Lex Fridman Podcast
#487 – Irving Finkel: Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations & Flood Myths
Dec 12, 2025
<p>Irving Finkel is a scholar of ancient languages and a longtime curator at the British Museum, renowned for his expertise in Mesopotamian history and cuneiform writing. He specializes in reading and interpreting cuneiform inscriptions, including tablets from Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian contexts. He became widely known for studying a tablet with a Mesopotamian flood story that predates the biblical Noah narrative, which he presented in his book “The Ark Before Noah” and in a documentary that involved building a …
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