649K views · Dec 7, 2018 · 26:17 · 3 HN recommenders · 4 mentions · discussed 2023–2025
British Museum curator Irving Finkel teaches how to write cuneiform, with a colleague following along. It is a short, lively introduction to the script.
Why Hacker News points people here: Recommended as the best short, funny and approachable introduction to cuneiform on YouTube.
“It's short enough for an introduction, funny and entertaining”HN comment, 2023
“Irving Finkel is the person to look up for cuneiform on Youtube.”
Irving Finkel teaches how to write cuneiform
If this is interesting... Irving Finkel is the person to look up for cuneiform on Youtube. From the British Museum: Irving Finkel teaches how to write cuneiform this video There are many other videos by him, but that's a place to start.
“It's short enough for an introduction, funny and entertaining”
Short, funny, informative introduction to cuneiform
There are many similar ones, but I like this one from The British Museum the most, because of the teacher: "Irving Finkel teaches how to write cuneiform I Curator's Corner Season 4 Episode 8 #CuratorsCorner" Who is he: > Irving Leonard Finkel is a British philologist and Assyriologist. He is the Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum, where he specialises in cuneiform inscriptions on tablets of clay from ancient Mesopotamia. It's short enough for an introduction, funny and entertaining, and broad enough, with some sprinkling of information that gives an idea of the complexities of the language too, not just the cuneiform itself. this video
“Irving Finkel, a British Museum curator, is a treasure.”
Finkel teaching how to write cuneiform
If you are interesting anything related to cuneiform writing or ancient Mesopotamian culture , Irving Finkel, a British Museum curator, is a treasure. Here he is teaching how to write cuneiform: this video Here is a hilarious talk he gave at Chicago's Oriental Institute on Noah's Ark: link
Lecture on cuneiform context-heavy language, cited for tablet density
Bits per [cm²|cm³|kg] is interesting like you get with cuneiform ceramic tablets[1], this one get about 1 word per cm² and cuneiform is crazy dense, I have no real grasp of how sumerian or akkadian words worked. I think it was heavily context based because from some lecture[2] at the British Museum. I have seen people do ceramics where information was stacked in layers and had to be destroyed to extract. The ultimate form of shifting media to preserve and read information. I guess that could done with better resolution with 3D printed Zirconia (0.1 mm³ blobs) so 1Mb /cm³ Edit: this idea of a cold storage is from Footfall by Niven and Pournelle, where information was stored on monoliths where layers could be incrementally extracted with tools documented on the above layers. i.e. start with 0.1 bit per m² and go down, done with the hand wavy handling of practical problems in science fiction. [1] link [2] this video
