Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah's Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Channel #487

In this enlightening conversation with Irving Finkel, a prominent scholar of ancient languages and curator at the British Museum, a wide range of topics related to ancient Mesopotamian culture, language, and artifacts are explored. The discussion covers the origins of writing, the complexity and longevity of cuneiform script, Mesopotamian myths, including flood narratives that predate the biblical story of Noah, ancient board games, and the nature of religion and literature in early civilizations. Finkel also shares personal insights into the process of deciphering cuneiform and the significance of preserving human history through museums.

Origins of Writing and the Birth of Cuneiform

Irving Finkel traces the inception of writing back to around 3500 BC in the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Early humans began using clay as a medium, evolving from simple pictographs—where images directly represented objects—to a revolutionary system encoding sounds. This phonetic breakthrough enabled the recording of language, grammar, and narrative, moving far beyond mere inventory or numerical tallies. The cuneiform script, named for its distinctive wedge-shaped impressions, emerged as a flexible, complex writing system used for over three millennia.

Despite the archaeological evidence suggesting a pictographic-to-phonetic development, Finkel proposes a controversial idea: the first writing might have been phonetic from the outset since it would have made more practical sense to encode sounds rather than images. He posits that for a long period, especially in trade contexts involving different languages, pictographic communication sufficed, but the Sumerians eventually innovated a full writing system capable of capturing linguistic nuance.

The Nature and Decipherment of Cuneiform

Cuneiform's structure is syllabic rather than alphabetic; each sign corresponds to a syllable combining a consonant and vowel rather than individual letters. The language corpus includes Sumerian, a language isolate unrelated to any known family, and Akkadian, a Semitic tongue connected to Hebrew and Arabic. Students of cuneiform must master multiple signs with often overlapping sounds or meanings, a challenging yet hierarchically organized system controlled by scribal schools.

Deciphering cuneiform was dramatically enabled by the discovery of the Behistun Inscription in the 19th century, a tri-lingual text in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. Although Henry Rawlinson is often credited, Finkel highlights the crucial but underappreciated work of Edward Hincks, who understood the multivalent nature of cuneiform signs.

The process of mastering cuneiform involves not just memorizing signs and grammar but developing contextual sensitivity. Words rarely have exact one-to-one equivalents between Akkadian and English, and modal subtleties (may, might, should) are not directly expressible in Akkadian grammar, complicating translation into modern languages. Finkel emphasizes that modern scholars rely heavily on monumental projects like the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary to navigate these complexities.

The Antiquity and Potential Prehistory of Writing

Finkel introduces the provocative idea that writing may predate the Mesopotamian records by thousands of years, pointing to Göbekli Tepe in Turkey (circa 9000 BC). There, he identifies seal-like stones with pictographic carvings that might represent an early form of writing or symbolic communication. Given the architectural complexity and social organization required to build Göbekli Tepe, it seems implausible that such a society lacked a communication system as sophisticated as writing.

He suggests that before the Mesopotamian cuneiform system, there was likely a long tradition of symbolic communication, driven by trade and social needs. This predates cities and large governments, challenging conventional theories that link writing's emergence strictly to state bureaucracy.

Mesopotamian Religion, Literature, and Worldview

The Mesopotamian pantheon was vast and hierarchical, with major gods like Anu, Enlil, and Ea at the top, and thousands of lesser deities integrated into a theological system that mirrored human social orders. People's relationship with the divine was practical and transactional—they took gods' existence for granted and engaged with them as forceful entities who could be appeased or bribed through offerings and rituals. Ghosts were understood as the spirits of the dead residing in the netherworld, with symbolic offerings made to sustain them.

Religion served as a coping mechanism for existential realities, suffering, and uncertainty. Unlike modern individuals who may struggle with religious belief, ancient Mesopotamians seamlessly integrated the divine into everyday life without doubt. Finkel contrasts this fluid polytheism with the dogmatism of monotheism, arguing that the latter has caused more conflict and division in human history due to its exclusivity.

Mesopotamian literature was rich and varied, encompassing poetry, proverbs, omens, medical texts, magic, and drama. The language was capable of expressing sophisticated ideas, rivaling that of Arabic or English. Omens, for example, reflected a nuanced philosophy of probability and caution rather than fatalism—predictions were framed as possibilities to be mitigated, not certainties.

The Epic of Gilgamesh and Oral Traditions

The ancient epic recounts the adventures of Gilgamesh, a semi-legendary king of Uruk, blending real historical figures with mythic motifs. It emerged from oral storytelling traditions long before being inscribed in cuneiform. Narrative artifacts such as repeated speech tags reflect its origins as oral literature meant for performance. This continuity from spoken tradition to written text underscores the ancient human impulse for storytelling, preservation, and teaching.

Artistic creativity in early humanity is evident in both literature and prehistoric cave paintings, signaling high levels of skill and imagination. Such expressions must have been valued across ancient societies, nurturing a human culture that intertwined fact, myth, and morality in shaping social consciousness.

The Ark Tablet and Flood Narrative

Finkel is renowned for discovering and decoding a clay tablet dated to circa 1700 BC that contains an early Mesopotamian flood story, often called the "Ark Tablet." This narrative predates the biblical flood account by roughly a millennium and shares several elements, including the idea of a divine decision to obliterate humanity due to their noisiness—a euphemism for overpopulation. The tablet details the god Enki instructing the human hero Atra-Hasis to build a large, round boat made of reeds and pitch, designed to preserve life during the deluge.

This flood myth reflects real environmental anxieties linked to Mesopotamia's frequent flooding and water management challenges. The story likely inspired later narratives, including the Gilgamesh epic and the Hebrew Bible's Genesis account, especially given the Babylonian captivity of the Judean people, facilitating cross-cultural exchanges of myth.

Finkel builds a strong case that the biblical flood narrative was adapted from Babylonian sources but reinterpreted through an ethical lens of sin and divine punishment rather than noise and overpopulation. The recurrence and power of flood myths worldwide point to both ancient historical events and shared human psychological motifs.

Building the Replica Ark

To test the plausibility of the flood story, Finkel oversaw the construction of a one-third scale replica of the ark described on the tablet. Utilizing traditional reed boat construction techniques found in Mesopotamia and India, the project confirmed that the round "coracle"-style vessel, coated with bitumen for waterproofing, was feasible, though imperfect. The hands-on experience reinforced the understanding that the story is partly a literary construction rooted in practical maritime knowledge, symbolizing human resilience rather than a literal historical event.

The replica's voyage highlighted the authenticity and ingenuity of the original account, despite some modern critics doubting the narrative's practicality. The story's enduring appeal lies in its dramatic tension, moral lessons, and metaphorical power rather than its archaeological certainty.

The Royal Game of Ur and Ancient Gaming Culture

Finkel discusses the Royal Game of Ur, a board game discovered in royal Sumerian tombs dating to around 2600 BC. Its unique board design and associated dice and pieces attest to its widespread popularity across the ancient Near East, lasting for nearly three millennia. Similar boards have been found from Mesopotamia through Egypt, Syria, and Greece, evidence of cultural diffusion and shared recreational practices.

The game is a blend of chance and strategy, effectively balancing luck with player decision-making, much like modern backgammon. Finkel reconstructed the game's rules from a 2nd-century BC tablet and contemporary artifacts, allowing it to be played today. The delight, frustration, and social bonding that board games foster are time-tested human experiences connecting ancient and modern societies.

Board games served not only as entertainment but also as "time pass," engaging players during otherwise idle moments and providing a controlled outlet for competition and cognitive challenge. Finkel suggests human fascination with games is fundamental, tied to social structures and psychological needs.

The British Museum as a Repository of Human History

Irving Finkel reflects on the British Museum's unique mission to preserve and present the totality of human cultural and intellectual achievements across time and geography. Unlike art museums focused on aesthetics, the British Museum is dedicated to the broader human story, showcasing artifacts that represent knowledge, ideas, and civilizations.

He emphasizes the museum's role in safeguarding objects for future generations and as a "lighthouse" against ignorance and disinterest. Despite controversies surrounding museum collections and repatriation debates, Finkel argues the institution serves a crucial cultural and educational function by providing a comprehensive narrative without bias toward any particular culture or religion.

The museum's vast archives, including over 130,000 cuneiform tablets, represent just a fraction of ancient human output. Their careful preservation and study enable scholars to reconstruct long-lost worlds, providing insights into the human condition across millennia.

Language, Thought, and Human Nature

Throughout the dialogue, Finkel stresses the deep connection between language and thought. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein's maxim, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world," he argues that language shapes human consciousness and intellectual capacity. Rich vocabularies and precise expression expand our cognitive horizons and cultural sophistication.

He laments the modern decline in linguistic literacy and eloquence, pointing to the rise of ephemeral digital communication forms that diminish verbal subtlety and, by extension, thought complexity. For Finkel, languages like Akkadian, Babylonian, and Sumerian showcase the potential for nuanced literary expression, countering assumptions of ancient primitiveness.

Human nature, he suggests, remains fundamentally constant across time. Ancient peoples were no less intelligent or capable than modern humans. What may differ is the context and technologies shaping their expression and social interactions.

Humor, Wit, and Everyday Life in Ancient Times

Though the cuneiform corpus contains few explicit jokes, Finkel recalls a humorous anecdote from the texts—a mosquito tactlessly asking an elephant if it is too heavy—as an example of the understated humor that survived from antiquity. Moreover, scripts include street drama and personal letters expressing human emotions such as love, jealousy, and rivalry, demonstrating that ancient civilizations shared many of the same social experiences as modern ones.

By connecting this with modern wit, such as the sharp humor of Tom Lehrer, Finkel highlights the timelessness of human creativity and the layered complexity of cultural expression, whether in a Mesopotamian clay tablet or a 20th-century satirical song.

The Interplay of Archaeology, Decipherment, and Imagination

Finkel likens his scholarly work to a Sherlock Holmes-style investigation, piecing together fragmentary evidence to reveal broader historical truths. Archaeology, language decipherment, and interpretive scholarship combine to reconstruct ancient civilizations from surviving "raindrops" of evidence like cuneiform tablets.

He cautions against assuming that what remains in museums and collections represents the entirety of past cultures, emphasizing that much has been lost or destroyed. Even the celebrated Library of Ashurbanipal recovered in the 19th century is but fragments of a once-vast intellectual repository.

This perspective invites humility and continual exploration, acknowledging that every discovery opens new questions and deeper mysteries.

Final Thoughts on the Human Story

Finkel closes with reflections on the enduring human quest for understanding, expression, and connection—from early writing systems to narratives about the gods and floods, from board games enjoyed millennia ago to the preservation of these legacies in institutions like the British Museum. He sees this continuum as a testament to human creativity and intellectual resilience, bridging past and present across the vast span of history.