Keep pulling the thread on Irving Finkel.
Mesopotamian scribes invented lexicography early in the third millennium BC by systematically organizing and standardizing written signs into thematic lists.
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 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.
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 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 original.
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 purposes.
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 played.
The oldest archaeological evidence for writing dates to approximately 3500 BC in Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
The cuneiform writing system was in use for over three millennia, and possibly closer to four millennia.
Irving Finkel believes the conventional theory that pictographic writing preceded phonetic writing is likely wrong and that the archaeological evidence is misleading.
The ancient Sumerian language is a language isolate, unrelated to any other known language family.
Irving Finkel believes that Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens possessed and used language.