Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
precautions were taken to protect them on the way to London, crates full of broken tablets
arrived at the museum and sat neglected in storerooms.
All those worthless fragments turned out to be the remains of the world's oldest topics.
The secrets of a dead civilization lay scattered in countless pieces of an archaeological jig-
saw puzzle. Smith's knowledge of cuneiform uniquely qualified him for the job of sorting
fragments excavated from the rubble of the Royal Assyrian library. The museum hired him
in 1863 as a curator's assistant.
He faced quite a challenge. Some tablets were broken into more than a hundred pieces.
Reconstructing them would be a tedious task, ideal for a detail-oriented introvert. Smith
threw himself into his job and was soon matching tiny pieces of broken clay together. A
natural at grouping fragments by color and shape, he had a remarkable knack for reassem-
bling the jumbled pieces into whole tablets.
For almost a decade the quiet curator's assistant painstakingly pieced tablets back to-
gether, patiently working through the museum's collection. Then, one damp fall morning
in 1872, he noticed references to the creation of the world. He soon found a large fragment
on which two of the original six columns of writing were intact, two were half-preserved,
and two were missing. It seemed to tell of a great flood.
But only part of the intact fragment was legible; the rest lay covered beneath a thick
white deposit. Frustratingly, the curator in charge of cleaning tablets was away, and Smith
was not authorized to take on the task. Naturally high-strung and nervous, Smith became
increasingly agitated waiting for the curator to return. When he finally did, Smith pounced
on the cleaned fragment.
Scanning down the third column, he struck gold.
My eye caught the statement that the ship rested on the mountains of Nizir, followed by the account of the sending
forth of the dove, and its finding no resting place and returning. I saw at once that I had here discovered a portion
at least of the Chaldean account of the Deluge.
1
The partial account Smith described was a speech given by a character he provisionally
named Izdubar (who eventually came to be known as Gilgamesh after scholars refined
their understanding of Sumerian). Recalling Izdubar's name from other fragments, Smith
searched for them and gradually reconstructed the tablet, piecing the story together as he
