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Intellectual, Code Breaker, Blasphemer: George Smith and the Ancient Chaldean Account of Genesis

Intellectual, Code Breaker, Blasphemer: George Smith and the Ancient Chaldean Account of Genesis

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George Smith was born in 1840 in London to poor parents, and consequently left school at the tender age of fifteen to take up an apprenticeship with Messrs Bradburry and Evans, a firm of engravers situated not far from the British Museum. Young George worked hard and saved his wages to buy all the latest works about Mesopotamia, the  Land Between the Rivers.

George Smith, pioneering English Assyriologist

George Smith, pioneering English Assyriologist (Public Domain)

Often he would spend his lunchtimes marveling at the then-recent discoveries from the ancient city of Nineveh that were housed in the museum. The magnificent alabaster statues of human-headed lions and bulls with wings, fabulous five-legged beasts, bas-reliefs depicting scenes of war, richly engraved chests, coins and paintings all proclaiming a civilization whose existence has been blurred by time into mere legend.

Refined low-relief section of a bull-hunt frieze from Nineveh, alabaster, c. 695 BC

Refined low-relief section of a bull-hunt frieze from Nineveh, alabaster, c. 695 BC (CC BY 3.0)

Cuneiform writing on the back of a Lamassu

Cuneiform writing on the back of a Lamassu (CC BY-SA 3.0)

It was here, within the hallowed halls of the museum, that the young engraver caught glimpses of two of the leading archaeologists of the time, Sir Henry Rawlinson and Sir Austen Henry Layard.

Gifted Code Breaker

It was a passing comment by a museum attendant that spurred George on to greater things. What if someone could read “them bird tracks”? What secrets were locked away on the thousands of cuneiform-covered fragments of clay tablets that filled the back storeroom? George Smith decided he was going to learn to read the ancient Sumerian script.

As members of the public flocked in their thousands to view the treasures dug out from the ruined palaces of long-dead kings, George worked away at his new passion. Within a few months, and to the surprise of the museum officials, Smith was deciphering cuneiform.

George was lucky enough to have been working on tablets that were part of the massive library of King Assurbanipal from twenty-five centuries earlier. Assurbanipal had ordered his agents, from as far away as Egypt to the west, and India in the east, to "Seek out and bring to me the precious tablets for which there are no copies in Assyria."

Ashurbanipal as High Priest.

Ashurbanipal as High Priest. (Public Domain)

Farming and irrigation were of special interest to the King. The land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers was made fertile by a massive system of irrigation canals, and Assurbanipal wanted to make sure the methods he was sponsoring were as modern as any the Egyptians were using along the Nile. The tablets came from near and far, in their hundreds, and were all given space in the King’s magnificent new library which stood, with its associated offices and palaces, on the east bank of the Tigris River. Thousands of tablets filled with the wisdom of the known world: books on architecture, law, astronomy, science and mathematics were all catalogued in the King’s library at Nineveh.

In 1867, Sir Henry Rawlinson wangled George a job at the museum. The amateur became a professional. His work output was amazing. He managed to show that the Elamites (from present day Iran) invaded Babylonia in 2280 BCE, and that a total eclipse of the sun had occurred at Nineveh in the month of Siva, or May, of 703 BCE. Those two solid dates were among the many he used to unlock the sequence of dynasties.

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Top Image: Deriv; Famous relief from the Old Babylonian period (now in the British museum) called the "Burney relief" or "Queen of the Night relief". (Public Domain), Cuneiform tablet c. 24th century BCE (Public Domain)

By Ted Loukes

 

Comments

Sorry - meant to get back to you earlier. George Smith was fortunate to have caught the eye of Sir Henry Rawlinson, who was not only a trustee of the British Museum, but also responsible for one of the early translations of the Behistun enscriptions. It was Rawlinson who hung off the side of the cliff in Iran coying the texts. He was also responsible for deciphering Old Persian, which enabled him to work out the Babylonian cuneiform. Smith was wangled a job at the British Museum by Rawlinson, where he was able to spend hours poring over the clay tablets that carried the Chaldean story of Genesis as well as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Ah - fascinating - thank you Ted. I assume then that George Smith was fluent in Old Persian, or Elamite, or Babylonian. Clever chap. Still, it must have taken him rather more than a wet afternoon to figure it all out :-)

Hi Veronica-Mae,

George Smith had access to the transcriptions and translations from the Behistun Inscription which was written in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. This 15 metre high rock engraving was to cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone was to Egyptian hieroglyphs.

It occurs to me to wonder how someone can decipher a script which is the written version of an unknown language? Just asking

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Ted

Ted Loukes’ fascination with Ancient Egypt began in 1972 with a visit to the Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition, held at the British Museum. His book Moses and Akhenaten: Brothers in Alms grew from a single page blog post to a two and a... Read More

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