Audio · 2025-12-12 · 24 moments

#487 – Irving Finkel: Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations & Flood Myths

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 docum ✦ AI generated

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Context

The first writing we can call writing is from around 3,500 BC, but this is just the oldest surviving evidence — the true origin of writing must be much, much older.

Irving Finkel introduces the origins of writing in Mesopotamia around 3,500 BC, explains how pictographic signs evolved into phonetic syllabic writing, and argues that the oldest surviving evidence is unlikely to be anywhere near the true moment of invention.

transcript

Irving Finkel: The first attempts at writing that we could call writing go back to the middle of the 4th millennium, say, around 3,500 BC, something like that. There were people in the Middle East, individuals who lived between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, who had clay as their operating material for building and all sorts of other purposes, and eventually as a writing support, they somehow developed the idea of the basis of writing, which means that you can make a sign, which people agree on, a surface, that another person, when they see it, they know what sound it engenders. That is the essence of writing, that there's an agreed system of symbols, that A can use and B can then play back, either in their heads or literally with their voices, a bit like a gramophone record. So when it really began, it's a terribly, terribly awkward question for us, because the truth of the matter is we have no idea when anything began. And all we can say is that the oldest evidence we have is around 3,500 BC. But whether that was anywhere near the time or the stage when this started off for the first time seems to me very, very unlikely.

Claim◆

Pictographic signs for objects followed by phonetic signs for sound is a much later and unlikely sequence — the far more natural first step would have been to make signs for sounds, since everyone already spoke the same language.

Finkel argues the standard archaeological sequence (pictures first, sounds second) is backwards — he believes a system of sound-based signs likely existed long before the Sumerian pictographs we have found, because any group trying to communicate would naturally start with sounds. He calls this a highly controversial position.

transcript

Irving Finkel: Now, the thing is, the received law from assyriology is it was that way round, that first we had pictures and secondly we had sound. Well, I have to say, I find this very hard to believe, because if you had a group of people in an environment where it was compellingly necessary to make a system that you made marks on a surface which everybody could understand and use. Why wouldn't you start out with signs that made sounds? Because everybody speaks the same language, right? So they didn't have A, B, C, D, E, F, G, but they could easily work out all the vowels and consonants without naming them as vowels and consonants, but the component parts. So they could have had signs that started out because if you decided you had, we have 26, say they had 50 signs that would create the sound. They could write anything without any further trouble. So I find it very bewildering that they started off with the least flexible and the least adaptable system of pictographs and then they moved on to the sound. I don't know why they bothered with it 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, they traded, they probably even had wars, and they had messages between them. And I think there was a long-running system of communication between people who didn't share a language, for whom pictures would suffice.

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Mechanism◆

Writing began when someone realized that a picture could represent not just an object but the sound of the word for that object, enabling the recording of language itself.

Finkel explains the key breakthrough in the origin of writing: moving from pictographic signs (a foot means foot) to phonetic signs (a foot means the sound of the word for foot), which liberated scribes to record language, grammar, and literature. He questions the standard archaeological narrative that pictographs came first, suggesting sound-based signs were the more natural starting point.

transcript

Irving Finkel: 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. Once this happened, some probably very, very imaginative and clever persons had a kind of light bulb moment when they realized that they could develop a whole panoply of signs which could convey sound. And once you had that, you're liberated from pictographic writing into a position where you can record language. So language, grammar, and all the rest of it, and before long, proverbs and literature and all the other things that got written down.

Claim◆

A carved green stone seal from Göbekli Tepe, circa 9000 BC, bearing hieroglyphic signs on its flat bottom, proves that writing existed thousands of years before the Sumerian evidence — it is a raindrop from which we can infer the waterfall.

Finkel describes a green stone stamp seal from Göbekli Tepe (circa 9000 BC) with carved hieroglyphic signs — a seal used to ratify contracts or agreements by impressing onto clay. He argues this is unmistakably writing, and that the organizational sophistication of Göbekli Tepe's architecture would have been impossible without it, making his position highly controversial in the field.

transcript

Irving Finkel: There's this marvelous site in Turkey called Gobekli Tepe. Everybody knows about the buildings and the architecture and the sculpture. If you go all the way through the photographs, which the archaeologists unwisely put online, you will find in the middle of one color plate with lots of other things, a round green stone like a scarab from Egypt, that's to say it has an arched back and a flat bottom, and on the flat bottom there are hieroglyphic signs carved in the stone, right? No one said anything about it at all, but it's clear to me, A, that this was a stamp to ratify where the carvings of the signs on clay or some other ceiling material would leave an impression. It must be that. So this is about 9000 BC. Now, when I was a boy at university, my professor said to me, the reason you can, writing evolved in Mesopotamia because they had complex cities with ziggurats and big buildings and lots of people and they had to organize everything. And so they invented writing to cope with it. Well, if they had to cope with that in Sumer in 3000 BC, they sure as hell had to do it at Gobekli Tepe because they hardly even begun to finish excavating the sites of Gobekli Tepe. They go on and on like Manchester and Newcastle United. And really, the old rule would be you could not have architecture like that, without, planned and built according to principle with all the different people. You couldn't have that without writing in southern Iraq. So how come suddenly, that 7,000 years earlier, they do it there? And that green stone shows that they had writing.

gives example · 1supports · 1

Claim◆

Writing began not with pictographs that later evolved into sound-based signs, but with sound-based signs from the very beginning, because any group of people trying to communicate would naturally start with the sounds of their shared language.

Finkel argues that the standard archaeological timeline — pictographs first, then phonetic signs — is backwards. He believes sound-based writing came first, and pictographs were a late, specialized offshoot used for cross-linguistic trade communication.

transcript

Irving Finkel: Well, I think it's rather paradoxical, because the first generation or so of tablets that we have are written in these pictographic signs, where each sign means what it looks like. So this is a very limited method of recording messages, and it doesn't lend itself to recording grammar. And then the secondary phase, as we understand it from archaeology, is the perception that you could take these signs, still meaning what they look like, but also what the words sounded like. So then you have all these wonderful ice cubes, which express all the sounds of the language from which you can record words and grammar and everything else. Now, the thing is, the received law from assyriology is it was that way round, that first we had pictures and secondly we had sound. Well, I have to say, I find this very hard to believe, because if you had a group of people in an environment where it was compellingly necessary to make a system that you made marks on a surface which everybody could understand and use. Why wouldn't you start out with signs that made sounds? Because everybody speaks the same language, right? So they didn't have A, B, C, D, E, F, G, but they could easily work out all the vowels and consonants without naming them as vowels and consonants, but the component parts. So they could have had signs that started out because if you decided you had, we have 26, say they had 50 signs that would create the sound. They could write anything without any further trouble. So I find it very bewildering that they started off with the least flexible and the least adaptable system of pictographs and then they moved on to the sound. I don't know why they bothered with it 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, they traded, they probably even had wars, and they had messages between them. And I think there was a long-running system of communication between people who didn't share a language, for whom pictures would suffice. So if merchants come and they have three sheep to sell, so they draw three little sheep, you know how much it is and what they are and so forth. And so I think that what happened with the Sumerians, with their pictographic signs, is that those signs are right at the end of a very, very, very long period of time when somebody thought, What we can do is take these stupid, inhibited, no smoking signs and write language. That is what I think happened.

Claim◆

The standard view that writing evolved from pictographs to phonetics is backwards — the natural starting point would have been sound-based signs, since everyone already spoke the same language.

Finkel makes a highly controversial claim: the received wisdom that writing began with pictographs and later evolved to represent sound is likely wrong. He argues that people who already shared a spoken language would naturally start with sound-based signs, and that pictographs probably belong to a much earlier, pre-Sumerian system of cross-linguistic trade communication.

transcript

explains mechanism · 1

Claim

The surviving cuneiform tablets represent only a tiny fraction — a raindrop — of what once existed, and the Assyriological assumption that what we have is roughly all there ever was is a profound fallacy that skews everything.

Finkel argues that the thousands of tablets from the Ur III period likely came from just two rooms, not a whole culture, and that Ashurbanipal's famous library at Nineveh was probably looted by the victorious Babylonians and Elamites — the fragments left behind are broken duplicates and discards, not the real library. The field's unspoken assumption that the surviving material represents the whole is a fallacy that must be attacked.

transcript

Irving Finkel: The thing is there are thousands of those tablets written in about 2100 to 2000 BC, thousands of them, about the size of a box of matches. So people like to generalize about the Sumerians at this time of the world. But they probably all came out of two rooms because they were dumped when they were no longer needed in some kind of room. And the archaeologists in the 19th century came down on these and then all the locals came and they bought, dug them up and they sold them all over the place and they'd gone all over the world, thousands and thousands of them, out of probably two stories rooms, which is not a whole culture or a whole country or their whole history or their belief systems. So our view of it is slewed by the nature of the material. And sometimes the material is opulent and benevolent, but not always. And sometimes the people who work with slewed material don't even realize how slewed it is. It's quite remarkable.

provides context · 1

Claim◆

Writing originated not as pictographs that later evolved to represent sound, but as a sound-based system from the very beginning, with pictographs being a much older, separate system used for cross-linguistic trade communication.

Finkel challenges the standard assyriological view that writing began with pictographs and later evolved to encode sound. He argues people would naturally start with sound signs since everyone speaks a language, and that pictographs were an older, separate system for trade between people who didn't share a language.

transcript

Irving Finkel: The received law from assyriology is it was that way round, that first we had pictures and secondly we had sound. Well, I have to say, I find this very hard to believe, because if you had a group of people in an environment where it was compellingly necessary to make a system that you made marks on a surface which everybody could understand and use. Why wouldn't you start out with signs that made sounds? Because everybody speaks the same language, right? So they didn't have A, B, C, D, E, F, G, but they could easily work out all the vowels and consonants without naming them as vowels and consonants, but the component parts. So they could have had signs that started out because if you decided you had, we have 26, say they had 50 signs that would create the sound. They could write anything without any further trouble. So I find it very bewildering that they started off with the least flexible and the least adaptable system of pictographs and then they moved on to the sound. I don't know why they bothered with it 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, they traded, they probably even had wars, and they had messages between them. And I think there was a long-running system of communication between people who didn't share a language, for whom pictures would suffice.

explains mechanism · 1

Claim◆

A green stone seal discovered at Göbekli Tepe (c. 9000 BC) with carved signs proves that writing existed thousands of years before the Sumerians, and that complex architecture like Göbekli Tepe could not have been built without a writing system.

Finkel interprets a green stone seal from Göbekli Tepe as definitive evidence of writing at 9000 BC — a pictographic stamp used for ratification. He argues that the organizational complexity of Göbekli Tepe's architecture would have been impossible without writing, challenging the standard view that writing arose only with urban civilization in Sumer.

transcript

Irving Finkel: Do you think it's possible we might find much, much older cuneiform type tablets? Well, or pictographic type tablets, but before the cuneiform and the drawing type, and I'll tell you why, because there's this marvelous site in Turkey called Gobekli Tepe. ... If you go all the way through the photographs, which the archaeologists unwisely put online, you will find in the middle of one color plate with lots of other things, a round green stone like a scarab from Egypt, that's to say it has an arched back and a flat bottom, and on the flat bottom there are hieroglyphic signs carved in the stone, right? No one said anything about it at all, but it's clear to me, A, that this was a stamp to ratify where the carvings of the signs on clay or some other ceiling material would leave an impression. It must be that. So this is about 9000 BC. Now, when I was a boy at university, my professor said to me, The reason you can, writing evolved in Mesopotamia because they had complex cities with ziggurats and big buildings and lots of people and they had to organize everything. And so they invented writing to cope with it. Well, if they had to cope with that in Sumer in 3000 BC, they sure as hell had to do it at Gobekli Tepe because they hardly even begun to finish excavating the sites of Gobekli Tepe. They go on and on like Manchester and Newcastle United. ... The old rule would be you could not have architecture like that, without, planned and built according to principle with all the different people. You couldn't have that without writing in southern Iraq. So how come suddenly, that 7,000 years earlier, they do it there? And that green stone shows that they had writing. That was an official who sealed this, got the stuff or whatever it was, or was his dad's name or whatever it is, got a wiggly snake and a wiggly this. That is pictographic writing. Maybe even as phonetic, I don't know, but it was writing thousands of years before in the South.

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Claim◆

A green stone seal from Göbekli Tepe (c. 9000 BC) proves writing existed thousands of years before Sumerian cuneiform, contradicting the standard view that complex architecture required writing, because Göbekli Tepe's monuments are inexplicable without it.

Finkel points to a green stone seal found at Göbekli Tepe with carved signs, arguing it was a stamp for ratifying agreements on clay—making it true writing from around 9000 BC. He argues the staggering scale and sophistication of Göbekli Tepe's architecture would have been impossible to organize without writing, challenging the orthodox timeline.

transcript

Irving Finkel: There's this marvelous site in Turkey called Gobekli Tepe. [...] If you go all the way through the photographs, which the archaeologists unwisely put online, you will find in the middle of one color plate with lots of other things, a round green stone like a scarab from Egypt, that's to say it has an arched back and a flat bottom, and on the flat bottom there are hieroglyphic signs carved in the stone, right? No one said anything about it at all, but it's clear to me, A, that this was a stamp to ratify where the carvings of the signs on clay or some other ceiling material would leave an impression. It must be that. So this is about 9000 BC. Now, when I was a boy at university, my professor said to me, The reason you can, writing evolved in Mesopotamia because they had complex cities with ziggurats and big buildings and lots of people and they had to organize everything. And so they invented writing to cope with it. Well, if they had to cope with that in Sumer in 3000 BC, they sure as hell had to do it at Gobekli Tepe because they hardly even begun to finish excavating the sites of Gobekli Tepe. They go on and on like Manchester and Newcastle United. And really, The old rule would be you could not have architecture like that, without, planned and built according to principle with all the different people. You couldn't have that without writing in southern Iraq. So how come suddenly, that 7,000 years earlier, they do it there? And that green stone shows that they had writing.

explains mechanism · 1

Example

A green stone seal from Göbekli Tepe (c. 9000 BC) with carved hieroglyphic signs is evidence of writing thousands of years before Sumer — contradicting the standard narrative that writing emerged only in urban Mesopotamia.

Finkel points to a little-known artifact from Göbekli Tepe — a seal with carved signs — as evidence that writing existed 7,000 years before the Sumerians. He argues that monumental architecture on that scale could not have been organized without writing, and that the seal functioned as an official ratification stamp, not a mere decorative doodle.

transcript

Irving Finkel: If you go all the way through the photographs, which the archaeologists unwisely put online, you will find in the middle of one color plate with lots of other things, a round green stone like a scarab from Egypt, that's to say it has an arched back and a flat bottom, and on the flat bottom there are hieroglyphic signs carved in the stone, right? No one said anything about it at all, but it's clear to me, A, that this was a stamp to ratify where the carvings of the signs on clay or some other ceiling material would leave an impression. It must be that. So this is about 9000 BC.... The old rule would be you could not have architecture like that, without, planned and built according to principle with all the different people. You couldn't have that without writing in southern Iraq. So how come suddenly, that 7,000 years earlier, they do it there? And that green stone shows that they had writing. That was an official who sealed this... That is pictographic writing. Maybe even as phonetic, I don't know, but it was writing thousands of years before in the South.

gives example · 1supports · 1

Claim

Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens certainly had full language, with names for things and the ability to distinguish self from other, because the cognitive and anatomical apparatus was there and the social demands of hunting and survival would have made it impossible for them not to develop speech.

Finkel argues that early humans and Neanderthals must have had language. He uses the example of hunting a rhino together—calling a companion by name to get their attention would establish identity and communication. He dismisses claims they lacked self-awareness as absurd, noting pain and survival threats are fundamentally personal experiences.

transcript

Irving Finkel: I personally believe that Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens for sure had language. For sure they talked to one another. It's impossible that they didn't. The point came when they did. They did. And the Neanderthals, 100,000 years of rule, live in Europe, they had to deal with the Ice Age, they all live together, they bring up their children, they couldn't speak anything. They have the same apparatus. And if you have a human brain, then it responds to stimulus. And the more stimulus there is for communication. I mean, the idea that you and I are out hunting rhino and you say, Lex, shut up, I'm constantly, Lex, Lex. And then I suddenly think, oh, I get it. You Our legs, right? You only have to do that once, then you know who I am. So I know that I'm me and that you are you. So people who say that they couldn't distinguish ego and all that, it's absolutely stupid.

explains mechanism · 1

Claim

The library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh was not destroyed by conquerors—it was looted and systematically removed, meaning what archaeologists found are only the broken duplicates left behind, a tiny fraction of the original collection.

Finkel argues that when the Babylonians and Elamites conquered Assyria, they would have taken the library's tablets home (they spoke the same language and used the same script) rather than destroying them. What archaeologists found in the 1850s were only broken, dropped, and duplicate items—not the library itself.

transcript

Irving Finkel: The Babylonians in the south, in my opinion, they worked hand in glove with the Elamites from Iran. They had a pincer movement and they beat Assyria, they conquered Assyria, and they ran through the capital and they set fire to everything, pinched all the women and to all the jewelry and all the gold. People say that in a fit of peak, they destroyed the library, 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. And I think what's left there is duplicates and broken things and things that got dropped and everything. And that's what everyone thinks is it.

provides context · 1

Context

The cuneiform tablets we possess from ancient Mesopotamia represent only a tiny, skewed sample — what survived is mostly administrative waste from a few rooms, while the vast majority of written material, including entire libraries, was looted or destroyed in antiquity.

Finkel argues that Assyriologists suffer from a systematic fallacy: assuming the tablets we have are representative of the whole. He gives two examples — the Ur III period tablets all coming from just two rooms, and the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh being largely looted by conquerors rather than destroyed, leaving only duplicates and broken remains.

transcript

Irving Finkel: For example, there's a period called the Earth 3 period where people lived in city-states, they wrote very small account tablets by the thousand, and there were two or three major cities where this is the way they lived. People had to bring tithes and offerings and everything was recorded by what I always refer to and people sympathize with is the ancestors of the inland revenue. Because everything had to be written down so that some schmuck could check it and fill out the ledger and some other schmuck above him could okay it so there's no funny business or no mistakes. Now the thing is there are thousands of those tablets written in about 2100 to 2000 BC, thousands of them, about the size of a box of matches. So people like to generalize about the Sumerians at this time of the world. But they probably all came out of two rooms because they were dumped when they were no longer needed in some kind of room. And the archaeologists in the 19th century came down on these and then all the locals came and they bought, dug them up and they sold them all over the place and they'd gone all over the world, thousands and thousands of them, out of probably two stories rooms, which is not a whole culture or a whole country or their whole history or their belief systems. So our view of it is slewed by the nature of the material. ... They found the tablets, higgledy-piggledy, all over the floor of a huge room in the corridors and everything, and lots of them broken and lots of them burnt. So ever since then, until really quite recently, Assyriologists have spent all that, a lot of people who work on these Nineveh times, but all the time joining the bits together. ... And the assumption has always been that if you put them all together again, you've got to have the whole library. But it's the absolute opposite. Because what happened was that the Babylonians in the south, in my opinion, They worked hand in glove with the Elamites from Iran. They had a pincer movement and they beat Assyria, they conquered Assyria, and they ran through the capital and they set fire to everything, pinched all the women and to all the jewelry and all the gold. People say that in a fit of peak, they destroyed the library, 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. And I think what's left there is duplicates and broken things and things that got dropped and everything. And that's what everyone thinks is it.

provides context · 1

Fact

Assyriologists systematically overestimate how representative surviving tablets are — what we have is a skewed fragment, not a reliable sample of ancient Mesopotamian civilization.

Finkel argues that the surviving cuneiform record is radically incomplete and misleading. For example, thousands of tablets from the Ur III period likely came from just two storage rooms, not a whole civilization. The famous library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh probably had its best tablets looted by the conquering Babylonians and Elamites, leaving only duplicates and broken pieces behind.

transcript

Irving Finkel: Assyriologists have the inbuilt idea that what we have is something like all there ever was, which is absurd. For example, there's a period called the Ur 3 period where people lived in city-states, they wrote very small account tablets by the thousand... thousands of them... about the size of a box of matches. So people like to generalize about the Sumerians at this time of the world. But they probably all came out of two rooms because they were dumped when they were no longer needed in some kind of room... out of probably two storage rooms, which is not a whole culture or a whole country or their whole history or their belief systems. So our view of it is skewed by the nature of the material.

Mechanism

Akkadian grammar lacks explicit modal verbs (could, might, should, ought), yet it is impossible that such a magnificent literary language lacked those subtleties — the diviners and doctors must have communicated contingency through prosody, such as drawing out vowels, and modern translations that render omens as 'if A then B' are fundamentally wrong.

Finkel argues that thousands of lines of Akkadian omens translate as 'if a lizard runs across the breakfast table, the queen will die,' but this literal reading is absurd — no diviner would make such a bald prediction. He contends that since Akkadian has no grammatical modal verbs, the nuance must have been carried by spoken delivery (vowel length, tone), and that the entire scholarly enterprise has been mistranslating omen literature for generations.

transcript

Irving Finkel: Now, there are thousands of lines of omens of all different kinds. And in Akkadian, it says, for example, if a lizard runs across the breakfast table, the queen will die. So if you translate the Akkadian this way, the word if, verb and everything. If that, then this. So there are thousands of lines translated in many books about omens where if this happens, that will happen. So this is how it's understood by my colleagues. Well, this is absolutely impossible. Because if you're the chief diviner for the king, and you open up a sheep to take a liver out and examine it according to them, if the queen's going to die and the king's there, you're not going to say, the Queen's going to die. I mean, you're going to look like a fucking idiot if she doesn't die. And if she does die, you're going to be responsible. 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, and therefore the requisite ritual or magic must immediately swing into action to defer the danger. So the point is that A equals B is never true. It means that with A, B, could be, might be, ought to be, should be, could be true. All those subtle things. So that the diviner who works from the king must have been a philosopher who looks at the king. He looks at the king and he knows what the king wants him to say. So he has to tell the king what he wants to hear, he has to tell the king if it's bad news in such a way that he doesn't mind or he won't worry. It's the most beautiful thing. It's so subtle. It's like a violin concerto. It can never have been A equals B for a minute.

Mechanism

Akkadian cuneiform could not grammatically express modal verbs like 'could,' 'might,' 'should,' or 'ought,' yet the language must have had ways to convey these subtleties — presumably through vocal intonation — because omens and medical texts would have been functionally impossible without them.

Finkel argues that Assyriologists mistranslate Akkadian omens and medical texts as literal 'if X then Y' predictions, which would have been absurd in practice. A diviner or doctor could never say 'the queen will die' — they must have used a modal nuance (could, might) expressed through vowel lengthening or tone, even though the writing system doesn't mark this.

transcript

Irving Finkel: Now, there are thousands of lines of omens of all different kinds. And in Akkadian, it says, for example, if a lizard runs across the breakfast table, the queen will die. So if you translate the Akkadian this way, the word if, verb and everything. If that, then this. So there are thousands of lines translated in many books about omens where if this happens, that will happen. So this is how it's understood by my colleagues. Well, this is absolutely impossible. Because if you're the chief diviner for the king, and you open up a sheep to take a liver out and examine it according to them, if the queen's going to die and the king's there, you're not going to say, the Queen's going to die. I mean, you're going to look like a fucking idiot if she doesn't die. And if she does die, you're going to be responsible. 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, and therefore the requisite ritual or magic must immediately swing into action to defer the danger. So the point is that A equals B is never true. It means that with A, B, could be, might be, ought to be, should be, could be true. All those subtle things. So that the diviner who works from the king must have been a philosopher who looks at the king. He looks at the king and he knows what the king wants him to say. So he has to tell the king What he wants to hear, he has to tell the king if it's bad news in such a way that he doesn't mind or he won't worry. It's the most beautiful thing. It's so subtle. It's like a violin concerto. It can never have been A equals B for a minute. So this means that not expressible in Akkadian grammar are these modal verbs: could, might, should, ought. They can't be expressed grammatically, but it is impossible that it was such a magnificent literary language where they didn't have these subtleties. It's utterly impossible. And if you translate, he will, in a literary text, he might, then the whole text is different. The whole text is different. And they don't, my colleagues translate, like it says in the grammar books, like that, automatically. There's no self-appraisal of the folly of it.

Claim

The invention of monotheistic religion was the biggest mistake in human history because it introduced dogmatic certainty — 'I'm right and you're wrong' — which generated religious prejudice, inquisitions, and conflict that polytheistic systems never produced.

Finkel contrasts Mesopotamian polytheism — where gods had different specialties, temples coexisted, and no one fought over whose god was real — with monotheism's inherent claim to exclusive truth. He cites visiting Hindu temples in Calcutta as a living example of how polytheistic worship accommodates individuality without religious prejudice.

transcript

Irving Finkel: 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, it means I'm right and you're wrong if you don't. So it's already on that footing. Dogmatic, and it's led to everything, inquisitions and all this kind of stuff, it's always a result of it, that one religion is superior and the other should be stamped out and all that. And in my opinion, monotheistic religion has generated the most fantastic amount of non-religious feeling. Whereas when you have all the different gods and they have different specialities and the ones you like and the ones that everybody likes and they have their temples and their offerings, it was very interesting to me to go into a temple in Calcutta when I went there with my wife, Joanna. We went into the temples and saw how they were. And I think they must be very much like the ones in Mesopotamia. So there was never anything about them which affronted people's individuality or I mean, there's no religious prejudice or even racial prejudice in antiquity. All these things are modern, disadvantageous matters. If you think what's done in the name of religion, it is absolutely staggering.

Claim◆

Monotheistic religions were a catastrophic mistake for humanity because they introduced dogmatic exclusivity—'I'm right and you're wrong'—which generated inquisitions, religious prejudice, and enormous suffering, whereas polytheistic systems never affronted people's individuality or produced religious prejudice.

Finkel argues that the creation of monotheistic religion was mankind's big mistake. Unlike polytheistic systems where multiple gods with different specialties coexisted without conflict, monotheism's inherent claim to exclusive truth generates dogmatism, persecution, and has caused immense suffering throughout history.

transcript

Irving Finkel: 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, it means I'm right and you're wrong if you don't. So it's already on that footing. Dogmatic, and it's led to everything, inquisitions and all this kind of stuff, it's always a result of it, that one religion is superior and the other should be stamped out and all that. And in my opinion, monotheistic religion has generated the most fantastic amount of non-religious feeling. Whereas when you have all the different gods and they have different specialities and the ones you like and the ones that everybody likes and they have their temples and their offerings, It was very interesting to me to go into a temple in Calcutta when I went there with my wife, Joanna. We went into the temples and saw how they were. And I think they must be very much like the ones in Mesopotamia. So there was never anything about them which affronted people's individuality or I mean, there's no religious prejudice or even racial prejudice in antiquity. All these things are modern, disadvantageous matters.

provides context · 1

Claim

The creation of monotheistic religions was the big mistake for mankind, because they brought evil into the world — the dogmatic 'I'm right and you're wrong' structure led to inquisitions and religious violence, whereas polytheistic systems never affronted people's individuality or generated racial or religious prejudice.

Finkel contrasts Mesopotamian polytheism — a practical, taken-for-granted system where gods had different specialties and people gave them nudges when needed — with monotheistic religions, which he argues introduced dogmatic certainty that one is right and others are wrong, leading to inquisitions and staggering violence done in the name of religion.

transcript

Irving Finkel: 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, it means I'm right and you're wrong if you don't. So it's already on that footing. Dogmatic, and it's led to everything, inquisitions and all this kind of stuff, it's always a result of it, that one religion is superior and the other should be stamped out and all that. And in my opinion, monotheistic religion has generated the most fantastic amount of non-religious feeling. Whereas when you have all the different gods and they have different specialities and the ones you like and the ones that everybody likes and they have their temples and their offerings, It was very interesting to me to go into a temple in Calcutta when I went there with my wife, Joanna. We went into the temples and saw how they were. And I think they must be very much like the ones in Mesopotamia. So there was never anything about them which affronted people's individuality or I mean, there's no religious prejudice or even racial prejudice in antiquity. All these things are modern, disadvantageous matters. If you think what's done in the name of religion, it is absolutely staggering.

Context

The extraordinary quality of prehistoric cave paintings — technically unsurpassable — proves that genius-level creative ability has always existed among humans, and that a single master artist likely traveled between sites, just as later oral storytellers and bards traveled between communities.

Finkel argues against the assumption that prehistoric people were primitive or less capable. The cave paintings are technically masterful — suggesting not that every family had a painter, but that a single genius artist moved from place to place. He extends this to early oral literature, arguing that storytelling around fires was a natural human mechanism for transmitting knowledge, and that creative genius is an ancient feature of Homo sapiens.

transcript

Irving Finkel: You have to allow for a strong creative principle surfacing in Homo sapiens at a quite early age, because the paintings on cave walls, you try drawing a running antelope in color on a wall. I mean, the quality of the workmanship, of the artistic ability is unsurpassable. It's not just good. So how is that an inexplicable thing at this very early date? It means that among all the population, you have imbeciles and Einsteins, and somewhere along the line, you have Rembrandt's. And I imagine that half the cave paintings in Europe were done by one person. I mean, you got the impression every family had a genius painter. It's impossible. Probably there was a person who went from place to place doing these paintings because they were so... could draw straight away accurately like that, but they are a distillation of creative artistic ability plus skill. So this is right at the pretty early stage, is it not, the cave painting material? So if you consider the human stock, which encapsulates such ideas ever after, then you have to reckon with that. You have to reckon with that. Very creative, very creative people. So the function of story is to tell the young and about what happened and about famous battles or when the flood came or how people learned to make fire or, you know, how we invented the wheel, all those sorts of things everybody puts down. But that's presumably what absolutely happened.

Claim

The creation of monotheistic religions was the big mistake for mankind, because they introduced dogmatic intolerance — 'I'm right and you're wrong' — which generated inquisitions and religious persecution, whereas polytheistic systems never affronted people's individuality in that way.

Finkel argues that monotheism introduced evil into the world through its inherently dogmatic structure — if one god is the only true god, then everyone else is wrong, which leads to persecution, inquisitions, and religious violence. Polytheistic systems, by contrast, were accommodating: many gods with different specialities, none demanding exclusive worship, and no religious or racial prejudice in antiquity.

transcript

Irving Finkel: 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, it means I'm right and you're wrong if you don't. So it's already on that footing. Dogmatic, and it's led to everything, inquisitions and all this kind of stuff, it's always a result of it, that one religion is superior and the other should be stamped out and all that. And in my opinion, monotheistic religion has generated the most fantastic amount of non-religious feeling. Whereas when you have all the different gods and they have different specialities and the ones you like and the ones that everybody likes and they have their temples and their offerings... there was never anything about them which affronted people's individuality or... there's no religious prejudice or even racial prejudice in antiquity. All these things are modern, disadvantageous matters.

Highlight slides

The Standard Sequence Is Backwards✦ from: Pictographic signs for objects followed by phonetic signs for sound is a much later and unlikely sequence — the far more natural first step would have been to make signs for sounds, since everyone already spoke the same language.A Simpler, More Powerful First Step✦ from: Pictographic signs for objects followed by phonetic signs for sound is a much later and unlikely sequence — the far more natural first step would have been to make signs for sounds, since everyone already spoke the same language.The Phonetic Breakthrough in Writing✦ from: Writing began when someone realized that a picture could represent not just an object but the sound of the word for that object, enabling the recording of language itself.From Sound-Signs to Literature✦ from: Writing began when someone realized that a picture could represent not just an object but the sound of the word for that object, enabling the recording of language itself.A 9000 BC Seal with Hieroglyphic Signs — Claim of Writing✦ from: A carved green stone seal from Göbekli Tepe, circa 9000 BC, bearing hieroglyphic signs on its flat bottom, proves that writing existed thousands of years before the Sumerian evidence — it is a raindrop from which we can infer the waterfall.Inference from Architecture: Writing Must Have Existed✦ from: A carved green stone seal from Göbekli Tepe, circa 9000 BC, bearing hieroglyphic signs on its flat bottom, proves that writing existed thousands of years before the Sumerian evidence — it is a raindrop from which we can infer the waterfall.Sound-Based Signs, Not Pictures, Came First✦ from: Writing began not with pictographs that later evolved into sound-based signs, but with sound-based signs from the very beginning, because any group of people trying to communicate would naturally start with the sounds of their shared language.Pictographs Were a Late, Cross-Linguistic Tool✦ from: Writing began not with pictographs that later evolved into sound-based signs, but with sound-based signs from the very beginning, because any group of people trying to communicate would naturally start with the sounds of their shared language.The Pictograph-First Model Is Backwards✦ from: The standard view that writing evolved from pictographs to phonetics is backwards — the natural starting point would have been sound-based signs, since everyone already spoke the same language.Sound-Based Signs Are the Natural Starting Point✦ from: The standard view that writing evolved from pictographs to phonetics is backwards — the natural starting point would have been sound-based signs, since everyone already spoke the same language.The orthodox view is backwards✦ from: Writing originated not as pictographs that later evolved to represent sound, but as a sound-based system from the very beginning, with pictographs being a much older, separate system used for cross-linguistic trade communication.Why sound signs make more sense✦ from: Writing originated not as pictographs that later evolved to represent sound, but as a sound-based system from the very beginning, with pictographs being a much older, separate system used for cross-linguistic trade communication.Pictographs as a separate trade system✦ from: Writing originated not as pictographs that later evolved to represent sound, but as a sound-based system from the very beginning, with pictographs being a much older, separate system used for cross-linguistic trade communication.The Green Stone Seal from Göbekli Tepe✦ from: A green stone seal discovered at Göbekli Tepe (c. 9000 BC) with carved signs proves that writing existed thousands of years before the Sumerians, and that complex architecture like Göbekli Tepe could not have been built without a writing system.Rewriting the Timeline of Writing✦ from: A green stone seal discovered at Göbekli Tepe (c. 9000 BC) with carved signs proves that writing existed thousands of years before the Sumerians, and that complex architecture like Göbekli Tepe could not have been built without a writing system.Green stone seal from Göbekli Tepe✦ from: A green stone seal from Göbekli Tepe (c. 9000 BC) proves writing existed thousands of years before Sumerian cuneiform, contradicting the standard view that complex architecture required writing, because Göbekli Tepe's monuments are inexplicable without it.Writing before Sumer — timeline challenged✦ from: A green stone seal from Göbekli Tepe (c. 9000 BC) proves writing existed thousands of years before Sumerian cuneiform, contradicting the standard view that complex architecture required writing, because Göbekli Tepe's monuments are inexplicable without it.Architecture requires writing✦ from: A green stone seal from Göbekli Tepe (c. 9000 BC) proves writing existed thousands of years before Sumerian cuneiform, contradicting the standard view that complex architecture required writing, because Göbekli Tepe's monuments are inexplicable without it.The Core Claim: Monotheism as a Catastrophic Mistake✦ from: Monotheistic religions were a catastrophic mistake for humanity because they introduced dogmatic exclusivity—'I'm right and you're wrong'—which generated inquisitions, religious prejudice, and enormous suffering, whereas polytheistic systems never affronted people's individuality or produced religious prejudice.Why Polytheism Avoided These Harms✦ from: Monotheistic religions were a catastrophic mistake for humanity because they introduced dogmatic exclusivity—'I'm right and you're wrong'—which generated inquisitions, religious prejudice, and enormous suffering, whereas polytheistic systems never affronted people's individuality or produced religious prejudice.

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