Irving Leonard Finkel (born 1951) is an English

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...

and

Assyriologist Assyriology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logy, -logia''), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cune ...

. He is the Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, where he specialises in

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

inscriptions on tablets of clay from ancient

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

Early life and education

Finkel was born in 1951 to a dentist father and teacher mother, one of five children, and grew up at

Palmers Green Palmers Green is a suburban area and electoral ward in north London, England, within the London Borough of Enfield. It is located within the N13 postcode district, around north of Charing Cross. It is home to the largest population of Greek Cy ...

North London North London is the northern part of London, England, north of the River Thames and the City of London. It extends from Clerkenwell and Finsbury, on the edge of the City of London financial district, to Greater London's boundary with Hertfordshi ...

. He was raised as an

Orthodox Jew Orthodox Judaism is a collective term for the traditionalist branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as literally revealed by God on Mount Sinai and faithfully tran ...

but became an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

as a teenager. He earned a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in Assyriology from the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

under the supervision of Wilfred G. Lambert with a dissertation on Babylonian exorcistic spells against demons.

Career

Philology

Finkel spent three years as a Research Fellow at the

University of Chicago Oriental Institute The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa (ISAC), formerly known as the Oriental Institute, is the University of Chicago's interdisciplinary research center for ancient Near Eastern studies and archaeology museum. ...

. In 1976 he returned to the UK, and was appointed Assistant Keeper in the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum, where he was (and remains) responsible for curating, reading and translating the museum's collection of around 130,000

tablets. In 2014, Finkel's study of a cuneiform tablet that contained a

flood narrative A flood myth or a deluge myth is a myth in which a great flood, usually sent by a deity or deities, destroys civilization, often in an act of divine retribution. Parallels are often drawn between the flood waters of these myths and the primeval ...

similar to that of the story of Noah's Ark, described in his book ''The Ark Before Noah'', was widely reported in the news media. The ark described in the tablet was circular, essentially a very large

coracle A coracle is a small, rounded, lightweight boat of the sort traditionally used in Wales, and also in parts of the west of Ireland and also particularly on the River Boyne, and in Scotland, particularly the River Spey. The word is also used for ...

kuphar A ''kuphar'' (also transliterated ''kufa, kuffah, quffa, quffah'', etc.) is a type of coracle or round boat traditionally used on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in ancient and modern Mesopotamia. Its circular shape means that it does not sail wel ...

and made of rope on a wooden frame. The tablet included sufficient details of its dimensions and construction to enable a copy of the ark to be made at about 1/3 scale, as documented in a 2014 TV documentary ''Secrets of Noah's Ark'' that aired as an episode of

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

's NOVA series. The reconstructed ark was floated with partial success given that the

bitumen Bitumen ( , ) is an immensely viscosity, viscous constituent of petroleum. Depending on its exact composition, it can be a sticky, black liquid or an apparently solid mass that behaves as a liquid over very large time scales. In American Engl ...

used as sealant for the vessel walls immediately succumbed to leaks and a gasoline powered pump had to continuously be used to pump out water.

Board games

Finkel studies the

history of board games A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects () that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice. The earliest known uses of the ...

, and is on the editorial board of ''Board Game Studies''. Among his breakthrough works is the determination of the rules of the

Royal Game of Ur The Royal Game of Ur is a two-player strategy race board game of the tables family that was first played in ancient Mesopotamia during the early third millennium BC. The game was popular across the Middle East among people of all social strata ...

. He also owns a replica set of the

Lewis chessmen The Lewis chessmen ( ) or Uig chessmen, named after the island or the bay where they were found, are a group of distinctive 12th-century chess pieces, along with other game pieces, most of which are carved from walrus ivory. Discovered in 1831 ...

which were used as props in the first Harry Potter film.

Great Diary Project

Finkel founded the Great Diary Project, a project to preserve the diaries of ordinary people. In association with the

Bishopsgate Institute Bishopsgate Institute is a cultural institute in the Bishopsgate area east of the City of London. The institute was established in 1895. It offers a cultural events programme, courses for adults, historic library and archive collections, and a ...

, Finkel has helped to archive over 2,000 personal diaries. In 2014, the

V&A Museum of Childhood Young V&A, formerly the V&A Museum of Childhood, is a branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum (the "V&A"), which is the United Kingdom's national museum of applied arts. It is in Bethnal Green in the East End of London, and specialises in obje ...

held an exhibition of the diaries of children written between 1813 and 1996.

Literary

Finkel has written a number of works of fiction for children. He appeared in the 2014 memoir ''The Boy in the Book'' by Nathan Penlington.

Personal life

Finkel lives in southeast London with his wife Joanna and has five children.

Selected publications

Academic

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Fiction

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References

External links

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The Great Diary Project
The Jager File, 24 September 2010. Retrieved 15 April 2013

{{DEFAULTSORT:Finkel, Irving 1951 births Alumni of the University of Birmingham English Assyriologists Jewish British writers Jewish atheists Employees of the British Museum Living people Tabletop game writers British philologists Jewish scholars 20th-century British archaeologists 21st-century British archaeologists