The ark before Noah : decoding the story of the flood
Irving L. Finkel (Author)
"British Museum expert Dr Irving Finkel reveals how decoding the symbols on a 4,000 year old piece of clay enable a radical new interpretation of the Noah's Ark myth. A world authority on the period, Dr Finkel's enthralling real-life detective story began with a most remarkable event at the British Museum - the arrival one day in 2008 of a single, modest-sized Babylonian cuneiform tablet - the palm-sized clay rectangles on which our ancestors created the first documents. It had been brought in by a member of the public and this particular tablet proved to be of quite extraordinary importance. Not only does it date from about 1850 BC, but it is a copy of the Babylonian Story of the Flood, a myth from ancient Mesopotamia revealing among other things, instructions for building a large boat to survive a flood. But Dr Finkel's pioneering work didn't stop there. Through another series of enthralling discoveries he has been able to decode the story of the Flood in ways which offer unanticipated revelations to readers of THE ARK BEFORE NOAH."--Publisher's website
eBook, English, 2014
First American edition View all formats and editions
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, New York, 2014
Texts
1 online resource (421 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations, map, color plates
9780385537124, 9781306514330, 0385537123, 1306514339
875276784
About this book
The wedge between us
Worlds and people
Recounting the flood
The ark tablet
Flood warning
The question of shape
Building the arks
Life on board
Babylon and Bible floods
The Judean experience
What happened to the ark?
What is the ark tablet?
Conclusions : stories and shapes
Appendix 1. Ghosts, the soul and reincarnation
Appendix 2. Investigating the text of Gilgamesh XI
Appendix 3. Building the ark : technical report
Appendix 4. Reading the ark tablet
Textual notes to Appendix 4
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index