8 h 28 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a broken clay tablet holds a flood story that sounds startlingly like Noah’s?
In The Chaldean Account of Genesis, George Smith follows ancient Babylonian stories through the clay tablets of Mesopotamia. Fragments from the ruined library at Nineveh reveal accounts of creation, a great flood, and other early legends. Smith sets these texts beside the opening chapters of the Bible, asking what their shared details might mean.
The search is as compelling as the myths. A ship, a mountain, and birds sent from a vessel help Smith recognize the flood story among broken fragments. He explains how the tablets come to light and why he believes Genesis and Babylonian myths share older roots, without claiming that the Bible simply copies them.
What you’ll discover
- The flood in fragments Follow the Babylonian flood account as far as the broken tablets allow.
- Creation and Tiamat Explore the Babylonian creation story, including the war with Tiamat.
- A reader of clay Meet George Smith, an engraver whose work leads him into ancient literature.
- The missing lines Follow the search at Nineveh for missing pieces of the flood story.
- Connections and cautions Consider Smith’s comparisons with Genesis and see where later scholars change his readings.
Who will love it
For readers curious about the Bible's roots, the first discoveries of Mesopotamian literature, or the thrill of scholarly detective work.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A self-taught clerk reads the clay
- The flood tablet changes everything
- The Babylonian flood, scene by scene
- The creation story and the war with Tiamat
- Back to Nineveh for the missing lines
- What the book argues, and how it has aged
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Il racconto caldeo della Genesi
by George Smith · 1876
George Smith reads a flood story on a clay tablet, opening a search for its links to Genesis.
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In short
In 1876 the English scholar George Smith published The Chaldean Account of Genesis. It gathered what he had learned from the clay tablets of ancient Mesopotamia, and above all from the ruined library at Nineveh.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A self-taught clerk reads the clay
George Smith was born in London in 1840 and began as an engraver of banknotes. He was not a university man. In his spare time he studied the cuneiform writing that scholars such as Henry Rawlinson had begun to decipher. Cuneiform means wedge-shaped, and it describes the marks a reed pen made in soft clay.
His skill was noticed, and he took a post at the British Museum. There he was given a huge task. Thousands of broken tablets had been brought from Nineveh, in what is now Iraq, and they lay in heaps. They came from the royal library of Ashurbanipal, an Assyrian king who had collected texts from all over his land.
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What is The Chaldean Account of Genesis about?
It presents Babylonian tablets that tell of creation, a great flood and other early legends. George Smith translates them and compares them with the first chapters of the Bible, showing both likenesses and differences.
Who was George Smith and what did he discover?
George Smith was a British Museum scholar who in 1872 read a tablet from Nineveh containing the Babylonian flood story. It belongs to the Gilgamesh poem, and his find caused a public sensation.
Who is Izdubar in Smith's book?
Izdubar is Smith's reading of the name of the hero now called Gilgamesh. The cuneiform signs could be read in more than one way, and later scholars corrected the name.
The author
George Smith
1840–1876 · English Assyriologist
George Smith was an English Assyriologist born in London in 1840. He worked at the British Museum, studying cuneiform inscriptions from ancient Mesopotamia. He also travelled to Iraq to excavate at Nineveh. He wrote The Chaldean Account of Genesis, published in 1876. He died in Aleppo that same year.
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