The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood
By Irving Finkel
ISBN: 9781444757071
350 pages
Publication date: 30 Jan 2014
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<http://www.amazon.com/The-Ark-Before-Noah-Decoding-ebook/dp/B00BMUVVS2>]
THE ARK BEFORE NOAH: Decoding the Story of the Flood by Dr Irving
Finkel is a compelling investigation of one of the most famous myths
in the world - and how the re-discovery of an ancient tablet
challenges our view of ancient history in a new and exciting way.
In THE ARK BEFORE NOAH, British Museum expert Dr Irving Finkel reveals
how decoding the symbols on a 4,000 year old piece of clay enable a
radical new interpretation of the Noah's Ark myth. A world authority
on the period, Dr Finkel's enthralling real-life detective story began
with a most remarkable event at the British Museum - the arrival one
day in 2008 of a single, modest-sized Babylonian cuneiform tablet -
the palm-sized clay rectangles on which our ancestors created the
first documents. It had been brought in by a member of the public and
this particular tablet proved to be of quite extraordinary importance.
Not only does it date from about 1850 BC, but it is a copy of the
Babylonian Story of the Flood, a myth from ancient Mesopotamia
revealing among other things, instructions for building a large boat
to survive a flood. But Dr Finkel's pioneering work didn't stop there.
Through another series of enthralling discoveries he has been able to
decode the story of the Flood in ways which offer unanticipated
revelations to readers of THE ARK BEFORE NOAH.
Biographical Notes
Dr Irving Finkel is Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian (i.e.
Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian) script, languages and cultures
Department: Middle East at the British Museum, headquartered in
London's Bloomsbury. He is the curator in charge of cuneiform
inscriptions on tablets of clay from ancient Mesopotamia, of which the
Middle East Department has the largest collection - some 130,000
pieces - of any modern museum. This work involves reading and
translating all sorts of inscriptions, sometimes working on ancient
archives to identify manuscripts that belong together, or even join to
one another.
<http://www.britishmuseum.org/the_museum/departments/staff/middle_east/irving_finkel.aspx>
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