The Oldest World Map in the World
Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum and an expert in cuneiform, takes a look at a 2900-year-old Mesopotamian tablet that contains a map of the world as it was known at the time.
The Babylonian map of the world is the oldest map of the world, in the world. Written and inscribed on clay in Mesopotamia around 2,900-years-ago, it is, like so many cuneiform tablets, incomplete. However, Irving Finkel and a particularly gifted student of his — Edith Horsley — managed to locate a missing piece of the map, slot it back into the cuneiform tablet, and from there set us all on journey through the somewhat mythical landscape of Mesopotamia to find the final resting place of the ark. And yes we mean that ark, as in Noah’s ark. Although in the earlier Mesopotamian version of the flood story, the ark is built by Ziusudra.
Finkel could not possibly look more like a British Museum curator than he does.
Btw, I first heard about the earliest Mesopotamian version of the flood story in a mythology class I took in college. I’d spent a lot of my youth going to church but religion didn’t click for me and I was never a believer. Hearing that flood story clinched it for me — the Old Testament of the Christian bible is just as mythological as the Greek or Mesopotamian gods (everything is a remix) — and I’ve been solidly atheist ever since. (via open culture)
Discussion 6 comments
I was thinking, "I bet he always looked like that, even as a young man" and then there's a flashback and yup.
I once met a friend of a friend who worked in rare books in London, dressed all in tweed. He probably looks like this now.
Every time I navigate to this post I think, what is David Letterman up to now?
I always felt the commonalities between mythologic traditions were actually a piece of evidence pointing to the reality of some bedrock truth that united them.
The excellent old PBS interview series between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell (Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth) comes to mind.
Well, I've been utterly unproductive today because I've been watching videos from the British Museum of Natural History.
He has some prominent interviews in Cunk On Earth where he comes off as a great sport with a clever sense of humor.
Cunk on Earth is so good. That had to be a hard show to make, to get the right amount of sarcasm, to get the interviewees on board, move the story along. It's really funny.
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