He would search for the missing pieces that would complete the story begun by his initial translations.Ĭomposed in the second millennium B.C., the Epic of Gilgamesh recounts the futile quest by its eponymous hero to find immortality. In return for exclusivity, the London Daily Telegraph newspaper offered to fund an excavation led by George Smith in the Middle East. Smith’s discovery caused a sensation, not just for academics but also for the general public. However, the tablets long predated the Bible, placing the flood story further back in history than originally thought. Smith’s work revealed that Mesopotamian writings included an account of a great flood similar to the one described in the Book of Genesis. One account says that when his colleagues turned around to see what was happening, he stripped off his clothes with joy. Overwhelmed with emotion at what he had just discovered, Smith began to run around the room in a state of ecstasy, shouting and whooping. I saw at once that I had here discovered a portion at least of the Chaldean account of the Deluge. On looking down the third column, my eye caught the statement that the ship rested on the mountains of Nizir, followed by the account of the sending forth of the dove, and its finding no resting-place and returning. When the restored tablet was placed before him, he deciphered the characters and confirmed his hunch-that they were part of a story about a great flood, with many of the key elements similar to the Noah story in the biblical Book of Genesis: Smith, an anxious man, had to wait for several days, his nerves strung like piano wires, before it could be cleaned. Much of the lettering, however, was obscured by a layer of grime. But intriguing words astonished Smith and reminded him of something. To a layperson, this piece (now known as tablet K.3375) does not look much different from all the other cracked tablets. In November 1872 a fragment from Nineveh caught his attention. His big breakthrough came after a decade of working at the museum. Smith’s great hope was that his work on the broken tablets might reveal links to biblical accounts. Smith hoped to travel to the Middle East to seek out more tablets, but the museum wanted him to stay in London and translate the tablets already in their collection. In his first decade working at the museum, Smith managed to establish dates for events in the history of the Israelites, helping to straighten out parts of the biblical chronology. Long days working with the ancient puzzle were relieved by moments of revelation. Over the next decade, Smith pored over them, perfecting his understanding of ancient languages, and soon became an expert. As experts in Akkadian writing were rare, most of the artifacts were simply left in storage at the museum. Created when the Neo-Assyrian Empire stretched from Egypt to Turkey, the tablets were discovered in the 1850s by Hormuzd Rassam, a protégé of Layard. Numbering in the thousands, many originated from Nineveh’s library, built by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in the seventh century B.C. In 1861 Rawlinson convinced the museum to hire Smith, initially on a part-time basis, to organize the vast number of tablets in its collection. Smith proved particularly adept at spotting which fragment fitted where when faced with a table strewn with shattered clay tablets. Rawlinson, who had worked with Layard at Nineveh, met Smith and was impressed by his abilities. They informed Sir Henry Rawlinson, the foremost cuneiform scholar of the time, of their talented lunchtime visitor. Over time, the scholars working in the antiquities department realized how well Smith could interpret it. Its characters are formed from strokes in the form of wedges, the Latin word for which- cuneo-is the root of the term “cuneiform.” To decipher requires dedication and patience. The tablets were in Akkadian, an ancient language written in cuneiform script.
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