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Summary Of Irving Finkels The First Ghosts
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Download or read book The First Ghosts written by Irving Finkel and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human experience.' - History Revealed 'A fascinating journey' - Yorkshire Post 'Marvellous...Finkel is an expert in Mesopotamian cultures at the British Museum, and is one of the most clever, and nicest, of people it has ever been my pleasure to encounter...A fascinating journey' - The Scotsman There are few things more in common across cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally 'believe' or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired, fascinated and frightened us for centuries - yet most of us are only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic literature. But their origins are much, much older... The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years, covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts, why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?
Book Synopsis The Ark Before Noah by : Irving Finkel
Download or read book The Ark Before Noah written by Irving Finkel and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent translation of a Babylonian tablet launches a groundbreaking investigation into one of the most famous stories in the world, challenging the way we look at ancient history. Since the Victorian period, it has been understood that the story of Noah, iconic in the Book of Genesis, and a central motif in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, derives from a much older story that existed centuries before in ancient Babylon. But the relationship between the Babylonian and biblical traditions was shrouded in mystery. Then, in 2009, Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum and a world authority on ancient Mesopotamia, found himself playing detective when a member of the public arrived at the museum with an intriguing cuneiform tablet from a family collection. Not only did the tablet reveal a new version of the Babylonian Flood Story; the ancient poet described the size and completely unexpected shape of the ark, and gave detailed boat building specifications. Decoding this ancient message wedge by cuneiform wedge, Dr. Finkel discovered where the Babylonians believed the ark came to rest and developed a new explanation of how the old story ultimately found its way into the Bible. In The Ark Before Noah, Dr. Finkel takes us on an adventurous voyage of discovery, opening the door to an enthralling world of ancient voices and new meanings.
Download or read book Cuneiform written by Irving L. Finkel and published by British museum Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cuneiform script on tablets of clay is, as far as we know, the oldest form of writing in the world. The choice of clay as writing medium in ancient Mesopotamia meant that records of all kinds could survive down to modern times, preserving fascinating documents from ancient civilization, written by a variety of people and societies. From reading these tablets we can understand not only the history and economics of the time but also the beliefs, ideas and superstitions. This new book will bring the world in which the cuneiform was written to life for the non-expert reader, revealing how ancient inscriptions can lead to a new way of thinking about the past. It will explain how this pre-alphabetic writing really worked and how it was possible to use cuneiform signs to record so many different languages so long ago. Richly illustrated with a wealth of fresh examples ranging from elementary school exercises to revealing private letters or beautifully calligraphic literature for the royal library, we will meet people that arent so very different from ourselves. We will read the work of many scribes from mundane record keepers to state fortune tellers, using tricks from puns to cryptography. For the first time cuneiform tablets and their messages are not remote and inaccessible, but wonderfully human documents that resonate today.
Book Synopsis Summary of Irving Finkel's The First Ghosts by : Everest Media,
Download or read book Summary of Irving Finkel's The First Ghosts written by Everest Media, and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-08-08T22:59:00Z with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The earliest known evidence of the belief in ghosts is from the third millennium bc, when a clay tablet was found that contained the word ghost. However, we must suspect ghostly presences that existed much earlier than this. #2 The first examples of simple inhumation, the deliberate creation of a space in which to deposit and cover a corpse, are only evident after ~120,000 BP. Down to ~60,000–50,000 BP, a good number of early Homo sapiens burials are known in the Middle East and Europe that pre-date the known Neanderthal burials of the same geographical areas. #3 The first burial of flowers at Shanidar Cave, Iraq, was publicized in 1971. However, the excavators later found that the flowers were actually clumps of pollen grains. The first burial of flowers was actually done by Neanderthals. #4 There are three strands of human belief that are implied by burial with goods: something survives of a human being after death, that something escapes the grasp of the corpse and goes somewhere, and that something, if it goes somewhere, can reasonably be expected to be able to come back.
Book Synopsis The Writing in the Stone by : Irving Finkel
Download or read book The Writing in the Stone written by Irving Finkel and published by Medina Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The landscape of this dark and powerful story is the ancient world of Assyria some 3000 years ago, a time when writing was in the world's oldest script, cuneiform, and the domination of unseen forces firmly in the hands of the state's leading Exorcist. In the capital, Nineveh, resides a deep and complex man, the power behind the King of the World. Faced with unforeseen disaster that threatens his authority, he emerges as a psychopathic killer. The author uses his familiarity with ancient writings preserved in the world's museums to recreate a vanished world in which those who step from the shadows in ruthless violence to pursue ultimate control show themselves at the same time to be disconcertingly human. The tight prose and graphic illustrations make this a gripping and unusual tale not of this world, but at the same time weirdly familiar.
Book Synopsis The Heart of Things by : Richard Holloway
Download or read book The Heart of Things written by Richard Holloway and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Holloway is one of our most beloved public thinkers. Throughout his life he has turned to poets and writers to help answer the big questions, and for solace and guidance in the face of life’s challenges. Now he shares those poems and words which have been his own guide, offered in the hope they will help us too. This is a book to turn to for inspiration, guidance and comfort. It offers lessons from those who, in Richard’s words, ‘know best how to listen and teach us to listen’, all united by ‘the sensual appeal of words, the pain and pleasure they impart’. It is a book to treasure.
Download or read book Ghosts written by Roger Clarke and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice A comprehensive, authoritative and readable history of the evolution of the ghost in the west, examining the behavior of the subject in its preferred environment: the stories we tell each other. "Roger Clarke tells this [the story that inspired Henry James' The Turn of the Screw] and many other gloriously weird stories with real verve, and also a kind of narrative authority that tends to constrain the skeptical voice within... [An] erudite and richly entertaining book." —New York Times Book Review No matter how rationally we order our lives, few of us are completely immune to the suggestion of the uncanny and the fear of the dark. What explains sightings of ghosts? Why do they fascinate us? What exactly do those who have been haunted see? What did they believe? And what proof is there? Taking us through the key hauntings that have obsessed the world, from the true events that inspired Henry James's classic The Turn of the Screw right up to the present day, Roger Clarke unfolds a story of class conflict, charlatans, and true believers. The cast list includes royalty and prime ministers, Samuel Johnson, John Wesley, Harry Houdini, and Adolf Hitler. The chapters cover everything from religious beliefs to modern developments in neuroscience, the medicine of ghosts, and the technology of ghosthunting. There are haunted WWI submarines, houses so blighted by phantoms they are demolished, a seventeenth-century Ghost Hunter General, and the emergence of the Victorian flash mob, where hundreds would stand outside rumored sites all night waiting to catch sight of a dead face at a window. Written as grippingly as the best ghost fiction, A Natural History of Ghosts takes us on an unforgettable hunt through the most haunted places of the last five hundred years and our longing to believe.
Book Synopsis Ancient Board Games in Perspective by : Irving L. Finkel
Download or read book Ancient Board Games in Perspective written by Irving L. Finkel and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone plays board games, and everyone will find something to fascinate them in this book about the games of the past, and their history and development. Based on the lectures given at a conference in the British Museum, this book tells the story in a properly academic way, but it is no less interesting for that ... and perhaps even more interesting! The book begins with three chapters on the games of the ancient Near East, most notably The Royal Game of Ur , then there are five chapters on the various games of ancient Egypt, senet, mehen , etc. Five more chapters are devoted to the games of the Greek and Roman world, then one on India, and three on Chinese games including Go. Then there are three on the beginnings of Chess and its introduction into western Europe, then four on backgammon from India to medieval England, three on mancala games, and one on the pursuit of hnefatafl , finally some brief notes on the games of the New World. The authors, thirty-one of them, range from archaeologists, historians and museum curators, not least Irving Finkel, the editor of the volume, to such well-known historians of games as R C Bell and the internationally famous grandmaster and journalist Raymond Keene. It is a large format book with hundreds of photos and drawings.
Download or read book Games written by Irving L. Finkel and published by British Museum Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the ancient origins of five board games from Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia and India. Includes fold-out game boards, complete rules for each game, press-out counters and scoring spinners. Suggested level: junior, primary, intermediate.
Download or read book Babylon written by John Curtis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2009 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lavishly illustrated volume sheds light for the first time on the true wonders of this ancient city and the echoes and images that have grown up around it over thousands of years. The authors bring together a wealth of art works inspired by this ancient city. Alongside these evocations of an imagined Babylon, they present the reality of the city, exploring the architecture, history, culture, and religious life of the time as well as Babylon's legacy today--in astronomy, astrology, and much more.
Book Synopsis Ancient Board Games by : Irving Finkel
Download or read book Ancient Board Games written by Irving Finkel and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here are four board games -- the Royal Game of Ur; Mehen, the Game of the Snake; Hounds and Jackals; and the Egyptian Game of Senet -- which were popular in the days of the pharaohs in ancient Egypt and in nearby countries from about 5,000 years ago, chosen and recreated by Dr. Irving Finkel of the British Museum. Everything you need to play them is here: the playing boards recreated in sumptuous colors, playing pieces, and full instructions including variations and other possibilities you may like to try.
Book Synopsis Haunted Greece and Rome by : Debbie Felton
Download or read book Haunted Greece and Rome written by Debbie Felton and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-22 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories of ghostly spirits who return to this world to warn of danger, to prophesy, to take revenge, to request proper burial, or to comfort the living fascinated people in ancient times just as they do today. In this innovative, interdisciplinary study, the author combines a modern folkloric perspective with literary analysis of ghost stories from classical antiquity to shed new light on the stories' folk roots. The author begins by examining ancient Greek and Roman beliefs about death and the departed and the various kinds of ghost stories which arose from these beliefs. She then focuses on the longer stories of Plautus, Pliny, and Lucian, which concern haunted houses. Her analysis illuminates the oral and literary transmission and adaptation of folkloric motifs and the development of the ghost story as a literary form. In her concluding chapter, the author also traces the influence of ancient ghost stories on modern ghost story writers, a topic that will interest all readers and scholars of tales of hauntings.
Book Synopsis The Lifeboat that Saved the World by : Irving Finkel
Download or read book The Lifeboat that Saved the World written by Irving Finkel and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The original account of a great flood— forgotten for thousands of years until it was recently rediscovered and deciphered—is now retold for children Four thousand years ago, long before the story of Noah’s Ark was written down in the Hebrew Bible, the Sumerians and Babylonians of Ancient Mesopotamia knew the story of the flood and the special boat that rescued all the animals. Its ancient Babylonian hero, Atra-hasis, was— just like Noah— ordered by his god to build a lifeboat to keep his family and all the animals safe until the flood was over. Unlike Noah, Atra-hasis was asked to build a round coracle boat the size of a soccer field—and given very precise instructions to follow. Told from the perspective both of the central hero, Atra-hasis, and of his youngest son, Very-quick, this remarkable story is supplemented with asides that give fascinating insights into daily life in Ancient Mesopotamia as well as the historical sources for the story. A tale of destruction on an unthinkable scale and survival against the odds, The Lifeboat that Saved the World is a story that has truly stood the test of time. The narrative is complemented by historically accurate detail and insights into how people lived all those years ago.
Book Synopsis Great Zimbabwe by : Shadreck Chirikure
Download or read book Great Zimbabwe written by Shadreck Chirikure and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-29 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conditioned by local ways of knowing and doing, Great Zimbabwe develops a new interpretation of the famous World Heritage site of Great Zimbabwe. It combines archaeological knowledge, including recent material from the author’s excavations, with native concepts and philosophies. Working from a large data set has made it possible, for the first time, to develop an archaeology of Great Zimbabwe that is informed by finds and observations from the entire site and wider landscape. In so doing, the book strongly contributes towards decolonising African and world archaeology. Written in an accessible manner, the book is aimed at undergraduate students, graduate students, and practicing archaeologists both in Africa and across the globe. The book will also make contributions to the broader field such as African Studies, African History, and World Archaeology through its emphasis on developing synergies between local ways of knowing and the archaeology.
Book Synopsis Ghost House by : Alexandra Adornetto
Download or read book Ghost House written by Alexandra Adornetto and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2014 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new series from the "New York Times"-bestselling author of the Halo trilogy begins. After the loss of her mother, Chloe Kennedy heads to her grandmother's country estate in the south of England where she get away from her grief and the spirits that haunt her. Until she meets a mysterious stranger.
Book Synopsis The Last Resort Library by : Irving Finkel
Download or read book The Last Resort Library written by Irving Finkel and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The library is situated, said the short entry in the Guide to British Libraries A-L, in pleasant rolling countryside not too far from Hereford, and is perhaps most readily accessible by private motor vehicle. This statement was quite accurate. Inaccessibility had always been one of the Library's most prized qualities. The Last Resort Library was founded in 1962, and is a forward-looking institution with very much its own sense of mission, it continued. The truth was that the Guide compiler had never heard of the Library himself, but someone had mentioned it to him right at the last minute, and he was improvising while correcting proofs. Researchers should be aware that, despite the size of the Library's holdings, there is no published catalogue of any kind. That's what he had been told, and it seemed only sensible to make a formal note of it. - Prologue
Book Synopsis Ancient Knowledge Networks by : Eleanor Robson
Download or read book Ancient Knowledge Networks written by Eleanor Robson and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Knowledge Networks is a book about how knowledge travels, in minds and bodies as well as in writings. It explores the forms knowledge takes and the meanings it accrues, and how these meanings are shaped by the peoples who use it.Addressing the relationships between political power, family ties, religious commitments and literate scholarship in the ancient Middle East of the first millennium BC, Eleanor Robson focuses on two regions where cuneiform script was the predominant writing medium: Assyria in the north of modern-day Syria and Iraq, and Babylonia to the south of modern-day Baghdad. She investigates how networks of knowledge enabled cuneiform intellectual culture to endure and adapt over the course of five world empires until its eventual demise in the mid-first century BC. In doing so, she also studies Assyriological and historical method, both now and over the past two centuries, asking how the field has shaped and been shaped by the academic concerns and fashions of the day. Above all, Ancient Knowledge Networks is an experiment in writing about ‘Mesopotamian science’, as it has often been known, using geographical and social approaches to bring new insights into the intellectual history of the world’s first empires.
