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Proms Extra: Cuneiform 07082017

Irving Finkel of the British Museum explains why we still have thousands of texts written between five and two thousand years ago and the people and the ideas they reveal

A pre-Prom audience at Imperial College in London listens in as Shaidha Bari talks to Assyriologist Irving Finkel about cuneiform; how the script survived, what it tells us about life in the cities of Ur, Ninevah and Babylon and the way some of the most memorable stories ever told travelled from culture to culture. On the fare demonic puns, a four thousand year old joke, why the Ark might have been round and just how painful life was for Sumerian school chidren.

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41 minutes

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