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Oh hey, how are you.
What are you doing? Come on in

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to have a seat. It's been
a while since we had doctor Irvin Finkel

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on the program. Actually the last
time he was with us was in twenty

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eighteen when he had published a book
called The Arc Before Noah. You know,

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and when we talk about ancient cultures, the ancient Sumerians, the Babylonians,

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the Assyrians, these are extremely advanced
cultures that were getting a sense of

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each day through these clay tablets known
as cuneiform tablets, and they were made

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of a specific kind of clay that
allowed for writing for passages for daily activities.

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And I was shocked when I discovered
that the British Museum in London has

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about one hundred and thirty thousand of
these and the general estimate, given the

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fact that they have so many,
and they have missing pages, missing chronicles,

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missing chapters of books, papers and
dialogue, that the estimate is around

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ten million that are left to be
found. I don't know where they came

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up with that number, but that's
an extraordinary number of documents that are left

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to be found. We're going to
hear more about that today from Irving in

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our interview. But I just want
to mention that there's only a handful of

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people who can read these tablets,
and Irving is one of them. And

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it comes down to it, he's
an anomalous like at me. And this

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is why I love the guy and
I love having him on the program because

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he's always looking for curiosities outside of
the mainstream and he's found quite a few

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of them. Now, if you
remember when he was on in twenty eighteen,

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and if you didn't hear that interview, you should go back, download

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it and listen to it. The
theme is the arc before Noah. He

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actually found specific details on boat building
four thousand to six thousand years ago in

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ancient Sumerian Samaria, and he brings
it forward and he believes, and based

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on his decipherment, that these ships
were not typical with the bow with the

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stern and aft design. They were
round. They were round boats that would

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float down the river on the nile
or whatever. And this was a shock

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to the academic world when he published
this, because it's like, what are

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you talking about. Well, he
actually got and this is why you got

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to get the book. He actually
got a detailed rendition of it by from

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an archaeologist who actually was also an
architect and who actually created a number of

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designs of these ships, and apparently
some of them were as big as a

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cruise ship that were round, circular, very very strange. So that was

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that was kind of an unveiling.
And then what we'll hear today is this

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new theme of working with these other
realms where ghosts appear and the dead appear,

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and having community, having conversations with
these people about the people who are

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left who are in physical form,
the families and the former associates in different

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administrations are presenting information from the other
realms. And this wasn't just a curiosity.

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Apparently the Sumerians took it extremely,
took it serious and jotted down the

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steps to access these realms. And
this is something that a typical academic would

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not even broach because it's like,
I'm not going to talk about that because

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that's beneath me. I don't feel
it is of any value. But Irving,

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being like I mentioned, being anomalist, found this not in a few

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references and passages and in journals.
He found hundreds of references of working with

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the dead in a two forms,
exorcism and necromancy, which is actually working

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with dead spirits. We would call
them souls. And apparently it's not channeling

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the spirit that comes through, it's
hearing it through the former body. And

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what they would do is they would
work with the person's skull. They would

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have the skull of the deceased,
and they would use special ointments and candles

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and scents and extract and open up
a vortex for communication. Now is where

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does this sounds? Apparently this was
very much mainstream. Here's a short three

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minute interview that I want to play
prior to this book we're going to talk

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today called The First Ghosts Most Ancient
Legacies. Here is doctor Finckel speaking to

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the BBC on what necromancy is and
why it was thought of as being very

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important by the agents. My name
is Irving Finkel and I'm a curator in

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the British Museum in the Middle East
department. One of the interesting things about

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ancient magic is to in a particular
culture look at things which are peculiar to

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that culture and things which all over
the world people do. And most of

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the things that happened in ancient Mesopotamia
written in cunatiform are more or less like

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the sort of things you find everywhere. So my favorite magic ritual, it's

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a manual written by an exhaustist who
wants to tell the future and he wants

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to practice necromancy. So here's somebody
who wants to bring a ghost up from

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where it's peacefully in the basement,
so to speak, and ask it questions.

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And he has a special way doing
this. You have to get a

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skull, and you put the skull
on the table and you burn all this

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heady material to create the right atmosphere, and then there's a kind of oil

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which is used to anoint the skull. And then when everything is ready,

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this is what happens. The sun
god, who really should know better,

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brings up from below the ghost of
the dead person who goes into the skull

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like that. And then the exorcist
or the specialist and necromancer asks this spirit

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a question and you're supposed to get
a true answer by means of this skull

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from this dead person who's inside it. Now, that is a very interesting

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matter which I've been dying to try
out. I've got a skull, but

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the diabolical problem is getting the right
stuff for the oil, And in our

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supermarket you can't get all the bits. So this I think is something worth

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trying. If you have the opportunity, you need to know who's going to

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win the grand national get your great
grandfather's skull, put you on the kitchen

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table. Bit at HP source,
ask the question fat City. Now,

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it should be obvious to you that
we can't even conceive of this type of

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communication in today's society. You know, I have worked and spoken with people

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who channel entities the dead. In
some cases they believe they're channeling ets from

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other race, other planetary systems.
I was into this for a while,

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and we had speak We had people
who were speaking at conferences who were channeling.

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I mean, we had the best
of the best. It's faded because

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there's a there's a whole belief system, and this is under psychiatry psychology that

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the individual who's speaking for this dead
person or this soul or the spirit is

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also bringing their own consciousness through and
so it can be tainted. And this

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is the problem with a lot of
people who channel Bashar. You might have

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heard of Bashar who channels an Et
Lazaris, Jane Roberts. I can go

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on and on. There's a lot
of very well known channels who brought through

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information. And if you're interested in
any of these channels, go back and

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listen to the names I just gave
you and look for their books. Read

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their books. Some people are very
much into it and that it appeals to

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a different audience, and if that's
if you don't want to get more into

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it, check it out. It
might interest you. But from that period

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to today, I'm talking a few
decades ago when channeling was really really big.

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I'm talking about here in the United
States. I'm not really familiar with

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the United with Europe or any other
part of the world. It had its

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place, and it still may have
its place, and it's been going on

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for centuries. But what these Sumerians
were doing, what these Babylonians and Assyrians

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and the Sumerians were doing, was
bringing forth the spirit of dead loved ones.

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And this is the focus of this
book. The first ghosts that we're

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talking about today, and a whole
bunch of other stuff that was just fascinating.

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So today's program is Cuneiforms, Ghosts
and Speaking with the Dead, and

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my guest is doctor Irving Finkel.
Sabaturs is well organized. Everything flowed easily.

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It was a fantastic tour from beginning
to end. To be honest,

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I was shocked by the private visits. I could not believe that we were

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lucky enough to experience those. That's
from one of the many people who do

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the Earth Ancients Grand Egyptian Tour every
year. We're in our fifth year and

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we're looking forward to our next program. That's this April twenty eighth through May

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fifth, and it is a tour
of ancient sites and it's a private tour

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with our host, Mohammed Imbryhem,
who is a wonderful world class post and

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tour guide. We have a few
spots left and this is an invitation to

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you to come out and join us
in what can only be described as a

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VIP tour of Egypt. These are
private sites we go to for the most

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part. This is a view of
some of the most intriguing sites, including

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the Great Pyramid, Hathor Temple,
the Bent Pyramid, the Red Pyramids,

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so much more, and then we
cruise on the Nile. This is a

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way to really take in the ancient
past and from start to finish, the

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food, the beverages and the environment
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please go to Earthancients dot Com Forward
Slash Tours all the informations there The Earth

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00:12:20.480 --> 00:13:15.480
Ancients Grand Egyptian Tour April twenty eighth
through May ninth. We can't talk about

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ancient civilizations without discussing cuneiforms, these
clay tablets that have been found in the

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thousands and various burials, various vaults, various locations in the Middle East otherwise

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known as the Mesopotamian area. And
when we talk about them, we had

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to look at the people who are
deciphering that, and we're inviting and we

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have back with this doctor Irving Finkel, who we had back in twenty eighteen.

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He was the author of a fun
book called The Arc Before Noah,

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and what he discovered in that decipherment
was it wasn't a typical ship. It

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was a round ship and that was
kind of a fun unveiling. But today

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we're going to catch up with him, not only because he continues to break

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important ground on decipherment, but there's
a lot of topics that are fascinating that

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we want to hear from him.
I want to just mention this and I

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was looking at doctor Finkel's background.
The British Museum has a collection of one

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hundred and thirty thousand pieces, which
I didn't know, and they are headquartered

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in quartered in the British Museum,
which is in London. So hey,

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Irving, welcome back to Earth,
Ancients. It's been a while. I

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apologize for the length of time,
and it's always great to see you.

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I'm glad to see you. Good
about one hundred and thirty thousand pieces of

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clay, you're right that, Oh, they cover about three thousand years of

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time or more. And they were
all written in QUINEI form of one kind

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or another, so they run between
about three thy five hundred b seen actually

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until about the first century AD,
so it's more than three thousand years of

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time. So when the nineteenth century
excavations started in the Middle East, they

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found lots of inscriptions on clay tablets. And in those days the whole situation

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about archaeology and cultural property was completely
different, and Mesopotamia was under the Turkish

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administration and there was an agreement with
the government that objects discovered would come back

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to Britain for the museum, which
is what happened then in the eighteen forties

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and eighteen fifties, and one advantage
of It was that the things which came

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out of the ground, which of
course no one could read, came to

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be deciphered. A lot of very
clever people worked on them, and eventually

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the breakthrough was made, and so
it was possible to take these pieces of

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clay with their impressions on which looked
like nothing at all familiar, and actually

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read them. The languages were,
the signs were cracked, the languages were

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deciphered, vocabulary understood, so that
nowadays people who do this sort of work

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can read tablets written in Sumerian on
the one hand, or Babylonian on the

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other with relative comfort. As long
as the object isn't broken or cracked in

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the middle or something. If it's
more or less all there, we can

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read it pretty reliably, in fact, very reliably. You know. I'm

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curious, you said the eighteen hundreds
of when most of these play tablets were

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found. Were they digs in like
or you are, or were they digs

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in neighboring cities, and there were
what they would call repositories where these were

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kept. Well, what happened was
that when archaeology began, the Romantic Old

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kind of archaeology, with big sites
and big team diggers and things. They

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started off in the area which was
where the Bible had taken place. They

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were most interested in that. So
they found in Assyria, the northern part

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of modern Iraq, the northern half, there were several obvious cities, great

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mounds that came out of the ground
like small mountains, where there was a

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successive deposits of archological material, sometimes
over thousands of years. And they they

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started digging on the biggest sites and
at the top of the biggest sites sometimes

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the names already were very suggestive,
looking for the kings of the Biblical period,

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and they found them. They found
the kings of Assyria like Sanakarib and

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Isar Hadden and Ashore Barnepal. The
kings of Assyria. They found it Linuvi,

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their palace, their palaces, the
contents the library, and about the

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empire that they had ruled. And
with their decide the script, it became

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possible to put the Sumerians, who
were the older group, and then the

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Syrians and Babylonians into their right geographical
terrain and their right chronological period, and

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the span of the period covers that
the really the beginning of writing. As

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far as we know for the first
time. It's probably not really the first

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time, as far as we have
it. The first evidence for writing all

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the way through pasted the development of
the alphabet until the first century AD,

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so three and a half thousand years
of writing. And the marvelous thing is

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these pieces you describe, one hundred
and thirty thousand. They're made of clay,

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and a special sort of clay which
was freely available in Mesopotamia between the

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Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Their banks
had this marvelous clay which took good impressions,

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didn't have gun in it, and
would dry in the sun or dry

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in the warm to a point that
the inscriptions would be safe. Sometimes they

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fired them. But so they used
this clay as their normal writing support,

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which altogether different from most civilizations with
which people are familiar today. I mean

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then they didn't have paper. They
didn't write on wood or parchment or bone

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or skin, not very often anyway, But they used this clay. And

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the thing about the clay was,
even if it wasn't probably fired in a

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kiln, if it was in the
ground with a room that was destroyed,

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overrun by the enemy, and everything
was set on fire and the buildings collapsed

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or there was something happened that people
moved away. Things in the ground just

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stay there they last, so that
when Austin Layard, who was the first

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British archaeologist who was really successful in
ancient Mesopotamia ancient Iraq, when they found

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these tablets, they found sometimes in
great quantity because they just survived in the

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ground. So it was an unlooked
for benefit that in fact, the whole

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of daily life, state life,
religious life. There's a great slew of

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information about all these things on these
bits of clay. So it's a rather

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miraculous thing. So it was very
important that they deciphered it. And when

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they got to the stage when it
was properly deciphered, the whole of this

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ancient culture opened up. So it's
before the Greeks, it's before the Romans.

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It's that sort of area. It
overlaps in chronology more or less with

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ancient Egypt. So ancient Egypt had
about a three thousand year run before the

208
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Greeks got to Egypt, and Mesopotamia
had about three thousand year run or more

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before the Greeks arrived there. I
mean archaeologically, of course, they're much

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older, but the historic period is
about the same. So when you go

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to school, you're supposed to learn
about the ancient Egyptian and the ancient Mesopotamians,

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and then you do the Greeks and
the Romans, and then you do

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everything else that came after. So
they're that part of school education which people

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are supposed to know a bit about, although I'm not sure if they do

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it anymore in schools. They did
when I was a boy, but maybe

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they don't anymore. Doesn't seem like
Sumerian was something that we talked a great

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deal when I was in high school
and college. And I'm curious when you

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talk about the interpretations of these cuneiforms, these aublets, how detailed are they.

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Are they talking about daily life,
the function of a relationship and marriage.

220
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Are they really giving us the details
of their culture? Well, pretty

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much. They use writing pretty much
for the same sort of areas that we

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do. So there is information about
human relationships, and about domestic law and

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state law, and religion and religious
belief and all those things. There's quite

224
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a lot of information about all of
them, sometimes over many centuries of time,

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sometimes out of archives where you can
follow the fate of different individuals,

226
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and then their sons and daughters and
their grandchildren and so forth. So there's

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a continuum also which you can sometimes
follow. The only point to answer your

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question in perhaps the way you are
asking me, is when they wrote about

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this sort of thing, they weren't
writing for us. They were writing for

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them, which means that all their
documents take for granted stuff that they knew,

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and then their recipients of the letters
knew, and the people with whom

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they operated knew. They didn't try
to explain everything like for a future reader.

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It was contemporary and functional. So
the result was that the reality is

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that sometimes when we have things,
we have to really think hard about reading

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a bit beyond the immediate paragraph to
what it implies, what you can understand.

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And for example, you could have
lots of business letters, and if

237
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you read them, it says mister
so and so writes to mister so and

238
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so, and they have a business
relationship, and they've obviously been working together

239
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more or less peace would be for
a long time. And sometimes deliveries are

240
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made and the payment doesn't come,
and sometimes it doesn't come for a very

241
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long time. And sometimes there are
letters that say, you know, Hello,

242
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Hello, where's the staff? So
we do get we get the flat

243
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information about business operations and sometimes safe
from let is, we get a bit

244
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of a window about which reveals interesting
things. And then we have other things

245
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like for example, magic or medicine
to do with the diseases that people get,

246
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and how they dealt with them,
and some women couldn't have children,

247
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and how unhappy they were about it, and how they tried to deal with

248
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all these things. So we have
a tremendous amount of information and each area

249
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you can get a superficial immediate understanding. And then if you're going to work

250
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with these materials, you have to
kind of read everything that exists within the

251
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reources in order to fill out the
picture, because what you don't want to

252
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do is to put too much modern
imagination into the interpretation. It's very tempting

253
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to think that everything is identical and
you can attribute an intelligible person to an

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inscription and think that you know they
do what you would do. That must

255
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be in your training, irving,
because I would say that your teacher,

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your professor, or whoever is helping
you understand this is going to lay that

257
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down as not to flavor or color
and interpretation. I think proper people who

258
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are proper teachers make this point.
But there's more to the point than that,

259
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because, for example, if you
do ancient religion and you know about

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the world's religion, and you grow
up thinking that things in a temple are

261
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idols and the idolators, and you
have a personal view of a monotheistic religion,

262
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you're intolerant to other religion. Then
when you read about an ancient civilization

263
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where they had lots of gods,
you have to shut up your own mind.

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You have to accept perfectly that's how
things are. There are of course

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cuties like that in the world today, and for some people it's very difficult

266
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to throw off their own prejudices and
look at things carefully. But there's a

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deeper level, I think to this, which I think is much more important,

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because in a way it's obvious not
to thrust a modern interpretation into the

269
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past. It's kind of not so
complex. But I think the deeper point

270
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is that Homo sapiens, the species
of Homo sapiens that we are and that

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everybody else on the planet are,
is the same species as people in antiquity.

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And the corollary of that is that
My own view is that if you

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tell an ancient Sumerian or a Babylonian
person and one of us and look at

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them side by side superficially, there'd
be a lot different. The clothes would

275
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be different, their hairstyle than what
they eat, the language they taught,

276
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their religious ideas, all sorts of
things big and different, big and small,

277
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would be different. But the inner
element of Homo sapiens, the inner

278
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way in which the human operates in
the world, for example, is a

279
00:26:30.640 --> 00:26:33.200
loyal and faithful and treacherous at the
same time, and tells the truth and

280
00:26:33.279 --> 00:26:37.359
lies, and is a hypocrite and
a pure person, and all those things

281
00:26:37.440 --> 00:26:44.400
that go on mixed up with a
human being certainly applied in antiquity. So

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it means that the person's in terms
of their behavior, their motives on a

283
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deep way, are very familiar.
And the difficulty is to is to tread

284
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the path where you feel united by
with these people, because they live like

285
00:27:02.559 --> 00:27:06.200
ants crawling under heaven, and they
have disease and they have illness and they're

286
00:27:06.200 --> 00:27:07.440
frightened, and they don't want to
die, and they want to have lots

287
00:27:07.440 --> 00:27:10.640
of children, and they want to
be rich, and they want to have

288
00:27:10.680 --> 00:27:12.759
a certain amount of power, and
they hate bullies, and they don't want

289
00:27:12.799 --> 00:27:15.640
to work every day and they have
to work, and all those things.

290
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Everybody has that, so that that
has a kind of unity about it,

291
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which is something deeper than the thing
that we can the superficial thing. Because

292
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most of the things when people are
you, don't you look completely different from

293
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me, You're you're not like me. Are cosmetic, they're outer cosmetic.

294
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So I think you have the different
levels of reality accessible. But my own

295
00:27:45.440 --> 00:27:52.559
feeling is that the one thing to
hold on to is that underneath they are

296
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like us. Underneath they are like
us. And one of the points which

297
00:27:56.160 --> 00:28:02.440
supports this is that if you will
know perfectly well that you could go out

298
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in the street and get a hundred
people in to line up in a queue,

299
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and the one one end will be
a card carrying genius with all the

300
00:28:11.319 --> 00:28:12.880
documents to prove it, and the
one at the other end would be a

301
00:28:12.920 --> 00:28:18.319
totally stupid idiot, and in between
you have all the extremes of intelligence.

302
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Well, that, for example,
is a human characteristic which certainly applies in

303
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antiquity and other things of that kind. I think it gives you a sort

304
00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:34.920
of under grid of trust that if
you try to read what people write and

305
00:28:34.960 --> 00:28:38.720
you try to think about what they
say and understand it, you can't go

306
00:28:40.440 --> 00:28:45.200
really far wrong if you operate on
that kind of principle. So of the

307
00:28:45.240 --> 00:28:48.880
things, you know, like this
book, I write about ghosts, and

308
00:28:49.839 --> 00:28:56.920
it's very It came to me when
writing this book most importantly because ghosts of

309
00:28:57.000 --> 00:29:03.200
things that everybody in the world knows
about, and the world divides into three

310
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categories. There are people who have
seen a ghost and they jolly well believe

311
00:29:07.960 --> 00:29:11.079
in them, and whatever anybody says, they know that they do, and

312
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they may not talk about it,
but they jolly well know. And then

313
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there are people in white coats in
laboratories who know that ghosts jolly well don't

314
00:29:18.440 --> 00:29:21.599
exist, and whatever you tell me, I won't believe it because they don't

315
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exist. And then you get the
people in the middle who are agnostics.

316
00:29:25.839 --> 00:29:30.759
So, yeah, what the situation
about the ghost phenomenon in the world,

317
00:29:30.839 --> 00:29:33.920
And I don't just mean where you
and I live, but in general is

318
00:29:33.960 --> 00:29:47.079
a very interesting thing because I believe
that that in ancient I mean, writing

319
00:29:47.079 --> 00:29:52.440
this book convinced me entirely about the
Mesopotamian ghost situation in antiquity, there was

320
00:29:52.559 --> 00:29:56.880
none of the I believe in ghosts, Oh, I see ghosts, and

321
00:29:57.039 --> 00:30:00.960
someone saying, we must be an
idiot if you believe this, and come

322
00:30:00.039 --> 00:30:04.039
on, you know it's not really
really And although so you have a conversation

323
00:30:04.079 --> 00:30:07.480
at a bus stop and one of
your neighbors says, I think I saw

324
00:30:07.519 --> 00:30:10.599
a ghost yesterday. And if you're
in a bad mood or you don't believe

325
00:30:10.599 --> 00:30:11.960
that, you say, come on, come on, you know this is

326
00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:15.400
old rubbish. I don't believe it
would. So none of this ever happened

327
00:30:15.440 --> 00:30:21.799
in antiquity because it wasn't true that
the Greeks, well maybe the Greeks are

328
00:30:21.839 --> 00:30:26.960
slightly different, but before that,
the ancient Mesopotamians, for certain, from

329
00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:32.279
their writings, it's not that they
believed or didn't believe in ghosts. They

330
00:30:32.319 --> 00:30:37.200
took them for granted. They were
part of life. It was a stratum

331
00:30:37.359 --> 00:30:41.559
of reality because the dead were buried, and the dead were supposed to be

332
00:30:41.640 --> 00:30:45.440
buried and say that, but they
came back and people saw them when they

333
00:30:45.480 --> 00:30:47.680
made them ill, and they were
an irritant, and they were this and

334
00:30:47.720 --> 00:30:52.519
that and the other, and all
the inscriptions, the whole range of them,

335
00:30:52.920 --> 00:30:56.599
which is available, which I tried
to stuff into this book as much

336
00:30:56.599 --> 00:31:02.720
as possible. The principle that unites
them all is the idea that everybody knew

337
00:31:02.799 --> 00:31:07.480
that ghosts exists. It wasn't a
matter for personal taste or for dispute.

338
00:31:07.680 --> 00:31:11.559
Let me stop you just for a
second, Irving. So this is the

339
00:31:11.599 --> 00:31:17.359
new book, the first ghost Most
Ancient Legacies. I have one here in

340
00:31:17.440 --> 00:31:21.680
factory. I'm not without Yeah,
yeah, yeah, it's a fantastic premise.

341
00:31:22.680 --> 00:31:25.599
Before you get into the details,
I want you to give us an

342
00:31:25.640 --> 00:31:27.680
overview. So you're saying, and
I think you're doing this right now.

343
00:31:29.559 --> 00:31:33.920
You're saying that if we look in
today's society, there's a huge population that

344
00:31:33.920 --> 00:31:38.920
says ghosts don't exist. Yeah,
it's not. You can't measure it scientifically,

345
00:31:40.319 --> 00:31:45.079
so the scientific method does not apply. And if you intellectualize it too

346
00:31:45.160 --> 00:31:48.799
much, it doesn't happen. You're
saying that the Sumerians, the Babylonians,

347
00:31:48.839 --> 00:31:56.599
and the Assyrians accepted it because it
was what handed down as kind of a

348
00:31:56.240 --> 00:32:02.240
religious belief or how would you classify
it as a well as a as a

349
00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:07.039
as a believer or an understanding.
Well, I think it's it's it's definitely

350
00:32:07.079 --> 00:32:12.480
not a belief. I think it's
something that everybody took for granted, as

351
00:32:12.519 --> 00:32:16.599
I say, and kids for granted, and somebody might see their grandfather in

352
00:32:16.640 --> 00:32:21.200
the garden or something like that,
and no one would faint. And if

353
00:32:21.240 --> 00:32:23.680
somebody saw their grandfather and the gardener
went and told their mom they were we'd

354
00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:27.079
read to take you to the doctor, there's something wrong with your mind or

355
00:32:27.079 --> 00:32:30.839
patching or eating your vegetables. They
would say, well, did he look

356
00:32:30.839 --> 00:32:34.160
happy or was he cross? Something
like that. It was part of the

357
00:32:34.240 --> 00:32:37.880
strust. And see the thing what
I was what I think is this that

358
00:32:37.039 --> 00:32:43.480
this is the default human understanding.
This is one that the reasons why I

359
00:32:43.640 --> 00:32:46.400
like to think of the Homo sapiens
matter. And I think that the conception

360
00:32:46.759 --> 00:32:52.000
that when the body's rots and stinks, the element inside it which makes the

361
00:32:52.119 --> 00:32:59.119
human being survives and goes somewhere the
soul the universe, what you call it

362
00:32:59.160 --> 00:33:01.240
the soul or whatever you fancy this
is. But this is a thing that

363
00:33:01.279 --> 00:33:06.759
goes back to the neodertals. In
my opinion, it's a characteristic of the

364
00:33:06.839 --> 00:33:13.000
species. It's a deep, hard
wired thing. So I think that this

365
00:33:13.319 --> 00:33:17.279
is the default position of mankind.
From the beginning, and that what has

366
00:33:17.359 --> 00:33:24.519
happened is at a certain stratum in
evolution history history historical evolution is that you

367
00:33:24.720 --> 00:33:35.200
have you have monotheistic religions which are
very dogmatic, very unforgiving, very uncatholic

368
00:33:35.279 --> 00:33:39.119
in their view of the universe,
very restrictive, and you have science,

369
00:33:39.759 --> 00:33:45.279
which is even worse. So the
description to the idea that goes a part

370
00:33:45.279 --> 00:33:54.640
of the human universe is squashed down
by modern religion and or monotheistic religion and

371
00:33:54.720 --> 00:34:01.640
science. It's squashed down into a
question where its status is altered, and

372
00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:05.640
it ends up that some people still
believe in it as it were, and

373
00:34:05.680 --> 00:34:08.679
some people never will, and some
people don't know it's changed its status.

374
00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:12.840
But there are many places in the
world where, for example, you might

375
00:34:12.880 --> 00:34:17.159
go and go into a village with
a notebook and a hat, looking like

376
00:34:17.199 --> 00:34:22.639
an anthropologist, and sit down talk
to an old person under retreat, doesn't

377
00:34:22.679 --> 00:34:27.280
matter where it is, and say, oh, somebody told me that in

378
00:34:27.320 --> 00:34:31.960
your country nobody believes in ghosts.
And what will happen is that the grandmother

379
00:34:32.280 --> 00:34:36.880
or whoever it is, they were
young men, she will say, how

380
00:34:36.960 --> 00:34:40.480
much time do you have? I
think you better sit down, and I

381
00:34:40.599 --> 00:34:45.760
will tell you all about it.
And this, I think is that this

382
00:34:45.920 --> 00:34:50.199
is the reality of the human position
with regard to ghosts, and that we

383
00:34:50.400 --> 00:34:54.440
are so suave, we're so slick, we're so easy with scientific guff,

384
00:34:54.960 --> 00:35:00.559
we're so easy with condemnation and intolerance
that it get suppressed, so that a

385
00:35:00.599 --> 00:35:05.760
person who has seen a ghost,
and let's say, for the sake of

386
00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:10.840
argument, that they have done,
can't tell anybody. They can't tell anybody.

387
00:35:10.960 --> 00:35:15.360
They don't want to go and join
a society of weirdos where everybody sees.

388
00:35:15.400 --> 00:35:19.159
They don't want that at all.
They want their mom and dad and

389
00:35:19.320 --> 00:35:22.480
uncle to believe them because they did. Like if you say that you past

390
00:35:22.599 --> 00:35:27.360
or diving tests, they believe you. And if you see a ghost like

391
00:35:27.400 --> 00:35:30.280
that, it's the same thing you
saw it, you know, And so

392
00:35:30.320 --> 00:35:35.199
it's a difference. So people don't
talk about it. They just don't talk

393
00:35:35.239 --> 00:35:39.639
about it. So I want to
get the foundation of or the basis of

394
00:35:39.719 --> 00:35:49.199
this book. Were you working on
a series of tablets and you developed or

395
00:35:49.239 --> 00:35:59.039
you started seeing a theme of ghost
discussions, sacred ghost worship? What was

396
00:35:59.119 --> 00:36:02.679
it? Because to write a book, you must have really that to yourself.

397
00:36:02.800 --> 00:36:07.880
Wait a minute, this is.
I'll explain. I'll explain when these

398
00:36:07.920 --> 00:36:12.159
one hundred and thirty thousand tablets in
the British Museum are in boxes, in

399
00:36:12.239 --> 00:36:16.480
draws, in cupboards. And when
I arrived in the British Museum, I

400
00:36:16.559 --> 00:36:22.599
went through the entire collection, draw
by draw, box by box to see

401
00:36:22.639 --> 00:36:25.599
what we had. And I did
that, I think three times, so

402
00:36:25.679 --> 00:36:30.480
I have a kind of grasp of
what these one hundred and thirty thousand tablets

403
00:36:30.519 --> 00:36:36.400
are in bulk. And in the
process, when I found something in the

404
00:36:36.480 --> 00:36:40.159
topic which really interested me, I
made a note of the number. So

405
00:36:40.320 --> 00:36:44.719
by meandering through the collection and looking
at things, ah, this is this,

406
00:36:45.800 --> 00:36:47.119
when I realized it quite a lot
of them. I todo with the

407
00:36:47.199 --> 00:36:52.159
ghosts in every sense. I recorded
all the numbers, and then I got

408
00:36:52.159 --> 00:36:54.679
these tablets out and I had a
good look at them. And then I

409
00:36:54.800 --> 00:37:02.599
realized that they have a a a
wide spectrum of things to do with ghosts.

410
00:37:02.760 --> 00:37:07.599
So, for example, one of
them is there are omens. When

411
00:37:07.079 --> 00:37:12.000
people say this happens, this is
the consequence. This is a mesopertamin idea.

412
00:37:12.079 --> 00:37:15.679
Lots and lots and lots of omens. So if a frog jumps into

413
00:37:15.719 --> 00:37:19.559
your cup of tea. This means
something, or that means something else.

414
00:37:19.880 --> 00:37:22.360
And there were lots of omens about
what happens if you saw a ghost,

415
00:37:22.360 --> 00:37:24.159
what did it mean? And it
wasn't just three or four lines, there

416
00:37:24.199 --> 00:37:29.559
were hundreds of lines of these.
One if you see a ghost on a

417
00:37:29.599 --> 00:37:31.400
Monday or Tuesday or a wenzy,
if they're wearing a hat or they're not

418
00:37:31.440 --> 00:37:34.760
wearing a hat, or if it's
a woman. You do know women,

419
00:37:34.840 --> 00:37:38.599
you don't know all these things.
There's a whole phone book of data about

420
00:37:38.639 --> 00:37:43.320
if you see a ghost what it
might mean. So this is one corner

421
00:37:43.360 --> 00:37:47.000
of it. Then there was the
thing about the rituals, because if you

422
00:37:47.079 --> 00:37:53.760
were the oldest son when your father
died, you were responsible for the regular

423
00:37:53.840 --> 00:37:59.519
offerings for the spirit the dead,
ghosts, the spirits of the of the

424
00:37:59.559 --> 00:38:02.800
person who died, so they were
believed to be first they were buried under

425
00:38:02.800 --> 00:38:07.400
the courtyard, so they were under
there. You knew where they were,

426
00:38:07.920 --> 00:38:12.360
But that was the horrible body,
and the essence of the person was in

427
00:38:12.400 --> 00:38:16.599
the underworld with lots of other essences
of people hanging around and waiting, and

428
00:38:17.320 --> 00:38:21.480
they knew it was down there.
They didn't know whether it was ten miles

429
00:38:21.559 --> 00:38:23.480
or one hundred miles, but it
was and they knew all about the underworld.

430
00:38:23.519 --> 00:38:28.159
They wrote about it. So there's
a thing about the offerings which you

431
00:38:28.239 --> 00:38:30.239
have to do, and about the
ghosts going down to the underworld. And

432
00:38:30.280 --> 00:38:35.239
there's the ghosts that don't get the
offerings because you forget and they get cross

433
00:38:35.239 --> 00:38:37.480
and they come back and they pull
people's here, you know, where's my

434
00:38:37.519 --> 00:38:39.960
offering? Where's my offering? Just
basically, so then you have to modify

435
00:38:40.079 --> 00:38:43.400
them, and you have to do
magic to make the ghosts happy, and

436
00:38:43.880 --> 00:38:47.039
you do all that, and then
there's a lot of other things as well

437
00:38:47.719 --> 00:38:52.119
that sometimes ghosts come when you don't
know who they are, and they can

438
00:38:52.159 --> 00:38:54.000
be very dangerous. They follow you
about, so it's like being followed on

439
00:38:54.039 --> 00:38:58.199
the street, and people get very
jumpy, and then they do other things

440
00:38:58.239 --> 00:39:01.199
they make you ill. So if
you go to sleep, it's impossible to

441
00:39:01.199 --> 00:39:06.079
go to sleep with both ears covered. Well, I mean you can nowadays

442
00:39:06.119 --> 00:39:08.400
you can wear your earphones, but
in principle, normally when you went to

443
00:39:08.400 --> 00:39:12.320
bed, your head was on one
side, so the other ear was exposed,

444
00:39:12.360 --> 00:39:15.480
and ghosts were believed to go in
through the ear. The really horrible

445
00:39:15.519 --> 00:39:20.039
ones they'd go in there and they
would drive you mad, and they would

446
00:39:20.039 --> 00:39:22.880
make it half for you to breathe, and they'd have to be exercised by

447
00:39:22.880 --> 00:39:25.199
the specialists who drove them away.
So there were people who had magic to

448
00:39:25.239 --> 00:39:29.760
make ghosts disappear, to come out
of the body, to leave a person

449
00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:31.800
alone, to make things better.
And there were lots of other things as

450
00:39:31.800 --> 00:39:37.280
well, amulets they had to write
and did. There were myths about the

451
00:39:37.360 --> 00:39:39.719
underworld and what it was like and
who was there and what went on.

452
00:39:39.800 --> 00:39:44.159
And then there was this thing you
mentioned before about necromancy, which is a

453
00:39:44.239 --> 00:39:49.920
rather specialist trade, where it was
believed in principle, like all people who

454
00:39:49.960 --> 00:39:54.239
practiced necromancy, that if you can
get somebody from below to come up,

455
00:39:54.360 --> 00:40:00.920
you can ask them questions and they
will tell you. No explains this that

456
00:40:01.280 --> 00:40:07.719
if you bring up somebody from down
there and you want to ask them about

457
00:40:07.760 --> 00:40:12.880
something which is important to you,
it's never explained how they know the answer.

458
00:40:13.280 --> 00:40:17.480
It's never explained that in all cultures
where necromancy is ever practiced, it

459
00:40:17.639 --> 00:40:24.079
is assumed that the dead are privy
to the sort of information that a living

460
00:40:24.199 --> 00:40:31.599
person seeks. So there were they
were there were exorcists and diviners and necromancers

461
00:40:31.639 --> 00:40:38.119
who were efficient, efficient practitioners of
this art, and there were special things

462
00:40:38.119 --> 00:40:43.280
you had to do to get ready. And the most important thing with necromancy,

463
00:40:43.960 --> 00:40:49.440
which is actually really rather fascinating,
is you get the skull, preferably

464
00:40:49.559 --> 00:40:52.239
of the person whom you want to
speak to. So if your father and

465
00:40:52.320 --> 00:40:58.159
grandfather are buried under the courtyard,
sometimes they had the kind of vault so

466
00:40:58.280 --> 00:41:00.519
when the next lot die, they
opened the door or chuck them in as

467
00:41:00.559 --> 00:41:06.079
well, so you might get quite
a accumulation of persons all in the same

468
00:41:06.159 --> 00:41:10.320
family, so you could, if
necessary, get a skull from the grandfather

469
00:41:10.480 --> 00:41:14.519
or something that they thought that that
was the best person. And then the

470
00:41:14.559 --> 00:41:20.159
exorcist does all this material it's anointily
things, and then there's incense and what

471
00:41:20.320 --> 00:41:23.559
have you, and the spells and
the sun god and has to bring up

472
00:41:23.639 --> 00:41:30.440
the spirit from below from the nether
world to enter into the skull and answer

473
00:41:30.559 --> 00:41:36.039
questions to the practitioner or to the
person who wants to find out the future.

474
00:41:36.119 --> 00:41:39.199
Quite an alarming thing to do in
reality. So although most of the

475
00:41:39.199 --> 00:41:45.880
magic that we have is to identify
ghosts and get rid of them, send

476
00:41:45.880 --> 00:41:51.599
them back where they belong. This
specialized thing was to bring them up to

477
00:41:51.679 --> 00:41:57.440
ask them a question or two about
the future. And the manual which is

478
00:41:57.480 --> 00:42:01.079
to do with this is rather interesting
because there are some jolly good spells at

479
00:42:01.079 --> 00:42:05.320
the end to drive the ghost back
again because they don't want it hanging around

480
00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:07.880
ever after, so they have to
and they let it back down. So

481
00:42:07.920 --> 00:42:14.920
you actually found the manual to working
with the dead. Yeah, to bring

482
00:42:14.960 --> 00:42:21.760
them up is it's it's it's a
tablet with instruction spells. We're going to

483
00:42:21.840 --> 00:42:27.599
take a short commercial break to allow
our sponsors to identify themselves, and we

484
00:42:27.760 --> 00:42:31.800
will return shortly with my guests today, doctor Irving Finkel, discussing his latest

485
00:42:31.800 --> 00:43:15.880
book, The First Ghosts. We'll
be right back. My guest today is

486
00:43:15.920 --> 00:43:21.920
doctor Irving Finkel, who is a
cuneiform expert at the British Museum in London,

487
00:43:22.679 --> 00:43:27.679
and he's written a new book on
ghosts called The First ghost Most Ancient

488
00:43:27.880 --> 00:43:35.880
Legacies. Would you say that the
information that they were receiving was considered valid

489
00:43:36.639 --> 00:43:42.159
or was it more of a kind
of an a game or something that a

490
00:43:42.239 --> 00:43:45.800
specialist would come in and do just
to connect with the ancestors. No,

491
00:43:46.320 --> 00:43:51.760
that's a very important question, but
it's absolutely nothing to do with the game.

492
00:43:52.239 --> 00:43:54.840
I think it was dead serious.
I think it was if you did

493
00:43:54.880 --> 00:43:59.800
it, it was quite costly because
you had to pay the person that preparations

494
00:43:59.800 --> 00:44:02.320
had to be carried out and the
room made ready and all that kind of

495
00:44:02.360 --> 00:44:07.639
thing. And then there's the danger
of fooning around with the dead, because

496
00:44:07.719 --> 00:44:10.280
if you believe in ghosts and you
believe you know that they exist, then

497
00:44:10.320 --> 00:44:14.559
you know there's going to be trouble
if you don't control it. So I

498
00:44:14.599 --> 00:44:22.320
think it was only done probably under
other serious circumstances where somebody really needed to

499
00:44:22.360 --> 00:44:27.840
know. For example, we do
know one case from the royal court in

500
00:44:28.119 --> 00:44:32.159
Syria in Ninity when Asher Barneipal,
who later became king and the most famous

501
00:44:32.239 --> 00:44:38.119
king, when he was youthful,
it was uncertain whether his older brother would

502
00:44:38.159 --> 00:44:43.280
become king when the father died,
because that was the principle as everywhere in

503
00:44:43.280 --> 00:44:47.719
the world, that the first son
normally becomes king when the old king dies,

504
00:44:49.719 --> 00:44:54.719
and Asher Barneipal, who was immensely
more intelligent and able and capable than

505
00:44:54.719 --> 00:45:01.599
his older brother, was very restless
and wanted to know whether it was ordained

506
00:45:01.599 --> 00:45:08.079
that his brother would become and he
got a necromancer to come into the palace

507
00:45:08.159 --> 00:45:14.679
in the dead of night, and
they called up the Queen's his grandmother,

508
00:45:15.880 --> 00:45:22.000
because the old king's mother will be
privyty all this. Then she was deceased

509
00:45:22.320 --> 00:45:25.679
and they called up to ask her
whether he would become king. And there's

510
00:45:25.679 --> 00:45:30.280
a reply which is written on this
tablet which implies that he will become king.

511
00:45:30.719 --> 00:45:34.920
So that was no game. It
was a dead serious matter. And

512
00:45:34.960 --> 00:45:44.199
I imagine that the prince doing this
somewhere in the basement of the palace in

513
00:45:44.239 --> 00:45:47.760
the middle of the night. If
there was one or two persons who who

514
00:45:49.639 --> 00:45:52.039
did this with him, they wouldn't
surprise me at all if he didn't have

515
00:45:52.079 --> 00:45:57.639
them bumped off, because it's a
very very secret matter to be privy to

516
00:45:57.719 --> 00:46:01.800
the inner workings of the of the
future ruler. And you know, if

517
00:46:01.840 --> 00:46:06.119
anything happened to the older brother,
there'd be the suspicion of murder and so

518
00:46:06.199 --> 00:46:10.000
forth. So it's a very dicey
thing. So I think people partly it

519
00:46:10.079 --> 00:46:14.280
must have been costly to do it, and partly rather frightening because I imagine

520
00:46:14.320 --> 00:46:17.239
if you're in a room and with
all the build up by an exorcist and

521
00:46:17.280 --> 00:46:24.119
you're asking questions and all of a
sudden there's a skull starts moving and outcomes

522
00:46:24.119 --> 00:46:28.320
the answer, I mean, you
probably die of fear. But you know,

523
00:46:28.559 --> 00:46:37.159
it's an interesting snippet in the history
of this that the among Jews of

524
00:46:37.199 --> 00:46:43.119
the Talmudic period, which is not
long after the end of Babylonia, and

525
00:46:43.360 --> 00:46:49.119
of course these people have been taken
to from Jerusalem to Bin libikad Neezza to

526
00:46:49.199 --> 00:46:53.159
live in Babylon. They were there
until they left to go this way and

527
00:46:53.199 --> 00:46:58.360
that, but some of them stayed
in Mesopotamia until the recent times. And

528
00:46:58.920 --> 00:47:05.519
among these more authorities, necromancy was
investigated in the Tongue Ward in their scripture

529
00:47:05.840 --> 00:47:10.639
they wrote about that you can call
up the dead with a skull. It's

530
00:47:10.639 --> 00:47:16.239
somehow they knew that the Babylonian practice
from their own associations. They knew about

531
00:47:16.280 --> 00:47:20.400
it. But one of the rabbis
who writes about it says, well,

532
00:47:20.440 --> 00:47:24.719
the question is if they do this, do they really hear the voice or

533
00:47:24.800 --> 00:47:30.679
do they imagine it? So this
was a medieval French rabbi writing about this.

534
00:47:31.440 --> 00:47:37.000
It got to the stage of modern
thinking where he asked the question,

535
00:47:37.159 --> 00:47:43.079
did they really hear this voice or
did they imagine? And that's the modern

536
00:47:43.599 --> 00:47:49.519
inquiry that comes from a modern person. It's very remarkable thing that it goes

537
00:47:49.639 --> 00:47:53.519
from everybody absolutely taking it for granted, to somebody else standing back and saying,

538
00:47:54.159 --> 00:47:58.400
maybe it's just in the mind.
Maybe not so. I think.

539
00:48:00.079 --> 00:48:04.880
To trace these things as far as
one can, it's very fascinating. Talk

540
00:48:04.920 --> 00:48:09.760
a bit about what was I would
think is a form of metaphysics in this

541
00:48:10.840 --> 00:48:19.840
questioning of the ghosts or the dead. Was it just practiced among the elite

542
00:48:20.679 --> 00:48:27.119
in these ancient cultures or have you
found that it was, as you say,

543
00:48:27.400 --> 00:48:35.239
in a very expensive ritual that was
only available to those who had the

544
00:48:35.320 --> 00:48:40.000
money to request this. Well,
I think this is not something that you'd

545
00:48:40.280 --> 00:48:45.039
find going on in the countryside,
or in the army, or among merchants

546
00:48:45.199 --> 00:48:51.519
or something. It's something of a
certain class, what you might call the

547
00:48:51.679 --> 00:48:59.079
upper class, who might have some
preoccupation where talking to the dead, so

548
00:48:59.280 --> 00:49:02.920
to speak, bring them an answer. There is another angle which is covered

549
00:49:02.960 --> 00:49:08.679
in a different document, where it
looks like someone is trying to find out

550
00:49:08.760 --> 00:49:16.519
whether he's going to be successful in
conquering a woman that he's after. I

551
00:49:16.639 --> 00:49:22.480
think that's what it's about. It's
rather terse, but I think the idea

552
00:49:22.639 --> 00:49:24.599
is am I going to get her
in the end, and so that's a

553
00:49:24.639 --> 00:49:28.320
different level of thing. And of
course everybody in the world would have this

554
00:49:28.480 --> 00:49:31.960
kind of problem. But I think
going to an acromancer and fooling about with

555
00:49:32.079 --> 00:49:37.760
a dead person was not done lightly, not done lightly at all. But

556
00:49:37.920 --> 00:49:40.599
of course this is one of the
This is one of the points which I

557
00:49:40.719 --> 00:49:45.239
was thinking about before, that we
have sometimes a lot of information, but

558
00:49:45.320 --> 00:49:50.760
we don't have the information round it, so we don't know what the questions

559
00:49:50.800 --> 00:49:52.960
are, and we don't know who
did it. And as you say,

560
00:49:53.039 --> 00:49:58.159
whether it's just the elite. But
I think there are other ways of divining

561
00:49:58.239 --> 00:50:02.159
the future. Some of them were
much more accessible and much less complicated.

562
00:50:02.280 --> 00:50:07.760
So you could go to a fortune
teller and get them to find out something

563
00:50:08.159 --> 00:50:15.199
which wouldn't involve the use of her
bringing up a dead person. I would

564
00:50:15.280 --> 00:50:21.280
think that. And I'm curious about
what you discovered you. I saw you

565
00:50:21.519 --> 00:50:31.000
in a video talking about extra exorcism
and nacro mancy. Yeah, would they

566
00:50:31.400 --> 00:50:39.960
would a family or a physician who
was dealing with somebody who was ill say

567
00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:46.079
they were possessed and then there was
somebody who was an expert at exorcism who

568
00:50:46.079 --> 00:50:53.159
would come in and work with the
spirit to remove the ill spirit from the

569
00:50:53.239 --> 00:50:59.079
body. Is that what your suggested
also a good question. So on the

570
00:50:59.159 --> 00:51:06.159
whole and the healers. There were
doctors who had drugs and applications and fumigants

571
00:51:06.280 --> 00:51:10.239
and amulets and rituals and all the
thing. The two kinds of healers had

572
00:51:10.280 --> 00:51:15.280
these operations and they would deal with
the sick. And the basic idea with

573
00:51:15.360 --> 00:51:23.960
the sick and started off that people
were made ill by the malice of other

574
00:51:24.079 --> 00:51:29.000
people, like witches. They operated
on people and when they were sick in

575
00:51:29.079 --> 00:51:30.840
their body, when they had things
wrong with them, that was the effect

576
00:51:30.960 --> 00:51:38.440
of witchcraft or sorcery. And this
was the first stage of explanation, because

577
00:51:38.480 --> 00:51:43.039
when people are presented with illness,
they need to have a reason behind it.

578
00:51:43.159 --> 00:51:45.000
They need to know how it works. And I think from the time

579
00:51:45.079 --> 00:51:50.920
of about Hammurabi about eighteen hundred BC, I think there was a general feeling

580
00:51:51.360 --> 00:51:55.719
that it was human malice that made
people ill, and gradually, gradually there

581
00:51:55.800 --> 00:52:02.039
was a shift in understanding where they
thought that it was evil, evil spirits,

582
00:52:02.159 --> 00:52:10.599
demons and devils that made them ill. And what grew up was a

583
00:52:10.719 --> 00:52:15.280
wide range of these characters, some
of them faceless and not very easy to

584
00:52:15.360 --> 00:52:22.559
identify, some of them well identifiable, who tormented the human race and could

585
00:52:22.599 --> 00:52:24.679
make them very ill indeed, and
in fact even bring about their death.

586
00:52:24.719 --> 00:52:29.920
And they had to be the effects
of what they did were tackled by the

587
00:52:30.039 --> 00:52:32.760
doctors, and sometimes they were driven
out. There were spells that they come

588
00:52:32.840 --> 00:52:36.440
out of the body, go away, go back to where you belong.

589
00:52:36.800 --> 00:52:40.719
So they had a kind of too
pronged attack, which was medicaments and pharmaceutical

590
00:52:40.840 --> 00:52:46.920
material and spells and incantations, all
of which would clear the patient out.

591
00:52:47.360 --> 00:52:52.920
So it's a kind of possession,
that's the right word. But it's not

592
00:52:52.079 --> 00:52:59.159
possession like with the witches of Salem, where it's familiar to everybody. It's

593
00:52:59.199 --> 00:53:04.119
more subtle that. It's more that
there were these forces that were believed to

594
00:53:04.159 --> 00:53:07.360
make people ill, which were a
long way from witches. They were much

595
00:53:07.400 --> 00:53:13.079
more dangerous than witches. These devils
and demons. Sometimes they knew what they

596
00:53:13.159 --> 00:53:16.920
looked like. But the point about
them is they were not made They were

597
00:53:16.960 --> 00:53:22.960
not made of human stuff. We
don't know the ancestry of the demons and

598
00:53:23.039 --> 00:53:28.760
devil. We don't know who how
they came into the world, so that

599
00:53:28.920 --> 00:53:31.599
they were unfathomable and you couldn't kill
them, and they had to be dealt

600
00:53:31.639 --> 00:53:38.840
with very firmly. So sometimes in
the first millennium, when people were sick

601
00:53:39.079 --> 00:53:45.039
or ill, the doctors would say
that this was a demon of one kind

602
00:53:45.159 --> 00:53:49.159
or another, and they know what
to do. And sometimes it was the

603
00:53:49.199 --> 00:53:51.519
effect of a ghost who, as
I said, might come in the ear

604
00:53:51.679 --> 00:53:57.559
or tormented person all together in a
way and possess them as you describe,

605
00:53:58.000 --> 00:54:00.360
and the ghosts have to be driven
out, and the ghost is much more

606
00:54:01.079 --> 00:54:07.280
it's much easier to drive them out
for two reasons. One that I believe

607
00:54:07.320 --> 00:54:13.360
that the Babylonians were quite sympathetic to
ghosts because they knew they were troubled.

608
00:54:14.000 --> 00:54:17.840
They couldn't settle in the nether world, they couldn't find tranquility, and they

609
00:54:17.920 --> 00:54:22.039
came back because they were agitated or
had some unfinished business. So they had

610
00:54:22.079 --> 00:54:28.920
a sort of sympathy with ghosts.
And of course ghosts were at bottom human

611
00:54:29.039 --> 00:54:35.360
beings, so they were more susceptible
to compelling spells and compelling utterances. And

612
00:54:35.880 --> 00:54:43.800
whereas the demons had nothing to do
with humanity. They were cold and unfathomable

613
00:54:44.280 --> 00:54:49.400
and in a way more more dangerous. And you can say that this is

614
00:54:49.440 --> 00:54:53.320
all a rather stupid and simple and
infantile way of looking at things, but

615
00:54:54.000 --> 00:54:59.719
it's not quite like that. For
example, you could say that what they

616
00:54:59.800 --> 00:55:05.119
call the demon that was in the
blood in the body and had to be

617
00:55:05.280 --> 00:55:12.880
removed is what we call microbes,
because they what they wanted to do was

618
00:55:12.920 --> 00:55:15.079
to have an explanation for the fact
that people could get ill without they don't

619
00:55:15.159 --> 00:55:19.360
know why. And sometimes they were
a bit ill, and sometimes they were

620
00:55:19.480 --> 00:55:22.599
very ill, and sometimes they had
an idea about contagion, for example,

621
00:55:22.880 --> 00:55:27.119
things like that. But otherwise they
wanted to know if someone got ill without

622
00:55:27.159 --> 00:55:30.239
doing anything terrible and they were wicked, there must be a reason. And

623
00:55:30.559 --> 00:55:42.159
this is this is really they settle
or attributing the root cause of this to

624
00:55:42.280 --> 00:55:45.800
something they could never see and never
would see. And that's exactly what happens

625
00:55:45.880 --> 00:55:50.079
with modern medicine, because no one's
ever seen a microbe, and certainly no

626
00:55:50.239 --> 00:55:53.639
patient has ever seen a microbe or
a virus or whatever it is that doctors

627
00:55:53.639 --> 00:55:59.599
say you've got. You never see
the thing we have a complete ascription to

628
00:55:59.639 --> 00:56:02.360
the eye that the expert tells us
what it is without us seeing it.

629
00:56:02.559 --> 00:56:07.159
And even if we had a microscope, we couldn't see the thing in ourselves.

630
00:56:07.679 --> 00:56:13.679
So in a way, it's a
kind of similarity that they called these

631
00:56:13.760 --> 00:56:15.679
things demons, and they describe what
they looked like, and they had special

632
00:56:15.760 --> 00:56:20.199
things to get rid of them,
but nobody ever actually saw them and they

633
00:56:20.360 --> 00:56:22.760
went. They weren't. They didn't
jump on you when you're going down the

634
00:56:22.800 --> 00:56:25.840
street like a monkey or something.
Let me just stop you right there for

635
00:56:25.880 --> 00:56:30.880
a second. Did they have a
classic you say like a police officer when

636
00:56:30.920 --> 00:56:32.840
you say that, that's what I
say, I just don't. I don't.

637
00:56:32.880 --> 00:56:37.280
I don't want to shift your your
your chain of thought because it's a

638
00:56:37.400 --> 00:56:40.000
it's a good flow, but I
want to add little bits and pieces that

639
00:56:40.159 --> 00:56:46.920
you thought, so I stop.
Stop. I wish there was a more

640
00:56:46.960 --> 00:56:52.440
elegant way to do it. But
that's it. So so uh would you

641
00:56:52.480 --> 00:56:59.000
say there was a classification of demons
or a classification of ghosts. This type

642
00:56:59.039 --> 00:57:06.119
of of presence means that you're screwed
because this is a powerful ghost who will

643
00:57:06.360 --> 00:57:10.519
possess you, or there's a lighter
ghost that just upsets the stomach, or

644
00:57:10.599 --> 00:57:16.119
a lighter ghost that takes over the
mind. Was there a classification or well,

645
00:57:16.639 --> 00:57:20.840
it wasn't a structure that was written
down, but I think there was

646
00:57:20.840 --> 00:57:27.239
an understanding because there's quite a wide
range of things that ghosts can do to

647
00:57:27.360 --> 00:57:31.480
make you unwell. And my explanation
for it is this. It's like this

648
00:57:32.159 --> 00:57:40.880
that the ghost you're given ghost up
here and making trouble has the character that

649
00:57:40.960 --> 00:57:45.679
he had in life. So if
you have an unhappy ghost who is a

650
00:57:45.760 --> 00:57:50.519
diffident, shy person and would never
harm a fly, then they wouldn't harm

651
00:57:50.559 --> 00:57:57.320
a fly in their ghostly existence.
If you had someone who is a lunatic,

652
00:57:57.519 --> 00:58:00.400
say this in a psychopath in real
life, then you might expect that

653
00:58:00.480 --> 00:58:05.960
their ghost, if it was coming
back, would have the same heartless,

654
00:58:06.360 --> 00:58:10.320
dangerous property, caused evil wherever it
could. And I think that they saw

655
00:58:10.480 --> 00:58:19.000
ghosts in this way that they were
human underneath. So depending on how ill

656
00:58:19.079 --> 00:58:22.559
you were, there'd be different things
to make you better. I mean it

657
00:58:22.639 --> 00:58:27.280
sounds a bit strange, but in
fact it was a kind of working system

658
00:58:27.360 --> 00:58:31.280
because it's like this when you have
an understanding of what causes things and what

659
00:58:31.400 --> 00:58:35.880
has to be done about it.
You don't have to fret about the philosophical

660
00:58:36.000 --> 00:58:38.679
deep issues that it would otherwise raise. I mean, that is how religion

661
00:58:38.760 --> 00:58:44.079
works. It gives you a nice
little tweet explanation of things that you have

662
00:58:44.199 --> 00:58:46.920
to believe in, miracles and all
this, and it distructs you and many

663
00:58:47.000 --> 00:58:51.599
kind of intelligence thought about well actually
involved in all this. I mean,

664
00:58:51.639 --> 00:58:54.639
this is the same human thing.
I think, the same principle. Okay,

665
00:58:55.880 --> 00:59:04.159
the Egyptians have the Book of the
Dead, and the Dynastics pren Anastics

666
00:59:04.239 --> 00:59:09.119
had a real fetish about afterlife.
They did, I think so Egyptologists say,

667
00:59:09.239 --> 00:59:14.559
no, it's just the accident of
discovery because we have tombs. But

668
00:59:14.719 --> 00:59:17.079
I do know one gets the impressionment
that they just couldn't wait to die,

669
00:59:17.199 --> 00:59:21.599
the Egyptians so they could dress up
in all these things and go on the

670
00:59:21.760 --> 00:59:25.719
journey and get I mean, it's
strange when you're really ornate. Do you

671
00:59:25.960 --> 00:59:34.920
see the same patterns in the uniforms
from the Sumerians, Assyrians or Babylonians.

672
00:59:34.960 --> 00:59:39.719
Do they go under the great lengths
about how to get ready for the afterlife,

673
00:59:39.960 --> 00:59:43.639
what you will see, who you
will meet, and so on?

674
00:59:44.760 --> 00:59:47.920
Not in the same way as the
Egyptians. Because the Egyptian and the people

675
00:59:49.039 --> 00:59:51.440
to whom this was concerned, it
was all laid out. They had a

676
00:59:51.519 --> 00:59:55.119
whole understanding of what they're going to
go through. In the Mesopotamian thing,

677
00:59:57.320 --> 01:00:00.840
they're not so specific and not so
deep. But I mean, there is

678
01:00:00.880 --> 01:00:07.079
a myth, for example, that
in Anna, the Goddess of Love,

679
01:00:07.719 --> 01:00:10.440
wanted to rescue her partner Donmozie,
who was trapped in the underworld. She

680
01:00:10.519 --> 01:00:15.199
went down this winding thing with seven
gates which she had to get through in

681
01:00:15.400 --> 01:00:20.239
order to rescue him and bring him
back. So in a literary text there

682
01:00:20.320 --> 01:00:23.280
is some information about that. You
start at the top when you go through

683
01:00:23.320 --> 01:00:27.519
all the gates and you get down
to the court of the Queen of the

684
01:00:27.639 --> 01:00:30.960
underworld. So you could have a
little map, you could draw a picture

685
01:00:30.039 --> 01:00:34.559
of it. But it's nothing like
as ornate and complex as it is with

686
01:00:34.639 --> 01:00:38.880
the Egyptians and they it's a different
kind of thing. It's a different kind

687
01:00:38.960 --> 01:00:43.679
of thing. I have a theory
which I wrote about in this book.

688
01:00:44.920 --> 01:00:50.920
Nobody who's reviewed it as noticed it, let alone argue with it, or

689
01:00:51.000 --> 01:00:54.599
accepted it. But I believe this
to be the case that when a person

690
01:00:54.840 --> 01:01:00.840
died and their body was buried out
of the way, and their spirit will

691
01:01:01.000 --> 01:01:06.119
we called it that, and went
down into the underworld, and they're just

692
01:01:06.280 --> 01:01:08.559
it's described how grim it is in
the underworld. It's kind of dusty,

693
01:01:09.199 --> 01:01:15.199
and they hang about in the poor
light, and it's not a very pleasant

694
01:01:15.239 --> 01:01:19.840
place. It's a shortage of water, and there are millions of other people

695
01:01:19.960 --> 01:01:23.039
there, and it sounds horrible,
really, it sounds like being in the

696
01:01:23.199 --> 01:01:30.719
army probably, and uh ghosts seemed
to me from the description of it,

697
01:01:30.800 --> 01:01:36.119
have every reason to be unhappy and
want to escape. But the thing is

698
01:01:36.199 --> 01:01:42.480
this, there is a kind of
esoteric literature in Mesopotamia where things are explained,

699
01:01:44.320 --> 01:01:49.280
or complex things are explained, sometimes
even more complex ways than the original.

700
01:01:49.400 --> 01:01:55.599
But they had they had a kind
of interesting, interesting way that you

701
01:01:55.719 --> 01:02:00.519
take one of the classic texts that
everybody had to know, and then you

702
01:02:00.639 --> 01:02:06.239
analyze the words for other meanings and
explain that this means this because of this,

703
01:02:06.440 --> 01:02:10.960
and they quote from other things as
a kind of exegesis of important texts.

704
01:02:12.000 --> 01:02:20.400
And some of these exegetical passages add
up to this picture that the Mesopotamian

705
01:02:20.800 --> 01:02:25.320
I believe this to be true.
The Mesopotamian principle was that the life as

706
01:02:25.480 --> 01:02:35.159
such, the life force, was
finite, with the consequence that for a

707
01:02:35.280 --> 01:02:40.320
new baby to be born, somebody
had to die. So when somebody died,

708
01:02:42.039 --> 01:02:47.039
that opened up in order to maintain
the equilibrium of the universe, the

709
01:02:47.119 --> 01:02:52.960
balance. It opened up the option
of another life and the spirits which are

710
01:02:53.599 --> 01:02:59.360
down there in the basement. And
I think when the baby was going to

711
01:02:59.440 --> 01:03:06.960
be coming, one was released,
and I don't know whether it entered the

712
01:03:07.000 --> 01:03:15.559
fallopian tube or the testicle of the
Babylonian there's no there's no detailed response to

713
01:03:15.639 --> 01:03:20.239
it. It's just that there's an
implication that that's how it worked. So

714
01:03:20.360 --> 01:03:24.559
it's not like reincarnation because people couldn't
remember their earlier lives. There's no evidence

715
01:03:24.599 --> 01:03:28.440
of that in Mesopotamia, or do
they even give the impression of that.

716
01:03:28.599 --> 01:03:32.519
They don't say anything about this.
It's just these esoteric remarks in these learned

717
01:03:32.599 --> 01:03:38.639
texts. But I think it means
that there was a balance of this precious

718
01:03:39.199 --> 01:03:45.400
what they call it, you know
that film, what's it called precious bodily

719
01:03:45.480 --> 01:03:51.679
fluids? You know, yeah,
yeah, it's precious bodily fluids. It

720
01:03:51.719 --> 01:03:54.199
always makes me laugh. That film, and that that line is it so

721
01:03:54.760 --> 01:03:58.840
that there was a there was a
finite amount, and that there was a

722
01:03:58.920 --> 01:04:01.400
balance between death and life and it
worked like this, which is a very

723
01:04:01.480 --> 01:04:08.039
wonderful conception, in my opinion,
very remarkable conception, possessed of a lot

724
01:04:08.119 --> 01:04:14.559
of power. And I go so
far as to say that I think it's

725
01:04:14.760 --> 01:04:21.320
contingent upon the reality that the Mesopotamians
depended so drastically and so visibly on water,

726
01:04:23.159 --> 01:04:28.880
on the river's coming and fertilizing their
land because and as long as the

727
01:04:29.360 --> 01:04:32.880
rivers ran, everything was fine.
But there have been episodes in time when

728
01:04:33.639 --> 01:04:39.679
because of warfare, one or other
parties tried to damn the resources water and

729
01:04:39.800 --> 01:04:43.760
interfere with it, which is an
absolute disaster. And I think that the

730
01:04:44.119 --> 01:04:54.519
psychological dependence on water has this manifestation
about life itself. It's a bit difficult

731
01:04:54.599 --> 01:05:00.119
to if I was faced with a
High Court judge and I had to through

732
01:05:00.280 --> 01:05:04.480
this, and it would be very
difficult to be one hundred percent convincing about

733
01:05:04.519 --> 01:05:09.199
it. But it seems to me
this all of a picture with a Mesopotamian

734
01:05:09.280 --> 01:05:12.679
psychology, that this should be true
and that this is the idea, And

735
01:05:12.719 --> 01:05:16.119
of course The interesting thing is if
you have a conception that the path from

736
01:05:16.280 --> 01:05:24.440
here down to the underworld is manned
by seven gatekeepers. Everybody always assumes that

737
01:05:24.639 --> 01:05:28.360
it's to keep everything down there,
but of course it might be to let

738
01:05:28.440 --> 01:05:31.960
one out the time. It might
be a different conception that these spirits.

739
01:05:32.880 --> 01:05:38.039
Anyway. The other conclusion I reached
in the course of my writing this book,

740
01:05:38.239 --> 01:05:41.039
which we're not supposed to be talking
about all the time, was this

741
01:05:41.760 --> 01:05:46.880
that all the religions of the world
believe that the spirit of a person or

742
01:05:46.960 --> 01:05:51.039
something of the person, goes somewhere
after they died. All clergymen tell this

743
01:05:51.159 --> 01:05:57.000
to widows, that your Alfred is
up there somewhere or other, and your

744
01:05:57.119 --> 01:05:59.960
meetium one day when you go.
Then all their religions have this idea,

745
01:06:00.679 --> 01:06:04.079
so there's no shame about it.
This is a central religious principle that the

746
01:06:04.199 --> 01:06:10.079
human species lumbering about in an awkward
body when the body is no good,

747
01:06:10.199 --> 01:06:14.639
the real bit of the person survives. This is a human universal principle.

748
01:06:15.519 --> 01:06:20.199
So I had an idea how beautifully
one could reconcile this with the ghost matter,

749
01:06:21.519 --> 01:06:25.480
Because, as I say, lots
of people say it's all nonsense,

750
01:06:25.519 --> 01:06:29.480
and all that but I don't know
how many white coats, and when they're

751
01:06:29.559 --> 01:06:34.599
being consoled by the clergy, in
the clergy says that your Mabel is in

752
01:06:34.679 --> 01:06:39.320
the right place with the Lord,
then they're not going to So I don't

753
01:06:39.320 --> 01:06:41.480
believe a word of that. There's
no proof of it. I mean,

754
01:06:41.519 --> 01:06:44.840
I like to see a demonstration before
I believe you, or before I take

755
01:06:44.840 --> 01:06:47.239
any comfort from this argument. I'm
sorry, it's not good enough. I

756
01:06:47.320 --> 01:06:50.559
need to see some statistics. I
need to see some written papers with footnotes.

757
01:06:51.000 --> 01:06:58.079
And the thing is this, I
believe that the ghost thing which say

758
01:06:59.199 --> 01:07:02.599
part of the world, and that
people don't die, but they go somewhere

759
01:07:03.039 --> 01:07:10.039
according to a religion. It's exactly
the same principle. And the only difference

760
01:07:10.199 --> 01:07:16.880
is this that ghosts are visible according
to the whole span of things, and

761
01:07:17.159 --> 01:07:21.480
the spirits aren't. So this is
it. So if you have this,

762
01:07:21.800 --> 01:07:27.079
there's no opposition between the two systems, but there are one. The only

763
01:07:27.159 --> 01:07:31.320
difference between them technically is that people
see ghosts, and that's that. So

764
01:07:32.360 --> 01:07:40.079
this allows one to formulate a very
neat psychological and pseudo scientific explanation, which

765
01:07:40.119 --> 01:07:46.119
is that some people can see ghosts
because of the way their minds are and

766
01:07:46.400 --> 01:07:51.199
some people can't, Like some people
can see colors, and some people are

767
01:07:51.280 --> 01:07:55.159
tone deaf, and some people are
this, and some people are that.

768
01:07:55.760 --> 01:07:59.760
So maybe some brains have a susceptibility
to this kind of thing and others.

769
01:08:00.000 --> 01:08:01.159
And I mean, you know,
where as I do that, there are

770
01:08:01.280 --> 01:08:04.480
people you offer MEETI in life who
were so like this. They go in

771
01:08:04.559 --> 01:08:10.239
a room and say someone's been murdered
here like that and all over the place,

772
01:08:10.320 --> 01:08:13.960
and it's a very very common thing
those sorts of people. And so

773
01:08:14.119 --> 01:08:17.640
that's it. I think that this
one system, and that the religion takes

774
01:08:17.680 --> 01:08:23.079
advantage of it to comfort the dead, and the people who believe in ghosts

775
01:08:23.279 --> 01:08:27.119
take advantage it to comfort the dead
or comfort the living. And that's the

776
01:08:27.359 --> 01:08:30.680
panical difference that one lot of visible
and one lot aren't. I'd like to

777
01:08:30.800 --> 01:08:33.479
argue about that with the Pope,
but I don't suppose I ever will.

778
01:08:34.479 --> 01:08:42.039
I want to ask you if you
came across any passages where a ghost was

779
01:08:43.840 --> 01:08:53.199
asked about an event and was able
to prophesize the coming of either a new

780
01:08:53.319 --> 01:08:57.199
king. I think you gave a
hint with a king between a family,

781
01:08:57.800 --> 01:09:02.399
a younger brother and an older brother
becoming a But was there other prophecy that

782
01:09:02.640 --> 01:09:08.439
no discoverment actually came through through the
connection with the other. That would be

783
01:09:08.640 --> 01:09:12.319
very tasty, But in point of
fact, we don't have the questions.

784
01:09:12.399 --> 01:09:15.119
We don't we don't know, they
don't write them down. No, that's

785
01:09:15.199 --> 01:09:19.359
one of the one of the one
of the ways in which we're impoverished because

786
01:09:19.399 --> 01:09:23.720
we only get what survives. We
don't get all the stuff around it.

787
01:09:24.439 --> 01:09:30.159
So, yeah, that's an interesting
question, but we can't answer it.

788
01:09:30.560 --> 01:09:36.560
But also prophesying is a slightly strange
word because it's to do with profits and

789
01:09:36.680 --> 01:09:42.840
the Bible and all that. Whereas
these people were not profits, they were

790
01:09:44.199 --> 01:09:51.479
they were specialists and part of the
whole mesopotape spectrum of people who try to

791
01:09:51.520 --> 01:09:56.800
predict the future. There were lots
of ways they did it, and smoke

792
01:09:56.960 --> 01:10:04.119
and oil and water and examining in
trails and hundreds of well, one hundreds.

793
01:10:04.119 --> 01:10:09.079
There were about twenty different ways in
which professionals could tell the future.

794
01:10:09.560 --> 01:10:12.600
So if you wanted to know somebody, if if I get married, am

795
01:10:12.600 --> 01:10:15.600
I going to have a son?
Will a son be born? That there'd

796
01:10:15.640 --> 01:10:20.920
be people who could try and find
out like that, but not prophescience in

797
01:10:21.000 --> 01:10:24.319
the sense, well, let me
let me, let me spend that a

798
01:10:24.399 --> 01:10:29.399
little bit is and this is funny
that we're talking about this. Are there

799
01:10:29.560 --> 01:10:38.720
references to astrological focal points or astronomical
focal points. There's a lot of people

800
01:10:38.800 --> 01:10:43.880
that believe that the Maya, as
an example, use the combination. And

801
01:10:44.000 --> 01:10:49.720
the Egyptians, we know they used
astrology, but astrology astronomy as a science

802
01:10:50.800 --> 01:10:59.520
for predicting certain events to come or
just general life. They certainly died,

803
01:11:00.199 --> 01:11:04.920
they certainly did. They had complex
astronomy, complex mathematical astronomy, and they

804
01:11:05.039 --> 01:11:13.119
had extensive astrology. And they both
are a function of observation of the heavens

805
01:11:14.000 --> 01:11:18.840
over a very very long period of
time. So the people who were mathematically

806
01:11:18.960 --> 01:11:24.279
capable and who observe what happened in
the heavens, and they started to notice

807
01:11:24.319 --> 01:11:27.960
how things moved, and they tried
to work it out, ended up with

808
01:11:28.479 --> 01:11:31.840
very sophisticated astronomy, which meant they
could predict when eclips would take place and

809
01:11:31.920 --> 01:11:38.119
many other things as well, And
they reached a level of astronomy which had

810
01:11:38.159 --> 01:11:42.880
a marked effect on the development of
astronomy among the Greeks. Is no doubt

811
01:11:42.920 --> 01:11:47.720
about it. They were high level
astronomers. And side by side you have

812
01:11:47.960 --> 01:11:53.279
astrology, which is an observation of
things that happen in the heavens and what

813
01:11:53.479 --> 01:12:00.600
that meant for us on earth.
And people did derive predictions about things from

814
01:12:00.760 --> 01:12:05.000
the astrological changes and the movements in
the zodiac and all these kind of things.

815
01:12:05.479 --> 01:12:09.560
And with the first visibility, in
the last visibility, they collected all

816
01:12:09.600 --> 01:12:15.600
these material and some of it had
ominous significance for individuals. And in fact,

817
01:12:15.920 --> 01:12:20.399
in the late period and third third
century BC, that kind of time,

818
01:12:20.720 --> 01:12:25.439
horoscopes were written when a baby was
born, with the conjunction of the

819
01:12:25.520 --> 01:12:30.399
things in the heavens and what it
meant for life, and the zodiac appeared

820
01:12:30.439 --> 01:12:34.439
for the first time in Mesopotamia,
the twelve divisions of the heavens, and

821
01:12:34.560 --> 01:12:38.520
the path of the Sun, the
path of the moon, and the movements

822
01:12:38.560 --> 01:12:41.840
of the planets. They had all
this stuff down because they spent a lot

823
01:12:41.880 --> 01:12:47.720
of time making observations and recording what
they saw. So it fell into a

824
01:12:47.840 --> 01:12:55.199
quite remarkable scientific thing. So sometimes
the same guys profited from the same knowledge.

825
01:12:55.239 --> 01:13:00.520
But you have a sharp division really
between astronomy, which is of all

826
01:13:00.640 --> 01:13:03.439
the things they did in Mesopotamia.
Perhaps the closest to what a modern person

827
01:13:03.520 --> 01:13:11.600
would say was science and astrology,
which flourished and never really died. I

828
01:13:11.680 --> 01:13:15.920
mean, the stuff that you read
nowadays in the newspapers is a direct inheritance

829
01:13:16.000 --> 01:13:24.439
from that framework of Babylonian astrology,
which came into Greek and into the world

830
01:13:24.560 --> 01:13:31.800
and thereafter. So yes, indeed, yes, indeed, we're going to

831
01:13:31.840 --> 01:13:36.159
take a short break to allow our
sponsors to identify themselves, and we will

832
01:13:36.279 --> 01:13:42.800
return shortly with my guest today,
doctor Irvin. Think all of the British

833
01:13:42.920 --> 01:14:25.840
Museum will be right back. My
guest today is Irving Finkel, a curator

834
01:14:26.119 --> 01:14:30.560
at the British Museum in London who
has spent most, if not all,

835
01:14:30.640 --> 01:14:38.560
of his career as a cuneiform expert, and he specializes in Sumerian, Babylonian

836
01:14:38.640 --> 01:14:48.680
and Assyrian cuneiform clay tablets. Are
you reading these cuneiform tablets more in a

837
01:14:48.920 --> 01:14:58.920
journalistic way or are there actual books
that are like Volume one of local history?

838
01:14:59.720 --> 01:15:04.239
Right? Well, you get both, so for example, letters and

839
01:15:04.760 --> 01:15:10.840
administrative documents and legal decisions, you
get a tablet for each, so they're

840
01:15:10.920 --> 01:15:14.760
on their own. But sometimes if
you're lucky you get an archive, so

841
01:15:14.840 --> 01:15:19.279
they will fit together. So that's
one sort of the difference between the single

842
01:15:19.520 --> 01:15:25.479
and the bulk. If you have
an archive of a family over several generations

843
01:15:25.520 --> 01:15:29.399
can be very interesting, very fruitful. So that's one thing. So then

844
01:15:30.039 --> 01:15:35.520
you have pieces of literature which take
up one tablet, and only ever did

845
01:15:35.640 --> 01:15:41.159
take up one tablet. And then
you have other works which were conceived of

846
01:15:41.960 --> 01:15:46.680
as consisting of many parts. So
for example, the famous story about Gilgamesh

847
01:15:47.880 --> 01:15:54.199
is written on twelve separate tablets,
tablets one to twelve, which in our

848
01:15:54.359 --> 01:15:58.640
case we would call chapters of a
big book. But they never bound the

849
01:15:58.680 --> 01:16:00.800
tablets. They were just you know, made of play. They were kept

850
01:16:00.840 --> 01:16:05.479
separately, one by one. But
there was practically speaking a book of Gilgamesh

851
01:16:05.560 --> 01:16:11.920
of twelve chapters length, written on
twelve clay tablets. And there were many

852
01:16:12.000 --> 01:16:15.640
other things like that. So,
for example, in the Palace at Ninevy,

853
01:16:15.800 --> 01:16:19.960
they collected together all the medical prescriptions
they could ever find, old ones

854
01:16:20.000 --> 01:16:25.399
and new ones, and they arranged
them according to parts of the body,

855
01:16:25.479 --> 01:16:29.760
from head to foot, and each
chapter, like the head has four or

856
01:16:29.920 --> 01:16:33.000
five tablets and the next one has
six tablets. So they put together all

857
01:16:33.119 --> 01:16:40.279
the therapeutic rituals, therapeutic procedures,
the spells, the analysis on a huge

858
01:16:40.680 --> 01:16:45.920
archive of tablets, which is like
an encyclopedia. So you could call Gilgamesh

859
01:16:45.920 --> 01:16:49.479
would be like one book of ten
chapters, and then the medical encyclopedia would

860
01:16:49.479 --> 01:16:55.119
be like a modern twelve volume encyclopedia
with everything in it. So they had

861
01:16:55.159 --> 01:17:00.000
the conception of works that belonged together
in sequence. And this is actually a

862
01:17:00.119 --> 01:17:04.479
useful thing because if you have a
literary text like Gilgamesh, for example,

863
01:17:04.960 --> 01:17:08.760
so you write the first side,
you turn it over and you write the

864
01:17:08.840 --> 01:17:12.600
second side, and at the bottom
they say this is the for example,

865
01:17:12.800 --> 01:17:16.479
this is the fifth tablet of the
Gilgamesh story, and then they write the

866
01:17:16.640 --> 01:17:21.520
first line of the next tablet.
So when you find the next tablet,

867
01:17:21.760 --> 01:17:26.079
if you're lucky, you have a
tablet with the first line, and then

868
01:17:26.119 --> 01:17:29.479
you think, ah, this is
the first line from the bottom of this

869
01:17:29.640 --> 01:17:32.479
one. So you know they get
running sequence and that they were very careful

870
01:17:32.560 --> 01:17:36.199
ascribes to to do this. They
say, this is tablet six, this

871
01:17:36.359 --> 01:17:40.159
is the first line of tablet seven. And when you've got tablet seven,

872
01:17:40.319 --> 01:17:43.840
it clicks in and if the end
of Tablet seven is preserved. We'll have

873
01:17:43.920 --> 01:17:47.159
the beginning of tablet eight. And
since George Smith in the eighteen fifties,

874
01:17:47.880 --> 01:17:51.319
this has gradually happened. So we
know there are twelve tablets of Gilgamesh and

875
01:17:51.399 --> 01:17:57.079
the great new translation by my friend
Andrew. George, who's a Londoner seriologist,

876
01:17:57.359 --> 01:18:00.399
has got good bits of all twelve
tablet. It's not everything because they've

877
01:18:00.439 --> 01:18:04.119
all got holes in, but at
least we've got the series the story in

878
01:18:04.359 --> 01:18:10.159
order. And what happens is that
sometimes in their museum somebody finds an old

879
01:18:10.199 --> 01:18:13.520
thing that's not being read, or
someone digs something up on a new dig

880
01:18:13.840 --> 01:18:15.439
and a bit more of the story
comes, and a bit more of the

881
01:18:15.520 --> 01:18:21.399
story comes. That's how that worked. Before we get into our next subject,

882
01:18:21.399 --> 01:18:28.600
which has to do with artificial intelligence. What was your hope in this

883
01:18:28.800 --> 01:18:34.079
book the first ghost? What was
your hope that the reader would discern from

884
01:18:34.159 --> 01:18:38.920
your rating? Oh? Well,
they are two basic things. One is

885
01:18:39.359 --> 01:18:45.439
that the whole subject of ghosts in
our society is ruined by fraud and cheating

886
01:18:45.880 --> 01:18:50.239
and imitation and commercial productions. There's
an awful lot of fake so that's one

887
01:18:50.279 --> 01:18:54.720
thing. And secondly, there's a
lot of literature about ghosts, which is

888
01:18:54.840 --> 01:19:00.159
complete nonsense, and also people deluded
by fraud. But on top of it,

889
01:19:00.640 --> 01:19:04.399
the beginnings of the story are very
vague because people think, well,

890
01:19:04.520 --> 01:19:08.840
they was invented in the Middle Ages
or something like that, and nobody really

891
01:19:08.960 --> 01:19:13.039
knows, and nobody writes about the
fact that the Romans and the Greeks had

892
01:19:13.159 --> 01:19:15.800
lots and lots of literature about ghosts, much more than we do in Mesopotama,

893
01:19:16.000 --> 01:19:20.359
marvelous things. And then we have
the Mesopotamian stuff, which is older,

894
01:19:20.840 --> 01:19:27.520
so we can say that ghosts existed
in the world the minute we had

895
01:19:27.600 --> 01:19:31.880
writing. It's already written down,
there's something about them. So in other

896
01:19:31.920 --> 01:19:36.439
words, it's a very, very
long running thing. And this is important

897
01:19:36.840 --> 01:19:44.479
because it's very easy to think to
misjudge the importance of phenomena, and people

898
01:19:44.640 --> 01:19:48.720
say that, you know, they
don't really have any idea about how old

899
01:19:48.800 --> 01:19:53.359
ghosts are. They don't really like
talking about it at all. But people

900
01:19:53.439 --> 01:19:58.520
who have written about it have no
idea that this stuff exists because there was

901
01:19:58.600 --> 01:20:02.880
no book really which presents so that
was one reason. And also I've met

902
01:20:02.960 --> 01:20:08.439
quite a lot of people since I
wrote this book who have told me that

903
01:20:08.560 --> 01:20:17.000
they've seen ghosts things like that.
Now, of course that one isn't doesn't

904
01:20:17.039 --> 01:20:23.359
believe everything everybody says by any manner
of means. But I've met some people

905
01:20:23.840 --> 01:20:29.880
who, after I gave a lecture
about this where the subject is permissible to

906
01:20:30.039 --> 01:20:32.560
talk about, have told me things
that have happened to them which are very

907
01:20:32.680 --> 01:20:39.399
remarkable. And there are people of
this kind that I know that I can't

908
01:20:39.479 --> 01:20:45.199
imagine that anything they would ever tell
me would be invented or erroneous anymore than

909
01:20:45.239 --> 01:20:49.520
I would doubt anything else. They
said that there's something about ghosts that people

910
01:20:49.720 --> 01:20:55.000
might have a perfectly normal relationship with
the person, believe everything they say until

911
01:20:55.079 --> 01:20:58.840
they talk about ghosts, then all
of a sudden they switch off. Well,

912
01:20:58.880 --> 01:21:03.199
I'll tell you one small thing like
that. There was a literary festival

913
01:21:03.239 --> 01:21:06.279
in the north of a bitten where
I went and talked about the ghost room

914
01:21:06.319 --> 01:21:09.720
full of people and after what I
said to anybody, see you wanted to

915
01:21:09.800 --> 01:21:13.319
put your hands up. Eventually some
people do, and it's good anyway after

916
01:21:13.399 --> 01:21:15.760
it's over. We were at dinner
in a restaurant all the people from the

917
01:21:15.800 --> 01:21:19.399
conference, and this lady came round
when we were having the last bit of

918
01:21:19.479 --> 01:21:24.319
the tea pot, came round and
sat down next to me, and she

919
01:21:24.399 --> 01:21:28.239
said, I'm very glad to hear
your lecture. I was very encouraged,

920
01:21:28.880 --> 01:21:31.560
and I said yes. She said, I want to tell you about something

921
01:21:31.600 --> 01:21:34.960
that happened to me. She said, when I was a teenager, about

922
01:21:35.119 --> 01:21:42.000
seventeen, I was at home in
our family house, in my bedroom,

923
01:21:42.000 --> 01:21:46.199
which was on the upper floor,
sitting at my desk, and I looked

924
01:21:46.279 --> 01:21:55.199
out the window into the garden,
and I saw my grandfather walking across the

925
01:21:55.359 --> 01:22:01.439
grass. And she said, this
was a very extraordinary thing because her grandfather,

926
01:22:01.680 --> 01:22:08.199
my grandfather, she said, was
dead. So she sat there sort

927
01:22:08.239 --> 01:22:15.000
of hooleaxed, and anyway, eventually
she got up and she went downstairs in

928
01:22:15.079 --> 01:22:18.720
a rather wobbly way and went into
the kitchen to find her mom. And

929
01:22:18.880 --> 01:22:24.720
her mom was leaning on the kitchen
sink with her chin like this, gazing

930
01:22:24.840 --> 01:22:28.479
out of the kitchen window. And
when her daughter came in the room,

931
01:22:28.680 --> 01:22:31.119
she said, you're never going to
believe this. I just saw my dad

932
01:22:31.239 --> 01:22:40.560
walking across the lawn. Now that
is not science, it's not proof.

933
01:22:40.880 --> 01:22:45.439
But the point about it is,
this lady, I'm absolutely sure had not

934
01:22:45.640 --> 01:22:50.479
talked about that for decades. It
wasn't slick, you know, like a

935
01:22:50.560 --> 01:22:56.159
dinner party thing. Let me tell
you about my when she told me,

936
01:22:56.439 --> 01:22:59.840
and I'm hard bitten about all this
stuff, you know, the thing about

937
01:22:59.840 --> 01:23:03.199
the on the back of the neck. They sure as hell, sure as

938
01:23:03.319 --> 01:23:08.960
hell stood up. And I would
say that simply not only do I believe

939
01:23:09.119 --> 01:23:12.239
her that she wasn't inventing it,
and that she didn't make it up,

940
01:23:12.319 --> 01:23:15.840
and she wasn't trying to. I'm
sure she did. And what I like

941
01:23:15.920 --> 01:23:21.319
about it is two independent witnesses,
neither of whom could make a mistake,

942
01:23:21.720 --> 01:23:27.720
because you don't mistake some old fart
in a raincoat for your dad or your

943
01:23:27.760 --> 01:23:31.479
grandfather if it isn't your grandfather.
So I thought that was a punchy,

944
01:23:32.359 --> 01:23:38.319
pretty interesting thing. And quite a
lot of people told me things in a

945
01:23:38.359 --> 01:23:42.000
way that is difficult just to And
so when I wrote the end of this

946
01:23:42.079 --> 01:23:46.199
book, I wrote a chapter about
the belief in it. And I think

947
01:23:46.279 --> 01:23:51.399
that anybody who saw or goes to
any point in their life and everybody said

948
01:23:51.439 --> 01:23:56.119
they were nuts or they didn't tell
anybody, and even now they're not sure

949
01:23:56.119 --> 01:23:59.600
because it was so long ago,
they should read this book because they have

950
01:23:59.640 --> 01:24:01.800
a kin ship with people that go
all the way back to the very beginning.

951
01:24:02.399 --> 01:24:06.880
And also I believe them. So, but I don't go around believing

952
01:24:08.000 --> 01:24:13.640
everything people tell me. But sometimes
that kind of statement it's completely irrational not

953
01:24:13.720 --> 01:24:18.439
to accept. So you're saying that
in studying the ancient people, when we

954
01:24:18.600 --> 01:24:23.640
do see girls, it's part of
the human condition. Yeah, okay,

955
01:24:24.079 --> 01:24:28.640
so we shouldn't we shouldn't disprove it. We should look at it a little

956
01:24:28.720 --> 01:24:31.319
closer. I think. So.
For example, I've often said this in

957
01:24:31.439 --> 01:24:35.880
giving lectures about this, that what
you have to do is you get half

958
01:24:35.920 --> 01:24:42.079
a dozen white coated scientists who and
I've heard people say this, whatever you

959
01:24:42.319 --> 01:24:45.560
tell me, I won't believe it. Now, that's not science in my

960
01:24:45.680 --> 01:24:49.359
opinion. That's one thing. So
we get a haunted house in the middle

961
01:24:49.399 --> 01:24:53.920
of Dartmoor in the winter, and
we have a party. We invite these

962
01:24:53.960 --> 01:24:57.279
scientists and they get drunk and they
have a lovely time in this heart with

963
01:24:57.560 --> 01:25:00.600
big old woman's broken minutes, and
then they get really tired and they go

964
01:25:00.680 --> 01:25:05.479
upstairs and they go and lie down
on the sultan mattresses in this great house.

965
01:25:05.880 --> 01:25:09.760
And when they're all asleep, you
can come with me. We get

966
01:25:09.800 --> 01:25:13.479
a ladder and we put you up
the back of the house and we climb

967
01:25:13.600 --> 01:25:18.520
up the ladder and then we go
through the window and we will all sit

968
01:25:18.720 --> 01:25:25.800
up in bed and wet themselves.
Oh my god, Hey, I want

969
01:25:25.880 --> 01:25:29.079
to move on to a couple of
other subjects in the time we have left.

970
01:25:30.399 --> 01:25:33.000
I have to bring this guy up, Zacharia Sitchen, who is the

971
01:25:33.199 --> 01:25:44.079
rug rogue philosopher's scholar or whatever you
want to call him. Hisn't he wrote

972
01:25:44.199 --> 01:25:49.479
numerous books I'm sure you're aware of, and claim that the Sumerians were the

973
01:25:49.560 --> 01:25:56.479
descendants of the Ananaki, a very
very early race of beings who had come

974
01:25:56.560 --> 01:26:08.079
from another planet. Have you run
across any reference to this information that are

975
01:26:08.760 --> 01:26:15.840
and if you did, did you
discounted as a myth or storytelling or why?

976
01:26:17.199 --> 01:26:23.159
Well, I've spent my whole adult
life reading to know form inscription since

977
01:26:23.199 --> 01:26:26.199
the age of seventeen. In fact, I'm now seventy two, so that's

978
01:26:26.239 --> 01:26:30.319
a fair whack. And I've never
seen anything in any form inscription which would

979
01:26:30.319 --> 01:26:36.279
do anything to support that idea at
all. And are not an ancient race

980
01:26:36.439 --> 01:26:41.960
older than the Sumerians. The Anuniki
are one of the groups of gods in

981
01:26:42.039 --> 01:26:46.479
the Sumerian pantheon. We know who
the Anniki are. They are not kings,

982
01:26:46.720 --> 01:26:50.640
They're not ancient kings. They are
part of the divine universe. They

983
01:26:50.680 --> 01:26:57.119
are gods. And there's not a
single whisper of a breath of an idea

984
01:26:57.479 --> 01:27:00.600
of that to be confirmed by anything
that's come mount of the ground in Mesopotamia.

985
01:27:01.119 --> 01:27:11.560
So I put it to one side
because I don't see any legitimacy in

986
01:27:12.079 --> 01:27:15.600
in that claim at all. A
lot of people, of course, believe

987
01:27:15.600 --> 01:27:19.000
it. A lot of people write
as letters and you know he's he's very

988
01:27:19.079 --> 01:27:27.680
popular writer, and it's it's it's
strange matter. But to answer your question,

989
01:27:28.079 --> 01:27:33.439
no is the answer. Okay,
uh, one other one the anarkotheria

990
01:27:34.079 --> 01:27:40.880
mechanism that was found in the water
that are here. Is there anything like

991
01:27:41.039 --> 01:27:45.239
that referenced in any of these uniforms
and and and in the case of your

992
01:27:45.319 --> 01:27:54.600
work, it would probably be somebody's
talking about using the machine to navigate or

993
01:27:56.159 --> 01:28:01.000
no, it's not it's not that
I'm I'm not the person to answer this

994
01:28:01.119 --> 01:28:05.119
in detail, but I've read about
the antikither and I know roughly that it

995
01:28:05.239 --> 01:28:15.520
has on it clever mechanisms which calculate
things according to principles that are already understood.

996
01:28:16.319 --> 01:28:23.920
Those principles are already understood in Babylonia. Right, the astronomy of Babylon

997
01:28:24.239 --> 01:28:30.800
would provide, as far as I
know, the data on which the Antikitherra

998
01:28:30.039 --> 01:28:34.680
was actually produced. Now it's got
written on it and it's made out to

999
01:28:34.760 --> 01:28:39.199
be written by Greeks. Maybe it
was written by Greeks, but there's no

1000
01:28:39.319 --> 01:28:43.000
reason why the same thing couldn't have
been made in Mesopotamia in terms of the

1001
01:28:43.159 --> 01:28:49.600
knowledge and the know how. So
that's one thing. And what was the

1002
01:28:49.640 --> 01:28:53.319
other question? Was there another question
about Well, no, it was basically

1003
01:28:53.720 --> 01:29:00.239
you know, it was found under
Sodinia. It was the shipwreck I think

1004
01:29:00.279 --> 01:29:05.840
it was a Roman ship and when
they began looking at it and had more

1005
01:29:06.159 --> 01:29:12.880
myrawn equipment to X ray that's very
intricate device. Yes, but look the

1006
01:29:12.920 --> 01:29:15.640
intricacy. There were two parts to
the Antikythrie. Are two conceptions. One

1007
01:29:15.800 --> 01:29:21.680
is the knowledge of movements in the
heavens measuring time or whatever would be.

1008
01:29:21.920 --> 01:29:28.760
There's the knowledge, and then there's
the physical ability to cut metal, to

1009
01:29:28.880 --> 01:29:32.359
calculate the number of teeth in the
cogs, to cut things and to make

1010
01:29:32.439 --> 01:29:36.199
them so that they worked in this
computer like way. That is a matter

1011
01:29:36.319 --> 01:29:42.119
of nothing to do with knowledge.
That's to do with mathematical calculation and skill,

1012
01:29:42.880 --> 01:29:47.880
and they're separate. Think I think
the important thing is that the knowledge

1013
01:29:48.000 --> 01:29:55.760
embodied in it is not only present
in Mesopotamia, but very likely comes from

1014
01:29:55.880 --> 01:30:01.239
there. I wouldn't be at all
surprised. I wouldn't. Okay, as

1015
01:30:01.319 --> 01:30:06.680
we conclude, uh, we started
before before we started recording, the question

1016
01:30:06.840 --> 01:30:15.520
of artificial intelligence in not only decipherment
of the cuneiform tablets, but interpretation.

1017
01:30:15.920 --> 01:30:25.600
And I'm curious with this advancing technology
that's permeating everything, really, what do

1018
01:30:25.720 --> 01:30:30.640
you see the future? And I
and I wanted to ask you because they

1019
01:30:30.640 --> 01:30:39.000
My thinking of it is they would
scan a tablet, pass it through a

1020
01:30:39.159 --> 01:30:46.479
system, and it out would come
a basic interpretation. And if well that

1021
01:30:46.840 --> 01:30:49.760
I mean that it's not like something
that would really cut through a lot of

1022
01:30:49.960 --> 01:30:56.159
time. If fine guys like you
would you could sit back, maybe you

1023
01:30:56.199 --> 01:31:00.800
would be the final analysis of what
came through. Well, look, let's

1024
01:31:00.880 --> 01:31:05.520
think about it simply. Let's say
you have a letter in canaoform to miss

1025
01:31:05.560 --> 01:31:09.560
it, so and then the contents
of the letter and the date at the

1026
01:31:09.600 --> 01:31:12.600
bottom. Right. There are lots
and lots of tablets like that. So

1027
01:31:13.319 --> 01:31:18.039
if you have a first class digital
photograph of the tablet front and back so

1028
01:31:18.199 --> 01:31:25.439
that all the signs are clear,
you can easily scan the photograph with a

1029
01:31:25.560 --> 01:31:31.520
machine that can identify the signs one
by one because you fed into it or

1030
01:31:31.640 --> 01:31:36.560
the data about all the different signs. Let's say they're nine hundred caniform signs,

1031
01:31:38.119 --> 01:31:43.039
right. The first thing is that
over three millennia they change their shape,

1032
01:31:43.600 --> 01:31:45.600
so you'd have to learn the computer
would have to learn each of the

1033
01:31:45.720 --> 01:31:51.800
nine hundred signs in its different incarnations
of shape throughout the whole of the period

1034
01:31:51.840 --> 01:31:56.279
of the canoform time. That's not
a problem for the computer. You just

1035
01:31:56.359 --> 01:32:00.920
have to feed it in so it
would know all all the signs and what

1036
01:32:01.239 --> 01:32:03.760
they always look like, so that
in other words, if you had a

1037
01:32:03.840 --> 01:32:09.359
letter of one period and there was
a particular sign there, then if they

1038
01:32:09.399 --> 01:32:12.880
had a letter of document of another
period of the same sign, they would

1039
01:32:12.920 --> 01:32:15.560
recognize it as being an earlier version
of that sign. That's easy for a

1040
01:32:15.600 --> 01:32:20.119
computer. It's just a matter of
whether anybody can feed it in. That's

1041
01:32:20.199 --> 01:32:26.319
one thing. Then there's The second
thing that all the signs can be used

1042
01:32:26.479 --> 01:32:33.600
in multiple ways, so they have
different sound values and different meaning values.

1043
01:32:34.039 --> 01:32:39.960
Now this is a complicated thing to
explain in abstract, but for example,

1044
01:32:40.439 --> 01:32:45.720
you have a sign like moo okay. So the Sumerian word MoU is a

1045
01:32:45.840 --> 01:32:50.760
useful syllable in writing words in like
museum, where meu is a syllable because

1046
01:32:50.800 --> 01:32:56.439
they wrote in syllables. But moo
also means cook and it also means year.

1047
01:32:59.079 --> 01:33:00.479
So if you have a mood,
you don't know whether it's just the

1048
01:33:00.600 --> 01:33:05.600
move sound or whether it means year, which is pronounced move, or whether

1049
01:33:05.720 --> 01:33:10.600
it means cook, which is pronounced
muchaldim. So you don't know that.

1050
01:33:11.039 --> 01:33:17.359
This is one little problem, and
all the signs have this characteristic. Also

1051
01:33:17.479 --> 01:33:20.960
you can use signs not to spell
the sound, but also to tell you

1052
01:33:21.079 --> 01:33:25.239
what kind or word it is,
like it's made of wood. And you

1053
01:33:25.319 --> 01:33:30.359
can have things called phonetic compliments when
you have a sign which is unusual and

1054
01:33:30.399 --> 01:33:31.920
then you write a sign next to
it which gives you a clue how to

1055
01:33:32.000 --> 01:33:35.319
read it. So they are all
these small things which to a seriologist are

1056
01:33:35.359 --> 01:33:39.359
bread and butter, And to me, I can do it in my sleep.

1057
01:33:39.960 --> 01:33:44.239
But they'd all have to be programmed
into this computer according to the basis

1058
01:33:44.319 --> 01:33:47.079
of all these signs, and then
they would have to learn the grammar.

1059
01:33:47.720 --> 01:33:51.880
They'd have to learn the grammar so
that when they have a tablet and they

1060
01:33:51.960 --> 01:33:57.279
scan the signs, they can identify
the words. They have to learn the

1061
01:33:57.319 --> 01:34:01.279
grammar and the vocabulary, but otherwise
they don't know how to see where one

1062
01:34:01.319 --> 01:34:06.720
word stops and another word starts.
So they'd have to learn all the vocabulary

1063
01:34:08.680 --> 01:34:13.960
in all its different periods of time, and all the grammar. Now you

1064
01:34:14.039 --> 01:34:17.279
may say that sounds like a taught
order. It's happened to me. That's

1065
01:34:17.359 --> 01:34:20.960
what's happened to me. I know
all that stuff like that, and I

1066
01:34:21.079 --> 01:34:28.680
can read uniform fluently. So if
it can be done by me, it

1067
01:34:28.760 --> 01:34:32.920
can sure as hell be done by
a computer. So the problem is it's

1068
01:34:33.000 --> 01:34:40.279
really finding a computer of efficient kind
of strength and the right people to feed

1069
01:34:40.359 --> 01:34:45.880
in the right information, so it's
most economically effective. If this were to

1070
01:34:45.960 --> 01:34:50.600
happen, obviously it would go through
a progression of reliability. When I was

1071
01:34:50.720 --> 01:34:56.840
a teenager, and if you bought
a camera from Japan, you would have

1072
01:34:56.960 --> 01:35:00.279
a whole sheet of instructions about how
to use it, which was practically speaking

1073
01:35:01.279 --> 01:35:08.239
unintelligible because the person in the company
in Japan had an English Japanese dictionary and

1074
01:35:08.399 --> 01:35:11.279
they plucked out the words. You
must have seen this kind of thing,

1075
01:35:11.760 --> 01:35:15.359
so you have no idea what the
hell they're talking about. And then maybe

1076
01:35:15.479 --> 01:35:18.960
fifteen years later you would have a
thing like that where it was fine but

1077
01:35:19.039 --> 01:35:25.399
there were some funny mistakes, and
now probably you get something which was perfect,

1078
01:35:25.920 --> 01:35:29.359
more or less perfect. And that's
what would happen. So if you

1079
01:35:29.479 --> 01:35:33.960
had these rough caste translations of say
a simple letter, done through all this

1080
01:35:34.239 --> 01:35:39.720
system by a computer with a print
out of the translation, it would make

1081
01:35:40.159 --> 01:35:45.760
some obvious mistakes, some big mistake, but you could always a person could

1082
01:35:45.800 --> 01:35:49.039
easily correct it, and it would
be quicker than starting from scratch. Maybe

1083
01:35:49.199 --> 01:35:53.920
I'm not sure, but it might
be so, But justine it would be

1084
01:35:53.960 --> 01:35:59.760
good for maybe the most basic interpretation. But then if you wanted the fine

1085
01:35:59.800 --> 01:36:04.760
points and the subtleties, it would
take a human being to be well,

1086
01:36:04.800 --> 01:36:10.439
I think it would. I think
if you try to translate Gilgamesh, it

1087
01:36:11.239 --> 01:36:15.880
would be a laughable thing. But
the thing is, the thing is which

1088
01:36:17.880 --> 01:36:21.920
I mean relatively speaking, all these
things are in their infancy, and there's

1089
01:36:23.000 --> 01:36:30.399
no doubt that the computer translation has
made leaps of progress nowadays. It's absolutely

1090
01:36:30.439 --> 01:36:32.119
astonishing what they can do. And
if they can do that, they could

1091
01:36:32.239 --> 01:36:36.920
definitely do this. The question is
whether it's worth the money that it would

1092
01:36:38.000 --> 01:36:41.640
cost and the time it would cost, because you know, we have one

1093
01:36:41.680 --> 01:36:45.520
hundred and thirty thousand tablets in the
British Museum. Maybe there's one hundred thousand

1094
01:36:45.600 --> 01:36:47.079
all over the rest of the world, and maybe there's ten million in the

1095
01:36:47.119 --> 01:36:51.199
ground of Iraq. But there are
only five people in Britain who can read

1096
01:36:51.239 --> 01:36:56.119
this thing, and they're probably fifty
in America. And who who gives a

1097
01:36:56.239 --> 01:36:59.920
monkey's you know? I mean,
we're all worried about the things we're worried

1098
01:37:00.039 --> 01:37:03.880
about. But it's very important because
it's the beginning of humanity and our history.

1099
01:37:04.640 --> 01:37:09.560
It's so it is important. But
I think it will be a long

1100
01:37:09.680 --> 01:37:14.199
time before. I mean, I
think people who are good at AI like

1101
01:37:14.319 --> 01:37:18.680
to have things that they can show
they can do and people go ooh and

1102
01:37:18.880 --> 01:37:23.000
are and this will be a choice
one. If you had a clay tablet,

1103
01:37:23.039 --> 01:37:25.560
they know which way up it goes
and you plug it in and ten

1104
01:37:25.600 --> 01:37:29.760
minutes later you get the translation.
That would be marvelous. Well, I

1105
01:37:29.920 --> 01:37:36.119
was just reading the other day they
are the AI computing power is growing exponentially,

1106
01:37:38.279 --> 01:37:42.560
and they just predicted this is about
twenty four hours ago, that they

1107
01:37:42.800 --> 01:37:46.479
think it can be close to the
human mind. I don't know how they

1108
01:37:46.520 --> 01:37:49.880
can think that, because we don't
know what the human minds about. So

1109
01:37:51.359 --> 01:37:56.199
it's weird. Well, look,
the thing is, you can get a

1110
01:37:56.840 --> 01:38:00.760
thing to write a novel, like
as if Jane Austen wrote it. Yeah,

1111
01:38:00.920 --> 01:38:04.159
but it's not you know, how
original, truly original? Will the

1112
01:38:04.399 --> 01:38:09.239
work be? Well, it depends
on what you've done with the computer.

1113
01:38:09.760 --> 01:38:14.119
But the thing is, I don't
know much about this, but I have

1114
01:38:14.279 --> 01:38:20.079
read something to the effect that when
AI, artificial AI tries to imitate poetry

1115
01:38:20.359 --> 01:38:25.840
or writing by people who do poetry
and writing is very successful. I mean

1116
01:38:25.840 --> 01:38:29.760
it's not. I mean it's pretty
hard to tell whether poetry is any good

1117
01:38:29.800 --> 01:38:32.039
anyway, and it's pretty damned difficult
really. It's not like an absolute thing,

1118
01:38:32.399 --> 01:38:36.720
and some people go crazy about a
particular poem is a voice for our

1119
01:38:36.800 --> 01:38:40.000
time and all the rest of it. It's just a lot of cliches,

1120
01:38:40.119 --> 01:38:44.119
but this is this is an interesting
thing. But I think that the point

1121
01:38:44.319 --> 01:38:53.399
is that there's a disjunct between the
needs of the world and what can be

1122
01:38:53.479 --> 01:38:59.279
done with AI, and AI is
really an indulgence for the human race because

1123
01:38:59.520 --> 01:39:02.479
we don't really need most of the
things it can do. Then we need

1124
01:39:02.560 --> 01:39:09.920
a lot of other things a lot
more. So I think I regard it.

1125
01:39:10.640 --> 01:39:14.880
I think it's a distraction from dealing
with starvation, hunger, disease,

1126
01:39:15.119 --> 01:39:19.199
war, all those things which intelligent
people should actually be dealing with, because

1127
01:39:19.199 --> 01:39:23.000
there are quite a lot of intelligent
people in the world and they have nothing

1128
01:39:23.039 --> 01:39:27.680
to do with those issues. And
then we can do the AI. When

1129
01:39:27.760 --> 01:39:30.399
everything's fine, there's no more cancer, there's no more this, no more

1130
01:39:30.479 --> 01:39:33.920
road accidents, then they can do
that, but it's not a priority.

1131
01:39:34.359 --> 01:39:38.600
It's a priority for them to show
what they can do, and of course

1132
01:39:38.640 --> 01:39:42.760
there'll be money and money and money. But I think probably the bulk of

1133
01:39:42.880 --> 01:39:48.640
human beings, if they were fully
aware of the threat to clear thought that

1134
01:39:48.840 --> 01:39:53.640
this represents, will be very,
very panicky. But on the other hand,

1135
01:39:53.760 --> 01:39:57.399
they're not all that many people who
really care a whot about clear thought

1136
01:39:57.520 --> 01:40:01.319
anyway, So who knows I think
the bottom line is there using it to

1137
01:40:01.800 --> 01:40:08.520
better human existence in some capacity,
so it's disguised the limit as to the

1138
01:40:08.600 --> 01:40:13.840
applications of AI. So yeah,
but hold on, the usual application is

1139
01:40:13.920 --> 01:40:19.720
to control people better, so don't
forget that historical evidence to support this claim.

1140
01:40:19.760 --> 01:40:23.920
Anyway, it's great to see you. I really enjoy talking. It's

1141
01:40:24.000 --> 01:40:28.159
always a pleasure irving to have you
on the program. And before we leave,

1142
01:40:29.560 --> 01:40:33.439
give people an idea of what your
typical day is. How many hours

1143
01:40:33.520 --> 01:40:41.199
do you spend at the British Museum, And also you have two books that

1144
01:40:41.279 --> 01:40:45.319
you've completed, what's what's happening in
the future, or lots of books underway?

1145
01:40:46.439 --> 01:40:49.319
Well, I usually end up getting
there about nine thirteen, I stated

1146
01:40:49.359 --> 01:40:56.479
about six and I'm what I'm trying
to do now is to finish projects that

1147
01:40:56.640 --> 01:41:00.520
I have had underway, some new, some being a while. I'm writing

1148
01:41:00.600 --> 01:41:10.479
a book about dreams in Mesopotamia about
that's one subject. I'm writing a lot

1149
01:41:10.560 --> 01:41:15.560
about the Royal Game of Er because
I found out a lot more recently about

1150
01:41:15.640 --> 01:41:17.880
this game and text to do with
it, and other sorts of things which

1151
01:41:17.920 --> 01:41:24.600
I have to do. I'm writing
a book about diaries. This is something

1152
01:41:24.640 --> 01:41:29.199
we must talk about one day,
because I started this project a rescue manuscript

1153
01:41:29.319 --> 01:41:32.119
diaries from being thrown away in Britain, and there's about fourteen thousand of them

1154
01:41:32.199 --> 01:41:36.399
now, and I'm trying to write
a book about why it's important not to

1155
01:41:36.479 --> 01:41:42.279
throw diaries away, how interesting they
are. And I've written fiction and all

1156
01:41:42.359 --> 01:41:45.079
sorts of stuff which I'm trying to
find a publisher for. So who knows.

1157
01:41:45.239 --> 01:41:48.760
It's just a non ending stream of
streams. I got to say that

1158
01:41:48.960 --> 01:41:54.880
I've seen more and more video of
you on YouTube and I find it fascinating.

1159
01:41:55.000 --> 01:42:00.319
So obviously you do enjoy speaking in
public. We do, and you

1160
01:42:00.439 --> 01:42:04.920
do it fairly consistentlysistently, which is
kind of nice. I do like it.

1161
01:42:04.960 --> 01:42:10.039
I like looking on stage more because
you know, with lockdown and all

1162
01:42:10.119 --> 01:42:15.079
those things, that and zoom rather
changed. But I have a mission.

1163
01:42:15.159 --> 01:42:17.640
I think I want people to know
about the seriology and what we know about

1164
01:42:17.680 --> 01:42:23.039
all that because it's full of amazing
things, and about the British Museum and

1165
01:42:23.119 --> 01:42:27.000
why museums are important, and why
money is not the most important thing in

1166
01:42:27.079 --> 01:42:30.720
the world, and all those sorts
of things. Because he isn't wonderful,

1167
01:42:30.000 --> 01:42:32.840
a real pleasure and like I said
before, we're going to have to have

1168
01:42:32.960 --> 01:42:41.159
you back fairly more consistently because twenty
eighteen was a while ago. So will

1169
01:42:41.199 --> 01:42:46.079
be in touch more regularly, Kid
at any time, see you soon.

1170
01:42:49.760 --> 01:43:00.319
I really like speaking with him Irving, simply because of his openness to all

1171
01:43:00.359 --> 01:43:04.840
the possibilities. You know, I
mean, somebody who's steeped in tradition,

1172
01:43:06.279 --> 01:43:14.560
especially an archaeologist or a museum curator, may not venture outside of the box,

1173
01:43:15.359 --> 01:43:20.119
outside of what's comfortable. And you
know, these topics are very,

1174
01:43:20.319 --> 01:43:27.439
very fluid, and they are a
challenge for a lot of people. And

1175
01:43:27.960 --> 01:43:30.760
I appreciate his point of view,
and I appreciate his openness, and I

1176
01:43:31.039 --> 01:43:34.800
really appreciate the fact, and I
think you might agree too, that he's

1177
01:43:34.840 --> 01:43:43.720
an anomalist. He's seeking these unusual
stories events. It's just so much fun

1178
01:43:43.800 --> 01:43:46.800
to speak with someone like that and
so and you know, it's funny.

1179
01:43:48.279 --> 01:43:53.840
I've been doing Earth Ancients for ten
years in our tenth year anniversary what is

1180
01:43:53.840 --> 01:43:58.199
it in April, and I've only
interviewed him once. And he is really

1181
01:43:59.319 --> 01:44:02.840
what I would call a staple for
Earth Ancients, a foundational piece in the

1182
01:44:02.920 --> 01:44:09.920
same vein that we have Graham Hancock, or people like doctor Edwin Barnhardt,

1183
01:44:10.000 --> 01:44:17.399
who under the tutelage of Linda Sheeley, this tremendous mayanist helped shape his her

1184
01:44:17.439 --> 01:44:26.239
students like ed and others to think
outside the box and to accept individuals who

1185
01:44:26.359 --> 01:44:33.960
are seeing ancient history from a different
lens and reporting it and rather than putting

1186
01:44:34.039 --> 01:44:42.000
them down or writing skating letters like
Graham received when he was the host of

1187
01:44:42.600 --> 01:44:50.520
Ancient Apocalypse, that Netflix series,
she helped her students consider other points of

1188
01:44:50.640 --> 01:44:56.880
view. And this is where we
really get a series of brilliant discoveries,

1189
01:44:57.720 --> 01:45:01.600
a way to look at the ancient
past with more clarity. And this is

1190
01:45:01.680 --> 01:45:05.439
important and this is what Earth Agents
is all about. So I'm gonna have

1191
01:45:05.479 --> 01:45:09.479
to have Erring back. And I
mentioned this when we finished our interview,

1192
01:45:09.560 --> 01:45:13.920
that hey, buddy, we got
to get you back more consistently. So

1193
01:45:14.600 --> 01:45:17.279
he agreed, and he likes,
he likes to be on the show and

1194
01:45:17.680 --> 01:45:23.239
he likes to speak about his topic, so it was fun to have him

1195
01:45:23.239 --> 01:45:28.159
on the program. Hey, I
want to mention that we are a sponsor

1196
01:45:28.319 --> 01:45:33.520
of this upcoming conference called Cosmic Summit. It is June fifteenth and sixteenth it's

1197
01:45:33.560 --> 01:45:38.560
going to be held in North Carolina. A lot of people won't be able

1198
01:45:38.600 --> 01:45:41.119
to go because it's you know,
that's kind of out of the way,

1199
01:45:41.680 --> 01:45:47.279
it's expensive. But the producer it's
going to be on the program in a

1200
01:45:47.359 --> 01:45:51.800
few weeks, as well as a
number of the keynotes. And I gotta

1201
01:45:51.840 --> 01:45:58.239
mention this because it is live streamed, meaning that you can sit on your

1202
01:45:58.600 --> 01:46:03.079
in your desk at home or your
office or wherever, and you can see

1203
01:46:03.119 --> 01:46:11.760
these fascinating speakers. And they have
people like Preven Mohan, Randall, Carlson,

1204
01:46:12.199 --> 01:46:17.560
Luke Caverns, just a whole list
of great people that you can stream

1205
01:46:18.960 --> 01:46:24.119
and see these people alive. And
would you believe it's as little as twenty

1206
01:46:24.199 --> 01:46:30.479
five bucks a day, just nothing, nothing. I was shocked when George

1207
01:46:30.760 --> 01:46:32.399
the producer, George Howard the producer, said to me, hey, we're

1208
01:46:32.439 --> 01:46:36.119
only going to charge it. I
said, that is amazing. These types

1209
01:46:36.159 --> 01:46:43.399
of programs are usually one hundred and
fifty or more. Twenty five bucks a

1210
01:46:43.560 --> 01:46:48.199
day, that is nothing. You
have no excuse not to do this.

1211
01:46:48.359 --> 01:46:55.960
For more information, go to cosmicsummit
dot com, scroll to the bottom and

1212
01:46:56.039 --> 01:46:59.479
look for the streaming pass. I
think it's at the very bottom of the

1213
01:46:59.600 --> 01:47:06.479
page. I'll have another direct link
that you can use that is it might

1214
01:47:06.560 --> 01:47:13.399
be quicker, but for now,
check this summit out. It is packed

1215
01:47:13.439 --> 01:47:16.119
with really, really good people.
It's two days, the fifteenth and the

1216
01:47:16.199 --> 01:47:21.479
sixteenth in the June. And wow, what this is the kind of programming

1217
01:47:21.560 --> 01:47:27.039
I really like. I mean,
and we sponsor a handful of shows each

1218
01:47:27.119 --> 01:47:30.439
year, and they want you to
get They want, you know, people

1219
01:47:30.600 --> 01:47:35.359
to sit and attend because it,
you know, makes some money. People

1220
01:47:35.439 --> 01:47:41.840
can't do it. It's too expensive
to fly from San Francisco, where I'm

1221
01:47:41.880 --> 01:47:45.399
at, all the way across the
country to North Carolina. I would love

1222
01:47:45.439 --> 01:47:46.560
to be there. I'm going to
be coming back from Egypt, so I

1223
01:47:46.640 --> 01:47:53.000
can't do it. But I really
encourage you to go to Cosmic Summit dot

1224
01:47:53.079 --> 01:47:56.439
com. Scroll the bottom first of
all, look at the lineup. Then

1225
01:47:56.479 --> 01:48:00.720
scroll the bottom and become a subscriber
or sign up for the streaming twenty five

1226
01:48:00.800 --> 01:48:05.439
bucks a day. God, it's
a nothing, it's totally nothing. So

1227
01:48:06.239 --> 01:48:12.880
we're gonna hear from more of the
people who are speaking and who are presenting

1228
01:48:12.960 --> 01:48:18.079
there, and it's a really good
one. I'm really encouraging these conferences to

1229
01:48:18.199 --> 01:48:26.119
consider streaming as more of a foundation
to reach out to people rather than getting

1230
01:48:27.039 --> 01:48:32.119
seats filled because it's just so expensive. And I mean I have been doing

1231
01:48:32.439 --> 01:48:41.960
and producing conferences and program directing conferences
for a long long time and the technology

1232
01:48:42.079 --> 01:48:45.239
is much better than it used to
be. It's so smooth, it's like

1233
01:48:45.319 --> 01:48:49.119
watching TV and that's what you want. So again, check it out Cosmic

1234
01:48:49.199 --> 01:48:56.039
Summit. We'll have George the producer
on the program in a few weeks plus.

1235
01:48:56.079 --> 01:48:59.600
We'll be interviewing a few of the
guests that are are a few of

1236
01:48:59.680 --> 01:49:03.840
the centers that are at the show
for you to get some more insights.

1237
01:49:03.880 --> 01:49:09.600
So check it out cosmicsummit dot com. Hey, I want to mention that

1238
01:49:10.279 --> 01:49:14.560
our first tour is coming up.
It's our Grand Egyptian Tour number five.

1239
01:49:14.680 --> 01:49:19.039
It's April twenty eight through May ninth, and I just want to mention this

1240
01:49:19.119 --> 01:49:23.359
really quickly. People go, hey, you know what, that's really more

1241
01:49:23.399 --> 01:49:27.640
money than I can deal with.
Most of these tours are ten grand.

1242
01:49:28.159 --> 01:49:33.359
I just saw a competitor posting for
twelve thousand. That's ridiculous. That is

1243
01:49:33.479 --> 01:49:39.680
totally ridiculous. And I'm very proud
of our group and our team at Stabatur,

1244
01:49:39.800 --> 01:49:44.279
which is Mohammed Imbrahem and his team. We've been working with him for

1245
01:49:44.319 --> 01:49:48.600
a while now. Ours is less
than five thousand. You're going, dude,

1246
01:49:48.640 --> 01:49:51.479
that's a lot of money. But
if you can take a break,

1247
01:49:53.239 --> 01:49:57.039
pull a little money out of your
savings. This is a spring break.

1248
01:49:57.159 --> 01:50:00.199
This is a once in a lifetime
tour. I'm not going to I'll be

1249
01:50:00.239 --> 01:50:01.760
doing it in twenty twenty five.
I'm skipping a year, so this is

1250
01:50:01.800 --> 01:50:06.359
the last available time I have because
I'm in the middle of writing a bunch

1251
01:50:06.399 --> 01:50:09.720
of stuff, a bunch of books
and a bunch of articles and a bunch

1252
01:50:09.760 --> 01:50:13.359
of research. So twenty twenty five
I'm gonna kind of lay low, not

1253
01:50:13.479 --> 01:50:15.479
going to go to the East Coast
or Europe. I think I might do

1254
01:50:15.640 --> 01:50:23.840
one trip to Yucatan, no excuse
me, to Guatemala with doctor Ed.

1255
01:50:25.039 --> 01:50:28.640
That's going to be November. I
think we're still working on in the details,

1256
01:50:29.399 --> 01:50:31.399
but that's it for twenty twenty five. So if you want to come

1257
01:50:31.560 --> 01:50:36.640
with me and Muhammad, go to
Earth Ancients dot Com forward slash Tours.

1258
01:50:36.800 --> 01:50:44.000
I speak about it every single week. It is an amazing tour. Everything's

1259
01:50:44.039 --> 01:50:50.079
covered, food, beverages, bus, ride, flight, accommodations and hotels

1260
01:50:50.520 --> 01:50:57.279
accommodations on the Nile River with a
private cruise ship, and that by itself

1261
01:50:57.399 --> 01:51:00.680
is worth the price of admission.
I mean, great to see you,

1262
01:51:00.840 --> 01:51:03.720
great to be with you. This
is not to be missed. And like

1263
01:51:03.800 --> 01:51:06.840
I said, I'm not gonna be
doing it in twenty twenty five. So

1264
01:51:08.079 --> 01:51:11.720
if you want more information, go
to earth ansients dot com Forward slash Tours,

1265
01:51:11.760 --> 01:51:15.359
look for the banner for Egypt.
Come out and join us. It

1266
01:51:15.720 --> 01:51:19.439
is fabulous. It's a rock bottom
price and I don't know if I can

1267
01:51:19.520 --> 01:51:24.600
hold it after this year, so
consider it. It's fifty percent less than

1268
01:51:24.640 --> 01:51:30.119
what most people pay for the tour
and we have a blast earth acients dot

1269
01:51:30.199 --> 01:51:35.760
com Forward slash Tours. All right, that's it for today. I want

1270
01:51:35.760 --> 01:51:40.039
to thank my guest, doctor Irving
Finkel, coming to us from the British

1271
01:51:40.159 --> 01:51:45.760
Museum in London, England, as
always, the team of Gail Tour in

1272
01:51:45.920 --> 01:51:50.920
Hollywood, California, and then there
is Mark Foster in London, England,

1273
01:51:51.000 --> 01:51:56.760
and everyone who makes this thing happen. You guys rock all right, take

1274
01:51:56.840 --> 01:52:11.439
care of me well and we will
talk to you next time. Studio