Kirjahaku

When a small, peculiar, palm-sized clay tablet made its way to the desk of Irving Finkel, Assyriologist and Assistant Keeper at the British Museum, Finkel could hardly believe his luck. What he discovered was a missing piece in the story of Noah and the Ark. In this captivating, absorbing work of scholarship, Finkel, a world authority on ancient Mesopotamia, leads the reader on a detective hunt for the prototype of Noah's Ark--from cuneiform wedges to bundles of reeds, from ancient Babylon to modern Iraq, Finkel reveals new information on the origin of the Babylonian Flood story which pre-dates the biblical deluge, including the surprising size and shape of the boat itself, and even where it came to rest. New to this edition, Finkel puts the "Ark Tablet" to the test in building a modern version of the ship. Throughout, The Ark Before Noah takes us on an adventurous voyage of discovery, opening the door to an enthralling world of ancient voices and historical lore.

In this engaging story, Irving Finkel follows the many adventures of the chessmen after they came to light on a Scottish beach in the nineteenth century. It ends with the big surprise that befell them in September 1993, when they were all temporarily reunited for the first time since their separation, at a Special Exhibition of Chessmen at the British Museum.

Board games have been played since prehistoric times, passing from person to person and country to country all over the world. This colourful and unique book explains the origins of five of the most long-lasting games, with five fold out game boards and rules so that you can play the games yourself. To play the games you can use ordinary modern dice and anything you like for counters: buttons or sweets will do!

In THE ARK BEFORE NOAH, 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.

'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human experience.' - History Revealed'A fascinating journey' - Yorkshire Post'Marvellous...Finkel is an expert in Mesopotamian cultures at the British Museum, and is one of the most clever, and nicest, of people it has ever been my pleasure to encounter...A fascinating journey' - The ScotsmanThere are few things more in common across cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally 'believe' or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired, fascinated and frightened us for centuries - yet most of us are only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic literature. But their origins are much, much older...The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years, covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts, why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?

In Context: the Reade Festschrift is a collection of invited and peer-reviewed essays by friends and colleagues of Julian Edgeworth Reade, sometime Mesopotamia curator at the British Museum from 1975 to 2000. Its coverage is designed to reflect the breadth of the recipient’s professional interests, from Assyria and Mesopotamia in general, to the relations between Mesopotamia and other regions and the impact of nineteenth-century discoveries on the field of Assyriology. They include both syntheses and archaeological research, as well as reports on archival discoveries. Context is always crucial. Here is fresh work from which any reader can gain a new appreciation of the importance of the ancient Near East.

"The library is situated," said the short entry in the Guide to British Libraries A-L, "in pleasant rolling countryside not too far from Hereford, and is perhaps most readily accessible by private motor vehicle." This statement was quite accurate. Inaccessibility had always been one of the Library's most prized qualities. "The Last Resort Library was founded in 1962, and is a forward-looking institution with very much its own sense of mission," it continued. The truth was that the Guide compiler had never heard of the Library himself, but someone had mentioned it to him right at the last minute, and he was improvising while correcting proofs. "Researchers should be aware that, despite the size of the Library's holdings, there is no published catalogue of any kind." That's what he had been told, and it seemed only sensible to make a formal note of it. - Prologue

In the capital, Nineveh, resides a deep and complex man, the power behind the King of the World. Faced with unforeseen disaster that threatens his authority, he emerges as a psychopathic killer.The author uses his familiarity with ancient writings preserved in the world's museums to recreate a vanished world in which those who step from the shadows in ruthless violence to pursue ultimate control show themselves at the same time to be disconcertingly human.The tight prose and graphic illustrations make this a gripping and unusual tale not of this world, but at the same time weirdly familiar.

In the capital, Nineveh, resides a deep and complex man, the power behind the King of the World. Faced with unforeseen disaster that threatens his authority, he emerges as a psychopathic killer.The author uses his familiarity with ancient writings preserved in the world's museums to recreate a vanished world in which those who step from the shadows in ruthless violence to pursue ultimate control show themselves at the same time to be disconcertingly human.The tight prose and graphic illustrations make this a gripping and unusual tale not of this world, but at the same time weirdly familiar.