Irving Finkel theorizes that the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh was not destroyed but systematically looted by conquering Babylonians and Elamites, with the remaining fragments being primarily dup...

Irving Finkel believes the conventional theory that pictographic writing preceded phonetic writing is likely wrong and that the archaeological evidence is misleading.

Irving Finkel believes the Hebrew Bible was compiled during the Babylonian exile and that its authors incorporated and recycled Babylonian myths, such as the flood story, for their own theological pur...

Irving Finkel asserts that Edward Hinks, a clergyman from Northern Ireland, was the true genius who deciphered the cuneiform system, not Henry Rawlinson who is commonly credited.

Irving Finkel believes that Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens possessed and used language.

The cuneiform writing system was in use for over three millennia, and possibly closer to four millennia.

Mesopotamian scribes invented lexicography early in the third millennium BC by systematically organizing and standardizing written signs into thematic lists.

The ancient Sumerian language is a language isolate, unrelated to any other known language family.

A round green stone seal with hieroglyphic signs found at Göbekli Tepe, dating to approximately 9000 BC, is evidence of a writing system thousands of years earlier than commonly believed.

The Akkadian language lacks grammatical structures to express modal verbs like 'could' or 'might', leading to modern misinterpretations of texts like omen lists which likely conveyed possibility rathe...

A Babylonian clay tablet known as the Ark Tablet, dating to 1700 BC, contains a flood narrative that predates the biblical story of Noah by at least a thousand years.

The Royal Game of Ur was played for nearly 3,000 years, from approximately 2600 BC, across a wide geographic area including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Crete.

The oldest archaeological evidence for writing dates to approximately 3500 BC in Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.

The British Museum holds a collection of approximately 130,000 cuneiform tablets.

The Ark Tablet describes the ark as a giant, round coracle, in contrast to the rectangular vessel described in the Bible.

The trilingual inscription of the Persian king Darius at Bisutun, written in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian, was the key that enabled the decipherment of cuneiform script.

The parallels between the Mesopotamian flood story and the biblical story of Noah, such as the releasing of birds, indicate a direct literary dependence of the biblical account on the Mesopotamian ori...

A cuneiform tablet in the British Museum, dating to the second century BC, contains rules for a later version of the Royal Game of Ur, allowing for the reconstruction of how the ancient game was playe...