Here is the full transcript of Tiffany Jenkins’ talk titled “Why An Ancient Mesopotamian Tablet Is Key To Our Future Learning” at TEDxSquareMile conference.
Tiffany Jenkins delivered a compelling talk on the significance of an ancient Mesopotamian tablet, known as the “flood tablet,” housed in the British Museum. She highlighted the contrast between the tangible heritage of the past, represented by such artifacts, and the intangible, digital world of today, arguing for the irreplaceable value of physical objects in understanding history.
Jenkins recounted the discovery of the tablet in the 19th century by adventurers [Austen] Henry Layard and Hormuzd Rassam, emphasizing its role in unveiling the forgotten civilization of Assyria. The narrative further delved into the story of George Smith, a self-taught scholar who deciphered the cuneiform script on the tablet, revealing a flood story predating the Biblical tale of Noah, thus challenging contemporary beliefs and orthodoxies.
She underscored the pivotal role of museums like the British Museum in preserving these artifacts, serving as bridges to past civilizations and offering invaluable insights into human history. Jenkins argued that such tangible connections to the past are crucial for future learning, providing a sense of reality and permanence in an increasingly digital age.
Finally, she advocated for visiting museums to experience these artifacts firsthand, to ground ourselves in the tangible achievements of our ancestors, thereby enriching our understanding of history and its relevance to the present and future.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
I am going to talk about something like this. It’s a dusty fragment from a clay tablet. That might not look like very much – you can’t really tell what the squiggles say on it, and it looks pretty old, off-yellow – but it’s actually one of the most remarkable objects I’ve ever encountered. It’s called a “flood tablet” because the squiggles, which are in cuneiform, tell the story of a flood.
It’s in the British Museum today, so not far from here, and it’s part of one of the oldest written-down forms of literature, so one of the pieces of the oldest pieces of literature in the world. It’s from the 7th century B.C., northern Iraq, so it’s about 2,700 years old.
Now, the previous speaker talked a lot about Facebook and the digital world, and I want to contrast objects like this to the digital world. The digital world is a wonderful thing, and it presents all sorts of opportunities for knowledge. We can really find anything we want on the web, but sometimes we have to know what to look for, and sometimes, I think, we need things that are a little bit more tangible, things that we can touch.
So I want to talk today about how objects like these, the real thing – and although I say we can touch them, obviously in museums, there are glass cases and there are security guards, so it’s more of a kind of idea of touch – but objects like these and institutions like the British Museum are essential to the future of learning; that in the 21st century, we need two things: We need a sense of the past – the civilizations that came before us – and we need a sense of the real.
The Discovery of the Flood Tablet
Now, I think the story of the Flood Tablet, how it was found, what it says, and the impact it had on the world when it was deciphered is salutary to what we’re thinking about today: how we know what we know, and how we never know everything. So, I want to tell you and take you back to how this Flood Tablet was found before it ended up in the British Museum.
There were two chaps responsible for it: Austen Henry Layard, he’s on the right, and this man over here, Hormuzd Rassam. Austen Henry Layard was an adventurer, so he took off to the Middle East around 1830, riding into the countries on horseback, as you do, and he met up with Hormuzd, an archaeologist.
And what they tried to do, and what they succeeded in doing, is finding the ancient civilization of Assyria. What’s remarkable is that we know quite a lot about Assyria today, but then it had pretty much been forgotten. Many of the buildings, the palaces, the sculptures, the Flood Tablet were completely covered in dirt, and nobody knew where they were. So they set about trying to find where they were with shovels and a team of men behind them.
They found the most remarkable and spectacular objects – completely bizarre objects – and the Flood Tablet. In fact, they found palaces, grand palaces, and a whole library. What was remarkable about the people of the time was that they set about, pretty much, creating a new state. They’re a massive empire, and they recorded many things about it.
The Deciphering of Cuneiform
So we know many things about the ancient Assyrians because they left a detailed record of it. But of course, people didn’t automatically know how to read cuneiform, which is what the language is on the Flood Tablet; it had to be deciphered. This – he’s not a hipster, he just looks like one there – this chap is called George Smith. Now, George was from a working-class background; he was self-educated; he had been apprenticed, at the age of 14, to a firm of banknote engravers, but he became absolutely passionate, and obsessed – and I think, in a way, you do have to be obsessed to make any kind of major breakthrough, which is what he did.
But he was obsessed with the Assyrians and obsessed with cuneiform, and he taught himself to read it. He became one of the leading translators of the day. He did this often in his lunch hour, in the quiet moments before he went to work. He would go to the British Museum in Bloomsbury, every day, and read the tablets – or try and read the tablets – in the reading room.
One day, he had the Flood Tablet in front of him, and he suddenly cracked it; it suddenly worked out.
It must have been one of those kind of spine-tingling moments when you feel like the hand of history is on your shoulder, because you are just about to make history. He jumped up, ran around the room, and said, “I am the first man to have read this, after 2000 years of oblivion,” which is a sort of moment to die for, I think. In fact, he was so excited, he began to undress himself, as you do.
Obviously, that’s not something to emulate in the British Museum – you might be asked to leave. What he had read was “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” and the remarkable thing about this was that it was a story of a flood that was very similar to the story of Noah and the flood and the animals. Why does that matter? The interesting thing about it, and the surprising thing about it, was that it was written 400 years before the earliest written version of the Bible story.
So it indicated that the Bible story wasn’t unique, it wasn’t privileged, it wasn’t a one-of, it hadn’t come from there, but had been drawn upon a kind of previous pool of knowledge in the Middle East. This was a time – so we’re talking about the 19th century – when all sorts of things were actually being questioned, including the biblical version of history. And George Smith’s revelation with this Flood Tablet was like lighting a fire; it just completely exploded all sorts of orthodoxies and mainstream thinking about biblical history. He was front-page news.
The prime minister of the day, Gladstone, came to see him lecture – you know, not bad for a banknote engraver called George who spent his lunch hours at the British Museum. I think his story is really important – it’s really salutary – because it shows a number of things: anybody can do it if they are dedicated, and it’s not easy – you have to work really damn hard, you have to be obsessed with your subject, to the point that people think you are weird. That’s no bad thing if you make breakthroughs like these. And you have to challenge the orthodoxies of the day, which can be quite a hard thing to do.
Now, we live in the 21st century, and we think we know – well, we probably do know more than we’ve ever known, but we certainly don’t know everything, and we could very easily be wrong – and the evidence of the past, strangely, is essential to questioning orthodoxies and challenging what we think we know. And I think that’s one of the reasons why museums are such wonderful places.
Now the British Museum – this is actually, before I go on, an Assyrian artifact, brought back, and you can see, I mean this is another world here represented by – And if you look – So, we have a kind of lion or a bull; we have wings coming out of its body, and amazingly – this is 7th century B.C., northern Iraq; could we do this now? – amazingly, he’s got five legs.
So, it looks like he’s walking if you are on one side, and then if you’re at the front of him, it looks like he’s stationary. So, museums hold artifacts like these. This is actually from the Met, but the British Museum around the corner holds many of these Assyrian artifacts, and I strongly recommend you go see them.
So, what do museums and their artifacts do? Why are they so important? I think they are a thread, a time-machine, where they link us to previous civilizations and previous peoples. Like I said, not in a kind of peace and love kind of way – we’re all equal and wonderful – I mean, the Assyrians were a very large and violent empire. They were tremendously creative and very, very powerful, but they were violent. And young men were apprenticed very early on, not to be like George Smith, a banknote engraver, but to be warriors, to be soldiers.
So we learn much more about those people by going to museums and looking at their artifacts. They also are, in many cases, free to enter. So, regardless of whether you are six, 16, or 60, you can go in, in your lunch break, like George, and have a look at things and wander around. The British Museum, formed in 1756, was free to enter right from the beginning. So, this tremendous idea of access to the world’s greatest knowledge institutionalized in the British Museum from very early on. Although I should say, at the time you did have to wear clean shoes – a few qualifications … not so much, I think, in the 21st century.
But the other thing museums and institutions like them offer, I think, is the real thing. Now, when I go into the BM, or if I’m lucky enough to go to somewhere like the Met, this guy, he’s five meters high; he’s really big. He’s unfamiliar; he demands my attention – I think it’s a he, although some of them look very feminine, so maybe they were confused or they were just kind of forward-thinking and ambivalent by their gender – but he demands our attention, and he deserves it. I think we live in a day and age where, and I am guilty of it as anybody else, where we access everything through our phones, through our computers, and there’s a kind of unreal quality to it.
I’m never sure – you know, it’s easy to not know what time of day it is, to not engage with something solid. And I think one thing that history does, and one thing that objects do, is they are tangible, you can touch them. They are solid; they don’t just melt into the air. I’m not sure if those of you in the audience saw the potential, continued destruction, by ISIS, in Palmyra, that site of ancient civilizations. There was a debate at the time that the horror expressed prioritized objects over people.
And I think that’s really the wrong way to understand that. I think it was an outrage, and I think, in a way, ISIS knew what they were doing; they were trying to destroy history. And I think that the thing is about artifacts like those at Palmyra, any museums, is that they give us a sense of who we are in history. So we may live in the 21st century, but people came before us and achieved many things. And I think a sense of our reality and the permanence of our reality is solidified by real objects.
So that’s why I would suggest after this conference, before you get a drink, maybe pop over to the British Museum and see some of these Assyrian artifacts, or the Rosetta Stone, or the Parthenon marbles, whatever takes your fancy. Because I think museums and ancient artifacts can take us out of the cloud and bring us back down to earth. Thank you.