Milton C. Fisher<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cSheer luck,\u201d many would say. How else does an excavator so quickly extract the needle in a haystack he\u2019s traveled thousands of miles to find? George Smith, a man as uncomplicated as his name, in a matter of weeks located the fifteen or so missing lines of the Gilgemish Epic. Sent to Mesopotamia in 1873 by a head-line-seeking British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph,<\/i> Smith was to follow-up on his announcement the previous year of a Babylonian flood story.<\/p>\n
A combination of things makes this chapter in the history of archaeological discovery truly exceptional. George Smith, to begin with, lacked the special background possessed by many of the pioneers – <\/b>military or civil service, independent wealth, formal education. Apprenticed to an engraver of bank notes at age fourteen, he pursued that profession. But an avid interest in archaic scripts and literature drove him to spend long hours at the British Museum. There he caught the eye of Sir Henry Rawlinson (see A&BR<\/i> Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 6-8), who gave him access to the museum\u2019s vast collection of Akkadian cuneiform documents and eventually an assistant-ship in the department of Assyriology.<\/p>\n
Smith soon justified this favor by publishing an inscription which established a chronological reference point – a solar eclipse of 763 BC. Another inscription fixed the date of an Elamite invasion of Babylon, 2280 BC. Wide public attention was captured, however, by his translation in 1872 of the Gilgemish Epic. From among literally thousands of clay tablets he had selected and pieced together in proper order, about eighty proved to be of momentous import.<\/p>\n
Written originally before Homer and the Hebrew Bible, and preserved in copy at the great library of Ashurbanipal\u2019s palace at Nineveh (modem Kouyunjik, near Mosul, Iraq), the Gilgamesh Epic was a twice-kept secret of the ages. Henry Layard (see A&BR Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 2-3) had unearthed a stack of baked clay tablets, charred and broken by the ravages of war, in the spring of 1850. For two more decades this remarkable treasure lay buried in the archives of London\u2019s great British Museum before George Smith discovered it.<\/p>\n
But George Smith was in for a sore letdown on the heels of his amazing success. When the Daily Telegraph<\/i> on the 21st of May, 1873, published a glowing account of his discovery of the missing portion of the deluge tablet, they added to his report the words, \u201cas the season is closing.\u201d Smith had hoped that word of his grand achievement would bring a further grant, over and above the original 1000 guineas. Instead, the paper inferred it was time for him to wind up his campaign.<\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 3:3 (Summer 1990) p. 67<\/p>\n
Still, in the next two weeks, Smith found other interesting documents. Added to his earlier discovery of a fragment of the history of Sargon II, containing a record of the expedition against Ashdod mentioned in Isaiah 20, he now turned up a curious warning to kings and a four column syllabary giving the phonetics and meanings of a series of cuneiform signs. The latter had been scattered in fragments amidst the rubble of Sargon\u2019s palace. He deciphered also two portions of the sixth tablet of the deluge series plus a variant account of the 2280 BC conquest of Babylon by the Elamites.<\/p>\n
All this kept excitement high, right up to his June 9 departure. For although the newspaper had dropped him, the British Museum itself sent George Smith back in 1874 and 1876 to continue excavation of Ashurbanipal\u2019s library. But field conditions proved too severe for him and, in broken health, he died of a fever at Aleppo.<\/p>\n
George Smith\u2019s short and not-so-adventurous life contrasts with the mighty impact made on Biblical studies by his publication of a flood account as old as the book of Genesis. Scholars had said, \u201cNo longer need we believe in an \u2018inspired account\u2019 or \u2018direct revelation\u2019 of prehistoric times. The Hebrews copied their version of creation and flood from earlier ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rather, the existence of an extra-biblical account, grossly distorted by polytheistc exaggerations as it is, serves to re-enforce the historicity of the Noachian Flood.<\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 3:3 (Summer 1990) p. 68<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Milton C. Fisher \u201cSheer luck,\u201d many would say. How else does an excavator so quickly extract the needle in a haystack he\u2019s traveled thousands of miles to find? George Smith, a man as uncomplicated as his name, in a matter of weeks located the fifteen or so missing lines of the Gilgemish Epic. Sent to … Continue reading “GEORGE
\nSMITH [1840-1876]”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}