Page 18 - Diva_3_2024_Irak Special_

It is not everyday that you have a chance to meet writing. It’s a lucky thing because even though
one of the world’s most famous specialists on the ancient Babylonians ere extinct, their
cuneiform writing. Dr Finkel has written many language, Babylonian, is related to modern
books both scientific and fiction, and is a true languages of the Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic,
scholar whose activities include giving lectures, and Syriac family – the Semitic group.
some of which you can find on YouTube. He is
in particular known for his discoveries linked to So, when they began to work out how the
the Royal Game of Ur, in ancient Mesopotamia, script could be understood, they learned
a game going back some 3,500 years, that they could understand the language as well,
people still play, and that you can find only in and then translate things properly. Before the
the British Museum. Babylonians were there, there was a people
called the Sumerians, and they used the same
We had a chance to meet with Dr Finkel and writing, but their language was something
ask him a lot of questions. He speaks with completely different. There’s no modern
enthusiasm about his field – Mesopotamia, relative of Sumerian, so we have to use
cuneiform writing, and all sorts of things that Babylonian texts to understand the Sumerian
happened long before we arrived on the scene. texts.
He has the gift of making people interested in
his fields – history and archaeology. The floor is It’s a fantastic thing, and the whole of life
yours Dr Finkel is recorded on these rather strange looking
things which people are often rather rude
To start, could you please tell us a little bit about when they see them. They often
about yourself and your work? say that they look like nothing, but we
My name is Dr Irving Finkel. I’m a curator in have literature, magic, medicine, history,
the British Museum in London where I’ve been astronomy, astrology, grammar, love letters,
working since 1979, which is rather a long business letters.
time. I was very lucky because when I went to
university, I learned to read cuneiform writing. Isn’t it difficult to continually sit there and
I had a very strict professor. I was his only read and understand what is written?
student, and I learned the ancient Sumerian Well, it depends on how you do it. You see,
and then the ancient Babylonian languages I was so fortunate because my professor
with him. I wrote my PhD with him, and then was extremely strict and he didn’t want any
I went to Chicago for three years. After that, wasted time. He said, “If you’re going to
I got a job in the British Museum, which has do this, you have to learn all of it,” and he
always been my ambition. I’ve been there ever never said anything polite or friendly. For
since, and I hope to be there for at least another six years, I had one-to-one teaching, like a
Interview with hundred years. I’m in the department called the master class for a violinist. Sometimes some
Middle East and we have archaeological objects
students came for a while, but they didn’t
Dr Irvin from all over what people call the Middle stay long. He said, “You have to learn to
read both languages, any kind of text, any
Eastern world. We have a big collection of these
Finkel cuneiform inscriptions, which are written on period.” So, I was sent out into the world
pieces of clay. with the best possible training. I went to
Chicago where they wrote the modern
The writing starts, well, probably about 3,500 dictionaries of these ancient languages.
Curator in the BC and lasts all the way down to the first

British Museum century AD, so three and a half thousand There also it was an amazing world because
years. It’s the writing before the alphabet, they worked like in a cancer research unit.
in London, so it’s a syllabary, and not an alphabet. They They were all very, very serious. They even
United Kingdom wrote it on bits of clay which last in the ground went to work on Christmas Eve. You had to
marvelously. In the nineteenth century, they work all the time. I went from this intense
started to dig them up during excavations, training to an intense workplace. When I
and they eventually managed to decipher the went to the British Museum, where you have

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