Babylonian Map of the World (Finkel)

The Babylonian Map of the World with Irving Finkel | Curator’s Corner S9 E5

(The British Museum) Premiered Aug. 1, 2024: The Babylonian map of the world is the oldest map of the world, in the world. [In space they have older ones.] Written and inscribed on clay in Mesopotamia around 2,900-years-ago, it is, like so many cuneiform tablets, incomplete.

However, scholar Irving Finkel and a particularly gifted student of his, Edith Horsley, managed to locate a missing piece of the map, slot it back into the cuneiform tablet, and from there set us all on journey through the somewhat mythical landscape of Mesopotamia to find the final resting place of the ark.

And, yes, we mean that ark, as in the stolen story of Noah [appropriated from older cultures and flood myths, namely, the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and Akkadian Atra-Hasis].

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:52 Ancient Mesopotamian Cuneiform Tablets
• 01:48 The oldest map of the world, in the world
• 02:07 What is the Babylonian Map of the World?
• 02:34 The Babylonian Map of the World explained
• 04:13 What are the triangles on the Babylonian Map of the World?
• 06:17 Missing triangle on the Babylonian Map of the World
• 06:52 Edith Horsley - Cuneiform LEGEND
• 07:20 Channel 4 News report on Babylonian Map of the World September 1995
• 08:32 BABY IRVING!
• 09:48 What the missing piece revealed
• 11:39 The ark and parsiktu-vessel
• 13:22 Mount Ararat and Mount Urartu
• 14:18 What does it all mean?
• 15:07 Author of Babylonian Map of the World

Although in the earlier Mesopotamian version of the flood story, the ark is built by Ziusudra. CONTENT WARNING: Contains a baby Irving F., when his beard was not yet white. #curatorscorner #babylon #mesopotamia

• Irving Finkel, British Museum, Aug. 1, 2024; Pat Macpherson, Sheldon S., Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly