Irving Finkel
Assyriologist and curator at the British Museum; reads cuneiform, and wrote The Ark Before Noah and The First Ghosts.
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 27 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
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Recent
The genius of writing was the moment somebody realised a picture could stand for a sound rather than for a thing.
And once they had the idea that you could write sounds with pictures, that’s the crucial thing, that a picture of a foot not only meant foot but it meant the sound of the word for foot.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
The archaeological record of early writing is misleading, because people across the Middle East were sending each other messages long before the Sumerians.
And my hunch is that the archaeological evidence that we have on this score is ultimately misleading, because I think this: that probably for a very, very long time before the Sumerians, people in the world, the world of what we call the Middle East, were in contact.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
There was writing at Gobekli Tepe, thousands of years before Sumer, and one stamp seal is enough to infer it.
Well, that seal from Gobekli Tepe is a raindrop from which I infer writing, and it’s perfectly possible they all wrote on flat leaves.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
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The Indus Valley people must have written on perishable material; carved stone seals cannot have been all the writing they had.
And it’s obvious, it’s obvious that they had writing on a perishable material. They can’t just have had inscribed stone seals, and many parts of India today write on palm leaf.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Inertia is nearly as strong as evolution, and people who talk about progress have no idea of it.
But actually, that argument is utterly, utterly fallacious, because the process of evolution is stymied left, right, and center by inertia. Inertia is nearly as strong as evolution, and this is something that the people who talk about progress and ideas have no idea about.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Assyriology has a built-in assumption that the tablets we have are roughly all there ever was, and it is absurd.
but it means that Assyriologists have the inbuilt idea that what we have is something like all there ever was, which is absurd.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Our picture of the Sumerians is skewed by the accident of what was dug up, and the people working with skewed material do not realise how skewed it is.
So our view of it is skewed by the nature of the material, and sometimes the material is opulent and benevolent, but not always, and sometimes the people who work with skewed material don’t even realize how skewed it is.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
The Babylonians did not destroy Ashurbanipal's library; they carted it home, and what is left at Nineveh is the leftovers.
But they wouldn’t destroy the library because it was the giant brain from which the Assyrians ran a world empire, and it had all the knowledge in the world. They destroyed that? They spoke the same language, they had the same writing system. They’d have taken them all safely home, cart after cart after cart.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Cuneiform survived three millennia partly because the people who could read it guarded their monopoly, and literacy for all was unthinkable.
And it was in no one’s interest whatsoever. Nobody would ever concede any interest in the idea of literacy for all.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Babylonian omens never meant that A causes B; the diviner could only ever say what might happen.
So all you can ever do and ever, ever have been able to do is to say, “There’s a sign here that says that the queen could die,” meaning “could die,” not “will die.”
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Translating Akkadian statements as certainties when they were possibilities changes the whole meaning of a text.
And if you translate, “He will,” in a literary text, “He might,” then the whole text is different. The whole text is different.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
No word in one language ever precisely equates to a word in another.
Well, you know, the truth about translation is that you never really have a word in one language which precisely equates another. You never do.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Monotheism was mankind's big mistake, because it brought evil into the world.
I think the big mistake for mankind was the creation of monotheistic religions, because they brought evil into the world. Because if you believe in a monotheistic religion, that means I’m right and you’re wrong if you don’t.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Law, morality, consideration and love do not depend on religion.
Because not having religion does not mean not having law or morality or sensitivity or consideration or love or any of those things. None of those things depends on religion, and those are the things which are important.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
The Mesopotamians did not believe in their gods and ghosts; they took them for granted, which is a different mechanism entirely.
But they didn’t believe in ghosts, they took them for granted. And they didn’t believe in the gods, they took them for granted. This is a different mechanism, because nobody here in the world today takes those things for granted, just the opposite.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Religious feeling fluctuates and is usually a response to need, not a steady state of awe.
It’s a kind of conception that’s not actually based on reality, that the individual’s response to religious stimuli fluctuates and is varied and is often a response to need.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Genesis and Gilgamesh are not two independent accounts of one flood; one is literarily dependent on the other.
So this was not only in the Epic of Gilgamesh, but it was also in the Book of Genesis. So what it meant was that it wasn’t… You couldn’t have two stories… It wasn’t two stories about the same thing. It was literary dependence.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
The text of the Hebrew Bible was drawn up in Babylonian exile, to stop the Judean refugees dissolving into Babylonia.
And the authorities who were there prevented this by drawing up a kind of charter of their history, explaining things from the beginning of time up until now, how it happened and what happened, and it was all intentional. So that is, in my opinion, the driving force behind the Hebrew text.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
The flood stories of the world are not the memory of one global cataclysm.
But I do believe that the story in Mesopotamia owes its inception to a disastrous flood, but nothing global. Nothing that touched America or China or Birmingham.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
The ark was never built; it is a literary construction out of the fact that the people who survived were in boats.
I think it’s a literary construction out of the reality that people who did survive were on boats.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
The noise that made the gods send the flood is a euphemism for overpopulation, and a rather sophisticated Malthusian position.
Before the flood, the gods had not created death. So I think the noise was a reflex of the fact there were just too many animals, too many people, and they had to do something about it.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
A board game conquers the world when chance and strategy are in balance in it.
But it has built within it, is the way I understand the game plays, a measurable quota of strategy. It’s a mix of probability and strategy.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
The modern adherence to the electronic universe is disastrous for humans, and reduces the vitality of the human component.
Because I think that the modern adherence to the electronic universe is disastrous for humans, and because it reduces the vitality of the human component. I think it’s restrictive in a way that people don’t realize until it’s too late.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
The people of the ancient world were not less advanced than we are; they were probably indistinguishable from us.
I honestly believe that the people at this time were not stupid. They weren’t gorillas. They weren’t less advanced than we are. They were probably indistinguishable from what we are.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Grieving for years after a death is infantile, because everybody was always going to die.
So if you’re very fond of somebody or you love somebody and they die, it’s kind of infantile to whine about it ever after. Because what did you think was gonna happen? Either you or them.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
Henry Rawlinson does not deserve to be called the father of Assyriology.
He’s called the Father of Assyriology, but I think he’s the Stepfather of Assyriology because when he first got these inscriptions, he wrote a long book about it, which was almost entirely wrong.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
The British Museum is a museum of ideas rather than of art, and no other museum in the world has that task.
It is actually a special place because you cannot point to another museum in the world with the same task. For example, the Louvre is basically a museum of art, basically a museum of art, not a museum of ideas.
Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations, Noah’s Ark, and Flood Myths | Lex Fridman Podcast #487 Said 12 Dec 2025
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