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Yes Max I re-enact that every year at the old BM (home of stolen Greek treasures) P -----Original Message----- From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Max Richards Sent: 28 February 2014 19:57 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: cuneiform [for Patrick mainly] 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=