The Ark Before Noah Decoding The Story Of The Flood

Author : Irving Finkel
Publisher : Hodder & Stoughton
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2014-01-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781444757071

Get Book

The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood by Irving Finkel Pdf

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.

Author : Irving Finkel
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 449 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2014-03-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9780385537124

Get Book

The Ark Before Noah by Irving Finkel Pdf

The recent translation of a Babylonian tablet launches a groundbreaking investigation into one of the most famous stories in the world, challenging the way we look at ancient history. Since the Victorian period, it has been understood that the story of Noah, iconic in the Book of Genesis, and a central motif in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, derives from a much older story that existed centuries before in ancient Babylon. But the relationship between the Babylonian and biblical traditions was shrouded in mystery. Then, in 2009, Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum and a world authority on ancient Mesopotamia, found himself playing detective when a member of the public arrived at the museum with an intriguing cuneiform tablet from a family collection. Not only did the tablet reveal a new version of the Babylonian Flood Story; the ancient poet described the size and completely unexpected shape of the ark, and gave detailed boat building specifications. Decoding this ancient message wedge by cuneiform wedge, Dr. Finkel discovered where the Babylonians believed the ark came to rest and developed a new explanation of how the old story ultimately found its way into the Bible. In The Ark Before Noah, Dr. Finkel takes us on an adventurous voyage of discovery, opening the door to an enthralling world of ancient voices and new meanings.

Author : William Ryan,Walter Pitman
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : History
ISBN : 9780684859200

Get Book

Noah's Flood by William Ryan,Walter Pitman Pdf

Basing their research on geophysics, oral legends, and archaeology, the authors offer evidence that the flood in the book of Genesis actually occurred.

Author : Irving Finkel
Publisher : Hodder & Stoughton
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2021-11-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781529303278

Get Book

The First Ghosts by Irving Finkel Pdf

'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human experience.' - History Revealed 'A fascinating journey' - Yorkshire Post 'Marvellous...Finkel is an expert in Mesopotamian cultures at the British Museum, and is one of the most clever, and nicest, of people it has ever been my pleasure to encounter...A fascinating journey' - The Scotsman There are few things more in common across cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally 'believe' or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired, fascinated and frightened us for centuries - yet most of us are only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic literature. But their origins are much, much older... The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years, covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts, why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?

Author : Irving L. Finkel,Jonathan Taylor
Publisher : British museum Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Cuneiform inscriptions
ISBN : 0714111880

Get Book

Cuneiform by Irving L. Finkel,Jonathan Taylor Pdf

Cuneiform script on tablets of clay is, as far as we know, the oldest form of writing in the world. The choice of clay as writing medium in ancient Mesopotamia meant that records of all kinds could survive down to modern times, preserving fascinating documents from ancient civilization, written by a variety of people and societies. From reading these tablets we can understand not only the history and economics of the time but also the beliefs, ideas and superstitions. This new book will bring the world in which the cuneiform was written to life for the non-expert reader, revealing how ancient inscriptions can lead to a new way of thinking about the past. It will explain how this pre-alphabetic writing really worked and how it was possible to use cuneiform signs to record so many different languages so long ago. Richly illustrated with a wealth of fresh examples ranging from elementary school exercises to revealing private letters or beautifully calligraphic literature for the royal library, we will meet people that arent so very different from ourselves. We will read the work of many scribes from mundane record keepers to state fortune tellers, using tricks from puns to cryptography. For the first time cuneiform tablets and their messages are not remote and inaccessible, but wonderfully human documents that resonate today.

Author : Irving Finkel
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 421 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2014-01-30
Category : Akkadian language
ISBN : 1444757067

Get Book

The Ark Before Noah by Irving Finkel Pdf

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.

Author : David R. Montgomery
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2012-08-27
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780393083965

Get Book

The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood by David R. Montgomery Pdf

How the mystery of the Bible's greatest story shaped geology: a MacArthur Fellow presents a surprising perspective on Noah's Flood. In Tibet, geologist David R. Montgomery heard a local story about a great flood that bore a striking similarity to Noah’s Flood. Intrigued, Montgomery began investigating the world’s flood stories and—drawing from historic works by theologians, natural philosophers, and scientists—discovered the counterintuitive role Noah’s Flood played in the development of both geology and creationism. Steno, the grandfather of geology, even invoked the Flood in laying geology’s founding principles based on his observations of northern Italian landscapes. Centuries later, the founders of modern creationism based their irrational view of a global flood on a perceptive critique of geology. With an explorer’s eye and a refreshing approach to both faith and science, Montgomery takes readers on a journey across landscapes and cultures. In the process we discover the illusive nature of truth, whether viewed through the lens of science or religion, and how it changed through history and continues changing, even today.

Author : Irving Finkel
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 168 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2018-03-19
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1911487205

Get Book

The Writing in the Stone by Irving Finkel Pdf

The landscape of this dark and powerful story is the ancient world of Assyria some 3000 years ago, a time when writing was in the world's oldest script, cuneiform, and the domination of unseen forces firmly in the hands of the state's leading Exorcist. In the capital, Nineveh, resides a deep and complex man, the power behind the King of the World. Faced with unforeseen disaster that threatens his authority, he emerges as a psychopathic killer. The author uses his familiarity with ancient writings preserved in the world's museums to recreate a vanished world in which those who step from the shadows in ruthless violence to pursue ultimate control show themselves at the same time to be disconcertingly human. The tight prose and graphic illustrations make this a gripping and unusual tale not of this world, but at the same time weirdly familiar.

Author : Irving Finkel
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2013-03-07
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780857733498

Get Book

The Cyrus Cylinder by Irving Finkel Pdf

Some historical artfacts are destined forever to alter how the ancient world is perceived. The unerathing in today's Iraq (in 1879) of a clay cylinder-shaped decree from Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia, stands in the same traditin of game changing discoveries from antiquity as Hammurabi's famous law code or the intact tom of the boy-king Tutankhamun. For the Cyrus Cylinder contains in microcosm the whole history of its period. Inscribed with an account of the conquest of Babylon in 539 BC by the Persian king, it records an event which launched one of the greatest imperial adventures in history. It describes Cyrus' capture and deposition of Nabondius, last native Babylonian ruler (represented by the Cylinder text as an oppressor of his own people), and proclaims the Persian, aided by the god Marduk, as a liberator. His annexation of Babylon was to become the platform upon which the Achaemenid military machine built its later vast imperium. But the Cylinder is more than an ancient exercise in propaganda. It has been celebrated as the world's first declaration of human rights, and an international symbl of religious tolerance, setting out the decree from which Cyrus freed the Jews in Babylon : an event recorded by Isaiah. Few other objects from antiquity are invested with so many hopes for the future. This important volume is the first to discuss the Cylinder and its remarkable history. Written by internationally respected authorities from the British Museum, it offers a fresh consideration of its subject in the light of new discoveries. Included here is a complete new translation of the Cylinder inscription using recently identified but previously unpublished sources. Archive materials have allowed a fresh investigation of the circumstances of the original nineteenth-century find by Hormuzd Rassam, and a reappraisal of the mysterious 'Chinese bone' forgeries. The book also discusses the extraordinary and evolving history of Cyrus' timeless message: a message that continues powerfully to resonate.

Author : Irving L Finkel
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 36 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Board games
ISBN : 0714131121

Get Book

Games by Irving L Finkel Pdf

Board games have been played since prehistoric times, passing from person to person and country to country all over the world. This colourful and unique book explains the origins of five of the most long-lasting games, with five fold out game boards and rules so that you can play the games yourself.

Author : Irving Finkel
Publisher : National Geographic Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2017-11-14
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 9780500651223

Get Book

The Lifeboat that Saved the World by Irving Finkel Pdf

The original account of a great flood— forgotten for thousands of years until it was recently rediscovered and deciphered—is now retold for children Four thousand years ago, long before the story of Noah’s Ark was written down in the Hebrew Bible, the Sumerians and Babylonians of Ancient Mesopotamia knew the story of the flood and the special boat that rescued all the animals. Its ancient Babylonian hero, Atra-hasis, was— just like Noah— ordered by his god to build a lifeboat to keep his family and all the animals safe until the flood was over. Unlike Noah, Atra-hasis was asked to build a round coracle boat the size of a soccer field—and given very precise instructions to follow. Told from the perspective both of the central hero, Atra-hasis, and of his youngest son, Very-quick, this remarkable story is supplemented with asides that give fascinating insights into daily life in Ancient Mesopotamia as well as the historical sources for the story. A tale of destruction on an unthinkable scale and survival against the odds, The Lifeboat that Saved the World is a story that has truly stood the test of time. The narrative is complemented by historically accurate detail and insights into how people lived all those years ago.

Author : Daniel C. Snell
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 528 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2020-02-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9781119362463

Get Book

A Companion to the Ancient Near East by Daniel C. Snell Pdf

The new edition of the popular survey of Near Eastern civilization from the Bronze Age to the era of Alexander the Great A Companion to the Ancient Near East explores the history of the region from 4400 BCE to the Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE. Original and revised essays from a team of distinguished scholars from across disciplines address subjects including the politics, economics, architecture, and heritage of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Part of the Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, this acclaimed single-volume reference combines lively writing with engaging and relatable topics to immerse readers in this fascinating period of Near East history. The new second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include new developments in relevant fields, particularly archaeology, and expand on themes of interest to contemporary students. Clear, accessible chapters offer fresh discussions on the history of the family and gender roles, the literature, languages, and religions of the region, pastoralism, medicine and philosophy, and borders, states, and warfare. New essays highlight recent discoveries in cuneiform texts, investigate how modern Egyptians came to understand their ancient history, and examine the place of archaeology among the historical disciplines. This volume: Provides substantial new and revised content covering topics such as social conflict, kingship, cosmology, work, trade, and law Covers the civilizations of the Sumerians, Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Israelites, and Persians, emphasizing social and cultural history Examines the legacy of the Ancient Near East in the medieval and modern worlds Offers a uniquely broad geographical, chronological, and topical range Includes a comprehensive bibliographical guide to Ancient Near East studies as well as new and updated references and reading suggestions Suitable for use as both a primary reference or as a supplement to a chronologically arranged textbook, A Companion to the Ancient Near East, 2nd Edition is a valuable resource for advanced undergraduates, beginning graduate students, instructors in the field, and scholars from other disciplines.

Author : Natan Ṿaserman
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2020-03-17
Category : Akkadian language
ISBN : 9042941731

Get Book

The Flood: the Akkadian Sources by Natan Ṿaserman Pdf

The story of the primeval cataclysmic flood which wiped out all life on earth, save for one family, is found in different ancient Mesopotamian texts whence it reached the Biblical and Classical literary traditions. The present book systematically collects the earliest attestations of the myth of the Flood, namely all the cuneiform-written Akkadian sources - from the Old Babylonian to the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, including Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh -, presenting them in a new synoptic edition and English translation which are accompanied by a detailed philological commentary and an extensive literary discussion. The book also includes a complete glossary of the Akkadian sources.

Author : Irving Finkel
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1904999417

Get Book

The Last Resort Library by Irving Finkel Pdf

The library is situated, said the short entry in the Guide to British Libraries A-L, in pleasant rolling countryside not too far from Hereford, and is perhaps most readily accessible by private motor vehicle. This statement was quite accurate. Inaccessibility had always been one of the Library's most prized qualities. The Last Resort Library was founded in 1962, and is a forward-looking institution with very much its own sense of mission, it continued. The truth was that the Guide compiler had never heard of the Library himself, but someone had mentioned it to him right at the last minute, and he was improvising while correcting proofs. Researchers should be aware that, despite the size of the Library's holdings, there is no published catalogue of any kind. That's what he had been told, and it seemed only sensible to make a formal note of it. - Prologue

Author : George Smith
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 1880
Category : Bible
ISBN : OXFORD:600081431

Get Book

The Chaldean Account of Genesis by George Smith Pdf