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culture

them.” They came thick and fast, and tea time. When the last one was
so I’m trying to write a book about nearly finished and I was reading it,
it. It’s such an unending and big I said, “Ooh the one thing I want to
subject. it’s very complicated. Then, I say…” So, the producer said “Okay.”
also have one other book I’m doing, So, I said, “When I’m prime minister,
about Babylonian medicine, because [I can see the producer getting a
we have lots and lots of documents bit wiggly on his chair], when I’m
to do with it – gynecology, inner prime minister, we’re going to get
pains, external things, therapy and rid of time writers and computers
drugs. and we’re going to teach cuneiform
writing at the school with clay so
still trying to influence me. I think I’ve discovered that the older you that lots and lots of people learn to
she’s very tolerant, and her idea is get, the more interesting everything read and write cuneiform so we’ll
that one day we’ll write a book that’ll becomes, more than I’ve ever had have an army of people to come to
be a best seller which makes a lot of any idea. the British Museum and work on all
money!
these documents all these hundred
Do you have young students working thirty thousand clay blocks.”
So what is your next project? with you?
I’m writing a big book about this I do work with students when I can That was the end of that fantasy,
Royal Game of Ur. About 20 years but we don’t have students in the and it was the end of the program.
ago, I had an idea to start a rescue museum. That’s only in the university. This was on Sunday. On Monday I’m
project for manuscript diaries I get to do a lot of lectures. When I’m at my desk about 11 o’clock having
because people in Britain for many asked, I always say yes. a coffee and reading something,
centuries have been regular diarists. the phone rings, and I hear hello
When people die their diaries are Do you take on interns? “Dr. Finkel, there’re are three girls
usually thrown away. I thought Well, actually we do have interns but down here. They’ve come to join the
this is terrible and that we should you have to be very careful because cuneiform army.” I went down and
try to do something about it. So, I some interns are lazy and some of there were three young ladies who
started collecting diaries and then them are careless. Some don’t turn had heard this program and they had
publicizing it. Then there’s an old up, and most of them don’t know come to join the army. I explained,
library in London which has taken anything at all so, by the time you “Well it will take you about six years
this on and has more than 14,000 explain what you want them to do, to learn this script, you’ve got to
diaries from nineteenth, twentieth you might as well just do it yourself. get to university, and you’ve got to
and twenty-first centuries. Some are do this and that. If you do this, the
even older. When people know that, It’s a pity because if you don’t have stuff that we have here you’ll find it
rather than take their aunties’ diaries anyone who can follow up your marvelous.” They went away happily.
and disposed of them – you know work, the day that you are no longer One of them applied to Oxford to
when old ladies die and people bury there, what will happen? do stereology, got in and she did a
their diaries immediately in case I mean there are always going to be degree in stereology got a first-class
they’re private. But after a while, people who’ve done a bit of stuff at degree, stayed on and did a PhD in
privacy becomes rather irrelevant. university. When I was a student it stereology. She is now in the field.
Nobody says you shouldn’t read was on the way up, and as I say now in So that throwaway remark, one seed
cuneiform tablets because they’re the universities it’s on the way down. in the furrow, bore fruit.
private, when they’re written in 2000
B.C. It’s just not relevant any more. So, Do you think it can come up again? Leaving Dr Finkel to his occupations,
I started this project, and it’s gotten There are lots of ways it could. One of we were happy and determined to find
bigger. People were in their houses them is to make regular discoveries this game, the Royal Game of Ur that
for two years with nothing to do. of astonishing things so that it gets even the guards on the Holy cities in
When you’re really bored, you start into the media. Years ago, I was Mesopotania played while they were
tidying up the house. I said, “If you invited by radio 4 BBC to do four on duty. The only place you can find
find these things, don’t throw them talks about cuneiform writing. I did it is at the British Museum’s website
away, send them here, we’ll look after the first on Sunday afternoon, about www.britishmuseum.org

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