Irving Finkel Teaches Cuneiform | The Ancients
The Ancients
•
1h 14m
In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Irving Finkel to uncover how cuneiform actually worked and how you would write it yourself.
More than five thousand years ago, a revolutionary script emerged in the fertile lands of Mesopotamia that would transform how people counted, governed, worshipped and told stories. This was cuneiform, the world’s earliest known writing system.
From humble beginnings as simple pictograms tracking beer and grain, to the wedge-shaped signs that recorded myths, laws and epic tales long before the Bible, this episode explores how cuneiform spread across Sumer, Babylon, Assyria and Persia — and why these clay tablets remain one of archaeology’s richest windows into the ancient world.
Up Next in The Ancients
-
Who Were Adam and Eve? | The Ancients
Adam and Eve: parents of humanity, or characters in a dark Near Eastern myth about wisdom, mortality, and the limits of being human?
Tristan Hughes and Dr Dylan Johnson strip away the Sunday school varnish to re-examine the story of Adam and Eve, starting with the question, Was there really an ...
-
Who Was Xerxes the Great? | The Ancients
He is one of the most famous rulers of the ancient world, remembered for leading a vast Persian invasion of Greece. Yet Xerxes the Great was far more than just a battlefield king.
In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by friend of the show Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones to e...
-
Ancient DNA Reveals New Truth About O...
What can ancient DNA tell us about the first homo sapiens to arrive in Arabia over 50,000 years ago? Tristan Hughes is joined by Prof. Pierre Zalloua to delve into the groundbreaking advances in ancient DNA research that illuminate the complex journeys of these early human populations.
They dis...
