium and luckier that those survived (some even by accident - fires destroying houses but cooking those tablets and burying them), who knows maybe we were writing on leather for centuries before that have all disintegrated by now (we hunted, we had access to paint, we naturally don't want to waste scarce resources).
This lecture by Dr Finkel on how he discovered the original Babylonian version of the Noah's Ark story is equal parts fascinating and hilarious: [VIDEO]
Somewhat related, since we're talking about cuneiform: Dr. Irving Finkel of the British Museum telling the surprisingly amusing story of how he discovered the oldest known version of the Noah's Ark story: [VIDEO]
Not to mention his book, about when he found an Cuneiform tablet circa 1800BC telling the story of Noah and the flood, which included more detailed instructions on how to build an ark than the biblical accounts and so he went and built it. Nice article: [LINK] Excellent lecture: [VIDEO]
If you are interesting anything related to cuneiform writing or ancient Mesopotamian culture , Irving Finkel, a British Museum curator, is a treasure. Here he is teaching how to write cuneiform: [LINK] Here is a hilarious talk he gave at Chicago's Oriental Institute on Noah's Ark: [VIDEO]