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Dr Irving Finkel: Noah’s Ark & Archaeology

Scott_Wood

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The London Fortean Society made it to a third meeting...

The myth of Noah's ark is well-known and the flood is investigated by archaeologists of the Near East. Now there is an idea of what such an ark might have actually been like.

British Museum curator and scholar, Dr Irving Finkel informs us on some ground-breaking discoveries in ancient Near Eastern studies.

Dr Irving Finkel works on the cutting edge of ancient scholarship, is Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian (i.e. Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian) script, languages and cultures, in the Middle East Department of the British Museum.

The evening will begin with the Fortmanteau; our monthly summary of strange news stories.

Thursday 24 November 7.30pm - 10.30pm
Upstairs at the Bell, 50 Middlesex Street London E1 7EX
£3 / £2 concessions
Tubes: Aldgate, Aldgate East and Liverpool Street.
Map to the Bell
 
He also likes old board games.

Last year, in celebration of International Tabletop Day, the British Museum did several videos of Merlin the Magician, er... Irving Finkel, the Assistant Curator of Ancient Mesopotamian script, talking about and playing The Royal Game of Ur, an over 4-millennium-old game from Mesopotamia.

Finkel has spent the lion's share of his life trying to decipher the history and rules of this ancient, 2-person racing game. The museum had a copy of the board (which Finkel made a replica of as a child), but had no idea which rules set went with it. Fortuitously, among the museum's 3500 clay tablets, Finkel eventually managed to uncover an analysis of the game, written by a Mesopotamian astronomer, and from there was able to reverse engineer the rules (and matched the rules to the mysterious gameboard artifact in the museum's collection). ...

https://boingboing.net/2018/04/05/watch-the-worlds-oldest-boar.html

More vids at link.

 
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