George Smith (assyriologist)
Encyclopedia
George Smith was a pioneering English
Assyriologist
who first discovered and translated the Epic of Gilgamesh
, the oldest-known written work of literature.
engraving, at which he excelled. From his youth, he was fascinated with Assyrian culture and history. In his spare time, he read everything that was available to him on the subject. His interest was so keen that while working at the printing firm, he spent his lunch hours at the British Museum
, studying publications on the cuneiform tablets that had been unearthed near Mosul by Austen Henry Layard
, Henry Rawlinson, and their Iraqi assistant Hormuzd Rassam
, during the archeological expeditions of 1840-1855. In 1863 he married Mary Clifton (1835-1883), and they had six children.
, Egyptologist and Direct of the Department of Antiquities, who brought the young man to the attention of the renowned Assyriologist Sir Henry Rawlinson. As early as 1861, he was working evenings sorting and cleaning the mass of friable fragments of clay cylinders and tablets in the Museum's storage rooms. In 1866 Smith made his first important discovery, the date of the payment of the tribute
by Jehu
, king of Israel, to Shalmaneser III
. Sir Henry suggested to the Trustees of the Museum that Smith should join him in the preparation of the third and fourth volumes of The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. Following the death of William H. Coxe in 1869 and with letters of reference from Rawlinson, Layard, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Edwin Norris, Smith was appointed Senior Assistant in the Assyriology Department early in 1870.
in the month of Sivan
inscribed on Tablet K51, he linked to the spectacular eclipse that occurred on 15 June 763 BC., a description of which had been published 80 years earlier by Francois Clement (1714-1793) in "L'art de vérifier les dates des faits historiques". This discovery is the cornerstone of ancient Near Eastern chronology. The other was the date of an invasion of Babylonia
by the Elamites in 2280 BC
.
In 1871, Smith published Annals of Assur-bani-pal transliterated and translated, and communicated to the newly-founded Society of Biblical Archaeology
a paper on "The Early History of Babylonia
", and an account of his decipherment
of the Cypriote
inscriptions
.
account of the Great Flood, which he read before the Society of Biblical Archaeology
on December 3 and whose audience included the Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone
, the only known instance of a serving British Premier ever attending a lecture on Babylonian literature.
This work is better known today as the final chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh
, the oldest known work of literature in the world, for which Smith is now popularly and justly famed as the discoverer. The following January, Edwin Arnold
, the editor of The Daily Telegraph
, arranged for Smith to go to Nineveh
at the expense of that newspaper, and carry out excavations with a view to finding the missing fragments of the Flood story. This journey resulted not only in the discovery of some missing tablets, but also of fragments that recorded the succession and duration of the Babylonian dynasties.
In November 1873, Smith again left England for Nineveh
, for a second expedition, this time at the expense of the Museum, and continued his excavations at the tell of Kouyunjik (Nineveh). An account of his work is given in Assyrian Discoveries, published early in 1875. The rest of the year was spent in fixing together and translating the fragments relating to the creation, the results of which were published in The Chaldaean Account of Genesis (1880, co-written with Archibald Sayce
).
, he fell ill with dysentery
. He died in Aleppo on August 19. He left a wife and several children, to whom a small annuity of 150 pounds was granted by the Queen.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Assyriologist
Assyriology
Assyriology is the archaeological, historical, and linguistic study of ancient Mesopotamia and the related cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers the Akkadian sister-cultures of Assyria and Babylonia, together with their cultural predecessor; Sumer...
who first discovered and translated the Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Mesopotamia and is among the earliest known works of literature. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems about the protagonist of the story, Gilgamesh king of Uruk, which were fashioned into a longer Akkadian epic much...
, the oldest-known written work of literature.
Early life and early career
As the son of a working-class family in Victorian England, Smith's ability to acquire a formal education was limited. At age fourteen, he was apprenticed to the publishing house of Bradbury and Evans to learn banknoteBanknote
A banknote is a kind of negotiable instrument, a promissory note made by a bank payable to the bearer on demand, used as money, and in many jurisdictions is legal tender. In addition to coins, banknotes make up the cash or bearer forms of all modern fiat money...
engraving, at which he excelled. From his youth, he was fascinated with Assyrian culture and history. In his spare time, he read everything that was available to him on the subject. His interest was so keen that while working at the printing firm, he spent his lunch hours at the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, studying publications on the cuneiform tablets that had been unearthed near Mosul by Austen Henry Layard
Austen Henry Layard
Sir Austen Henry Layard GCB, PC was a British traveller, archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, author, politician and diplomat, best known as the excavator of Nimrud.-Family:...
, Henry Rawlinson, and their Iraqi assistant Hormuzd Rassam
Hormuzd Rassam
Hormuzd Rassam , was a native Assyrian Assyriologist, British diplomat and traveller who made a number of important discoveries, including the clay tablets that contained the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest literature...
, during the archeological expeditions of 1840-1855. In 1863 he married Mary Clifton (1835-1883), and they had six children.
British Museum
Smith's natural talent for cuneiform studies was first noticed by Samuel BirchSamuel Birch
Samuel Birch was a British Egyptologist and antiquary.-Biography:Birch was the son of a rector at St Mary Woolnoth, London. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School. From an early age, his manifest tendency to the study of out-of-the-way subjects well suited his later interest in archaeology...
, Egyptologist and Direct of the Department of Antiquities, who brought the young man to the attention of the renowned Assyriologist Sir Henry Rawlinson. As early as 1861, he was working evenings sorting and cleaning the mass of friable fragments of clay cylinders and tablets in the Museum's storage rooms. In 1866 Smith made his first important discovery, the date of the payment of the tribute
Tribute
A tribute is wealth, often in kind, that one party gives to another as a sign of respect or, as was often the case in historical contexts, of submission or allegiance. Various ancient states, which could be called suzerains, exacted tribute from areas they had conquered or threatened to conquer...
by Jehu
Jehu
Jehu was a king of Israel. He was the son of Jehoshaphat, and grandson of Nimshi.William F. Albright has dated his reign to 842-815 BC, while E. R. Thiele offers the dates 841-814 BC...
, king of Israel, to Shalmaneser III
Shalmaneser III
Shalmaneser III was king of Assyria , and son of the previous ruler, Ashurnasirpal II....
. Sir Henry suggested to the Trustees of the Museum that Smith should join him in the preparation of the third and fourth volumes of The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. Following the death of William H. Coxe in 1869 and with letters of reference from Rawlinson, Layard, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Edwin Norris, Smith was appointed Senior Assistant in the Assyriology Department early in 1870.
Discovery of inscriptions
Smith's earliest successes were the discoveries of two unique inscriptions early in 1867. The first, a total eclipse of the sunSolar eclipse
As seen from the Earth, a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, and the Moon fully or partially blocks the Sun as viewed from a location on Earth. This can happen only during a new moon, when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction as seen from Earth. At least...
in the month of Sivan
Sivan
Sivan is the ninth month of the civil year and the third month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. It is a spring month of 30 days...
inscribed on Tablet K51, he linked to the spectacular eclipse that occurred on 15 June 763 BC., a description of which had been published 80 years earlier by Francois Clement (1714-1793) in "L'art de vérifier les dates des faits historiques". This discovery is the cornerstone of ancient Near Eastern chronology. The other was the date of an invasion of Babylonia
Babylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...
by the Elamites in 2280 BC
23rd century BC
The 23rd century BC is a century which lasted from the year 2300 BC to 2201 BC.-Events:*2334 BC – 2279 BC: Sargon of Akkad's conquest of Mesopotamia....
.
In 1871, Smith published Annals of Assur-bani-pal transliterated and translated, and communicated to the newly-founded Society of Biblical Archaeology
Society of Biblical Archaeology
The Society of Biblical Archaeology was founded in London in 1870 to further Biblical archaeology. It published a series of Proceedings in which some important papers read before the Society were preserved....
a paper on "The Early History of Babylonia
Babylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...
", and an account of his decipherment
Decipherment
Decipherment is the analysis of documents written in ancient languages, where the language is unknown, or knowledge of the language has been lost....
of the Cypriote
History of Cyprus
-Prehistory:Cyprus was settled by humans in the Paleolithic period who coexisted with various dwarf animal species, such as dwarf elephants and pygmy hippos well into the Holocene...
inscriptions
Cypriot syllabary
The Cypriot syllabary is a syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from ca. the 11th to the 4th centuries BCE, when it was replaced by the Greek alphabet. A pioneer of that change was king Evagoras of Salamis...
.
The Epic of Gilgamesh and expedition to Nineveh
In 1872, Smith achieved worldwide fame by his translation of the ChaldaeanChaldea
Chaldea or Chaldaea , from Greek , Chaldaia; Akkadian ; Hebrew כשדים, Kaśdim; Aramaic: ܟܐܠܕܘ, Kaldo) was a marshy land located in modern-day southern Iraq which came to briefly rule Babylon...
account of the Great Flood, which he read before the Society of Biblical Archaeology
Society of Biblical Archaeology
The Society of Biblical Archaeology was founded in London in 1870 to further Biblical archaeology. It published a series of Proceedings in which some important papers read before the Society were preserved....
on December 3 and whose audience included the Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
, the only known instance of a serving British Premier ever attending a lecture on Babylonian literature.
This work is better known today as the final chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Mesopotamia and is among the earliest known works of literature. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems about the protagonist of the story, Gilgamesh king of Uruk, which were fashioned into a longer Akkadian epic much...
, the oldest known work of literature in the world, for which Smith is now popularly and justly famed as the discoverer. The following January, Edwin Arnold
Edwin Arnold
Sir Edwin Arnold CSI CIE was an English poet and journalist, who is most known for his work, The Light of Asia.-Biography:...
, the editor of The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, arranged for Smith to go to Nineveh
Nineveh
Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, and capital of the Neo Assyrian Empire. Its ruins are across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, in the Ninawa Governorate of Iraq....
at the expense of that newspaper, and carry out excavations with a view to finding the missing fragments of the Flood story. This journey resulted not only in the discovery of some missing tablets, but also of fragments that recorded the succession and duration of the Babylonian dynasties.
In November 1873, Smith again left England for Nineveh
Nineveh
Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, and capital of the Neo Assyrian Empire. Its ruins are across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, in the Ninawa Governorate of Iraq....
, for a second expedition, this time at the expense of the Museum, and continued his excavations at the tell of Kouyunjik (Nineveh). An account of his work is given in Assyrian Discoveries, published early in 1875. The rest of the year was spent in fixing together and translating the fragments relating to the creation, the results of which were published in The Chaldaean Account of Genesis (1880, co-written with Archibald Sayce
Archibald Sayce
The Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce , was a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford from 1891 to 1919.- Life :...
).
Final expedition and death
In March, 1876, the trustees of the British Museum sent Smith once more to excavate the rest of Assurbanipal's library. At Ikisji, a small village about sixty miles northeast of AleppoAleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
, he fell ill with dysentery
Dysentery
Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...
. He died in Aleppo on August 19. He left a wife and several children, to whom a small annuity of 150 pounds was granted by the Queen.
External links
- Smith, The Chaldean account of Genesis Cornell University Library Historical Monographs Collection. or see HTML format
- http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/549731/George-Smith