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culture

Interview with
Dr irvin Finkel

Curator in the

British Museum in london,
United kingdom

time. I was very lucky because when I went to
university, I learned to read cuneiform writing.
I had a very strict professor. I was his only
student, and I learned the ancient Sumerian
and then the ancient Babylonian languages
with him. I wrote my PhD with him, and then
I went to Chicago for three years. After that,
I got a job in the British Museum, which has
always been my ambition. I’ve been there ever
since, and I hope to be there for at least another
hundred years. I’m in the department called
the Middle East and we have archaeological
It is not everyday that you have a chance to objects from all over what people call the
meet one of the world’s most famous specialists Middle Eastern world. We have a big collection
on cuneiform writing. Dr Finkel has written of these cuneiform inscriptions, which are
many books both scientific and fiction, and written on pieces of clay.
is a true scholar whose activities include
giving lectures, some of which you can find The writing starts, well, probably about 3,500
on YouTube. He is in particular known for his BC and lasts all the way down to the first
discoveries linked to the Royal Game of Ur, in century AD, so three and a half thousand
ancient Mesopotamia, a game going back some years. It’s the writing before the alphabet,
3,500 years, that people still play, and that you so it’s a syllabary, and not an alphabet. They
can find only in the British Museum. wrote it on bits of clay which last in the ground

marvelously. In the nineteenth century, they
We had a chance to meet with Dr Finkel and started to dig them up during excavations,
ask him a lot of questions. He speaks with and they eventually managed to decipher the
enthusiasm about his field – Mesopotamia, writing. It’s a lucky thing because even though
cuneiform writing, and all sorts of things that the ancient Babylonians ere extinct, their
happened long before we arrived on the scene. language, Babylonian, is related to modern
He has the gift of making people interested in languages of the Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic,
his fields – history and archaeology. The floor is and Syriac family – the Semitic group.
yours Dr Finkel
So, when they began to work out how the
To start, could you please tell us a little bit script could be understood, they learned
about yourself and your work? they could understand the language as
My name is Dr Irving Finkel. I’m a curator well, and then translate things properly.
in the British Museum in London where I’ve Before the Babylonians were there, there
been working since 1979, which is rather a long was a people called the Sumerians, and they

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