Antiquitopia

I'm a little behind on my Agade reading, but since I teach Gilgamesh (where the Noah character is usually called Uta-Nipishti--or Utnapisthim--but once called Atrahasis reflecting the older story of the flood), I thought this article from the Guardian was interesting (at least in parts): According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from god's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant circular reed raft. The now battered tablet, aged about 3,700 years, was found somewhere in the Middle East by Leonard Simmons, a largely self-educated Londoner who indulged his passion for history while serving in the RAF from 1945 to 1948. The relic was passed to his son Douglas, who took it to one of the few people in the world who could read it as easily as the back of a cornflakes box; he gave it to Irving F...