The World’s Worst Script: Cuneiform | Irving Finkel in conversation with William Dalrymple 

My thoughts exactly!

rly ? i mean rly ?

The sorry we didn't get this guy or this guy. I'm too drunk to be up here. And here is some dude 😅

​@@amyfox9659 Sorry for being late with response I was quite busy at that moment in time but i was in shock that rly somebody replied :D... I guess u should all drink alcohol from time to time i do not bite :D or weld "Spear of destiny" as a great champion of God, El :) although sometimes it can be heard in my compositions(music) but umm yeah :D it is not like i try to scare everybody around with not only umm quite well informed regarding topic of Ancient Sumerians or Egyptians deity's but also welding "spear of destiny" as a Arche Angel Michael :D. And um Im sorry for the last comment ~i mean at that time meant what i meant~ but it was firmament so elevated spirit that hear jokes about boring not working microphone while doing almost impossible with craft (music composing from scratch) also implementing stories from ancient mythology(trying to tell their stories but with using no words) it just can make you little upset or sad, nothing enigmatic, sinister or ya know(spear of destiny kind of staff)xD, I like Mr Irwin i think his knowledge regarding topic is out of this world rly

EXACTLY!

why? you guys have destroyed your own culture by becoming slave to the arabs and their religion. And now those ISIS fools are destroying all those artifacts and statues of mesopotamia.

@Janitor Queen He wasn't being racist for goodness sake. He was probably annoyed by the ppl coming and going and having conversations as Finkel spoke. In my opinion the majority of the audience thoroughly enjoyed the talk.

I would just quickly like to mention that a lot of those people did show great enthusiasm, and that a lot of them were probably there listening to lectures for quite a while. And I don't care how much you love something, listening to many hours of lectures on the subject will be tiring (not boring, but tiring). So I feel we can't put too much blame on this audience, although it would have been nicety see them more "with it"

The audience have a culture thousands of years older than you or that clown Finkelstein.

Lucky you. I really wish they put good videos with the ppt s for PPL who can t afford to visit far flung museums and as token of stealing/ dislocating all the artifacts

You like being brainwashed.

Brilliant and delightful

He's old and stupid.

that's the definition of assyriologist, pretty much 😜

He did say he’s not coming back.

Heart-breaking that so many are not drinking at the Finkle well. ;'(

That's extra credit for ya...

No surprise. Arrogant rudeness seems to be deeply embedded in the culture. It's so infuriating to see this kind of disrespect for such a legend.

Don’t expect “attention” in your country to be the same as yours. This was not addressed to specialists but general public. Im glad people of all kind and ages have payed attention at least 3 minutes. Me too, 30 years ago perhaps id found it not interesting. Now im passionate!

@yaniraorellana4756 Very good point. So maybe the blame goes to the event coordinator. However, it doesn't change the fact that too many in the audience were just plain rude. I'm no specialist but if I'm sitting in a seat placed there for "listeners" the least respect I can give is to LISTEN. Still, I'm also aware that this is an old school englishman addressing a crowd of those who lived through or are offspring of those who were under British rule. They might still be a little salty...pun intended.

Well, given that he was talking about it in context of Ancient Sumerian, I think it was understood.

Interesting that you said this. I said the same, then I realized that by choosing to spend my time watching his lectures, no matter how old, I’ve made him my mentor by paying attention to his words and his body language. I only hope to be able internalize his mannerisms. I want to be like him. He nurtures my mind.

Because of the importance of the civilization that birthed their ideologies. But yes, yes I do and it's hilarious. He sold "throws shade" at smartphones and slide machines. Lol

He litterally called the guy a cave man to his face lmao

Save the library! - Quick, burn it!

@Janitor Queen nutmeg mixed with tobacco is gutka - in short

If they have to chose between the lecturer and the slides, they should chose the slides. We can handle it.

ditto

infuriating

@Janitor Queen Kinda like when they do a close up of the singer mincing and gyrating during the guitar solo.

glenrkat would have been nice if they zoomed in on the screen occasionally...

For real tho they should have shown more of the slides than the crowd

He's probably 75 yr dirty ol bugger!

He likes being funny. If you don't like it I suggest cultivating a sense of humor so you can react like a healthy person and not a socially sick one.

Agreed, it was cringe-worthy. This man is a treasure, and should not have been introduced as an 'after-thought'.

Not at all funny.

It is called humour. I dont think Finkel took any offence. Why do you?

@@cyb-m 🤦 it wasn’t funny🤦 Dalrymple was ignorant because he hadn’t bothered to watch any RU-vid clips of Irving Finkel - he thought he was making a Dad joke about his family telling him what to do - but he was just wilfully ignorant. That’s the offence everyone is offended by😐

@Judy Snyder this is about both math and sciences! They are like this on most things that I've noticed. Probably worse now that there is Facebook...... Lol

This is an open air event with hundreds of other people who are not watching the lecture. That is where the noise is coming from. If you look at the audience they are rarely talking.

you clearly never had a lecture in India. The audience was neither "rude" nor "jabbering"

Yep, appears to be a tough crowd

Yep... me too.

Japanese might be even worse, arguably... There's this little snag of "alternative readings"...

@@hakanstorsater5090 Chinese also has "alternative readings".

Isn’t the earliest known Chinese writing system 1500 years younger than cuneiform..?

@@vaudevillian7 You referring to China's oracle bone script which dates to around the 2000 BC? I think cuneiform is supposed to be from about 3500 BC.

@Janitor Queen That's just a subset of the routinized destruction of documents by security services in the US, UK and elsewhere. Freedom of Information was intended to protect the documentary record as much as anything else, and its rolling back and neutering over the decades has been so as to protect such destruction of records. Personally as a British socialist, I don't give a shit about Trump or US election outcomes. They're both evil, they're both worse, they both carry on global imperialism and no other country including my own is safe from the threat of coups and political interference and potential bombing as long as the US empire remains and the imperialist ruling class retains control over US society, through the Constitution designed to prevent democracy and entrench oligarchy. Jan 6 was a completely insignificant pinprick compared with the damage done by the US coups which have succeeded in the world, including the 2014 coup in Ukraine under Obama, and compared with the thousands murdered on the streets of America every year by US police. When the US State Department and the CIA gets involved in another coup attempt in Washington, then you'll have something to worry about, because those expletive deleteds mean business and don't care how many people get killed to install the client regime of their choice.

Why? What are your standards?

I happened to read today that Indian ambassadorial delegations to England were required, on return, to squeeze through a golden replica of a yoni, thus being culturally reborn. Makes sense to men. Finkel 's reasons for holding on to other people's cultural artefacts seemed to me however to be entirely spurious.

🫡

So true!

It is the effing USUK and their 'jihadist' patsies who oversaw destruction of the artefacts and monuments of the ME, is it not?

Keep all the monuments from the lands you ruled and colonized. Still think British or for that matter west is civilized. They luted the entire world , still doing from Arabia and Africa. Western world is self centered and have closed boarders while they invade all the other lands.

India had civilization before west. If they didn’t have script, they believed by repeating till you get by heart all its scriptures didn’t need scripts.

....... i.e. the American army.

He says that at the very beginning. It was just a excerpt.

I can understand people want their own heritage back, but the artifacts have never been as safe as they’ve been in Western museums these past few centuries. I think 3D printed copies should be made of all these artifacts before handing them back, so we can still appreciate them in some form, and something better than photos is left in case they do get destroyed by savages.

The current people of Iraq have absolutely no more claim to such artifacts than the British or French or Germans do. The current inhabitants of Iraq are not genetically, linguistically, or cultural similar to such old people at all.

You may or may not be an Egyptologist, but you clearly NEVER have been to an Indian train station.

@@maikmost8589 - Yes, as to the first; clearly so, as to the second.

Especially the idiots on their mobile phones. If they don't want to listen why are they there?

@@squareysquare3150 I wonder if it's a cultural thing .... the mobile phone etiquette. I've heard of this phenomenon before ...unrestricted mobile phone use during a major classical music performance in Lebanon (admittedly a few years ago) . A hippy once said to me "it's cultural, that's why we don't understand it". Personally, I find it really sad. Someone please tell me what I'm missing (I suspect, reluctantly, a fair huge bit). In short, I.F. is worth listening to!

Is it any irony thing? I love it but so many peeps don't get it

The host did say that irving was called at the last minute to fill an empty slot. And I did hear laughter at some of his jokes so it couldn't be all that bad.

Thank you for your explanation. Cameraman mainly focused on nubile females but in general it is a large and focussed audience. People are being silly.

Maybe send them 3D printed copies instead.

Who deserves what isn't something I'd let the British decide.

You mean like democracy and the US??

I see what you did there :D