Sep 14, 2014
In 1948, while serving in the Middle East, a British RAF pilot picked up a clay tablet covered in mysterious writing. He brought it home as an intriguing memento, and it sat collecting dust on his mantelpiece for decades. When he died , his son brought it to an expert at the British Museum. The tablet was 3700 years old, and was a detailed instruction manual for building a huge boat to survive a flood - a boat like that recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian tale that inspired the story of Noah's Ark during the Jewish exile in Babylon. This was no ordinary ...