Fascinating! I've been thinking about old Gilgy all day.
KS
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Kasper Salonen, toiminnanjohtaja
Helsinki Poetry Connection
http://hkipoetryconnection.blogspot.com/
+358505554947
On 28 February 2014 21:57, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Patrick, notice also the rediscovery:
>
> this startling decoder was set to work on the jumble of stone bits and
> pieces until one day he cried out in ecstasy and ran round the room tearing
> off his clothes.
>
> this in the British Museum 1871...
>
> Max
>
> On 01/03/2014, at 5:04 AM, Patrick McManus wrote:
>
> > Max thanks some of my poems have also been hanging around that long P
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> > Behalf Of Max Richards
> > Sent: 27 February 2014 23:25
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: cuneiform [for Patrick mainly]
> >
> > The Epic of Gilgamesh was deciphered from cuneiform tablets in the
> British
> > Museum which had been excavated in the Library of Ashurbanipal in
> Nineveh.
> > Thousands of chunky manuscripts, chipped, friable and defaced, more like
> > knapped flints than books, were dug out of the alluvial strata by Henry
> > Layard and Homuzd Rassan in the 1850s and laid out on trays in the
> museum.
> > George Smith was an engraver of banknotes for Bradbury's, the printers,
> > which specialised in playing cards and had the commission from the Mint
> to
> > issue banknotes. The workshop was near the museum and the story goes that
> > George took to haunting the Assyrian collections in his lunch hour,
> until he
> > caught the eye of the keeper, who asked him what he was doing, coming so
> > regularly. 'I am reading,' he replied. So this startling decoder was set
> to
> > work on the jumble of stone bits and pieces until one day he cried out in
> > ecstasy and ran round the room tearing off his clothes. George Smith had
> > found Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which told the story of the
> Flood,
> > and his joy was occasioned above all by the independent corroboration the
> > poem offered to the historicity of the Bible. He was a fervent Christian
> and
> > longed, as many did, for archaeology to prove the scriptures'
> reliability.
> > Later that year, 1872, he delivered a paper to the Society for Biblical
> > Archaeology, and read out the account of the flood from the epic. This
> was
> > the first time the Epic of Gilgamesh had been heard and understood after
> an
> > interval of two thousand years: the longest sleeper ever among the
> world's
> > great poems. Four years later, Smith died in Aleppo at the age of 36.
> >
> > http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/marina-warner/short-cuts=
>
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