Professor Alan Millard reviews a recent book that has hit the headlines
In 1985 a man came to the British Museum with a Babylonian clay tablet, which his father had acquired in Iraq in the 1940s. The museum’s specialist was astonished as he read the cuneiform signs: it was part of a Babylonian story of the flood!
Alas, the owner would not leave the tablet for study. The expert, Irving Finkel, was bereft! Not until 2009 was he allowed to examine it at leisure. In this book he enthusiastically describes his patient decipherment and growing understanding of a text written almost 4,000 years ago.