Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
the stories preserved in the columns of tiny wedgelike characters impressed into clay tab-
lets. He spent his meager income on obscure textbooks and his evenings learning to read
arcane inscriptions and mastering a dead language. After work he haunted the British Mu-
seum, where the staff noticed the enthralled youth's interest in the collection of fragmented
clay tablets. Who knew what mysteries lay hidden in the thousands of fragments in the mu-
seum's collection?
George Smith's reconstructed cuneiform tablet of the Babylonian flood story
(
by Alan Witschonke based on an illustra-
tion in Smith, G., 1876,
The Chaldean Account of Genesis
, Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York, p. 10
).
For half a decade, from 1849 to 1854, archaeological expeditions returned crates con-
taining thousands of clay tablets to the British Museum. Digging through the rubble of an-
cient Nineveh, near the modern Iraqi town of Mosul, excavators discovered the ruins of
King Ashurbanipal's library dating from around 670
BC
. Not recognizing their significance
at first, the museum's curators thought the tablets were decorated pottery. After minimal
