SUBTITLES:
Subtitles generated by robot
00:12
all right already already okay and thank
you very much for that subtle and
delicate introduction it's not
appreciative right well the first thing
I've got to tell you is the misnomer
under which we are all laboring because
ancient writing has nothing to do with
cones because cones are an artificial
system of finding a writing technique
which bamboozles everybody else and
drives them into lunatic asylums
that is not the intention behind the
cuneiform writing system or Egyptian
hieroglyphs although of course we did
00:45
end up bamboozled in lunatic asylums
well that's quite another matter
so this bizarre writing if you've never
seen it before you shortly will is
nothing to do with codes it is a proper
functional writing system with the same
purpose behind it there's our own
alphabetic system so it's come to my
attention recently rather miserable in
its import that there are people in this
country who've never actually seen the
keenya form tablet how this can be in
01:14
this day and age I don't know but I
brought one to show you now this tablet
is an utter corker it has many
immediately obvious characteristics for
example it's written in about 1780 BC is
you can obviously tell it looks like a
letter but it isn't in fact it's a
wondrous inscription and it's more
interesting than everything else in the
British Museum clicked and put together
it's rather embarrassing because it
doesn't belong to us but it is written
from left to right ruled lines and the
01:47
writing system is a bit like printing in
that you have a stylus like a chopstick
and you press the end of this chopstick
into the surface of the clay gently and
each time you make a stroke that is part
of a sign and all the signs in the world
are made up of one or two or three did
some design
so once you've learned that you can ride
anything so this tablet was written by a
very high quality literary
bribe you can see the fronts more or
less easy to read the back looks like
it's been trampled by elephants and of
course that's the most interesting part
02:19
so this is made of clay and that was the
first writing system using ancient
mesopotamian it's a jolly good thing
they did use clay because all the
tablets in the British Museum without
last all the books and papers in the
British Library for certain and every
single piece of nonsense record you're
on a computer will be long gone and we
will be the winners now I'll show you
that tablet not in order to sell the
book which is tempting pile of witches
in the hall outside in which our
02:50
chairperson is already alluded to twice
that's just happens to be on the slide
but the point is that that is the
replica of the babylonian idea of what
the ark in the flood story looked like
which came out of that tablet which is a
kind of recipe to build it so when you
saw that you wouldn't necessarily leap
to that conclusion but it does underline
the fact that it is real writing of real
language with real grammar and real
meaning and no ambiguity and not
occurred so the part that we have to
03:22
start in the educational business with
the map this is the most insulting and
baby lighting that I could find and but
once it shows you where he dick is which
is that brown blob down on the left and
I'm going to be talking about stuff from
the blue Bob in the middle which is kind
of Iraq which when I started out isn't
serious nobody in this country knew
where that was at all and of course they
do now for all the wrong reasons so
writing began as far as we know and
definitely before in Egypt in Iraq about
03:51
3500 BC so if any other speaker this
evening floats in front of you and
starts talking about Egyptian stuff
hieroglyphs anything like don't believe
a word of it if they try to claim
primacy now the fact is this that they
use clay which was freely available in a
god-given way because the banks of the
Euphrates and Tigris Rivers which
provided the Mesopotamian ami invented
by the Greeks and was perfect for
forming writing tablets
without bits in it which would take
04:22
sharp impressions and dry perfectly in
the Sun and that's what they did they
started with clay and they lasted they
stuck with it until about the second
century AD so well well over 3,000 years
of continuous use and on the right you
see some reads of the type which grow
liberally in Iraq so you got a six inch
bit cut it at the right angle stripped
off the stuff and there you had a free
writing and tool which would last you
for ages so it was a very simple matter
and very fortunate that that's what be
04:53
happened so this is not going to be an
exam or a test or anything depressing
like that there are two points about
this lecture firstly nobody is allowed
to go to sleep or I shall get very angry
and the second thing is there might well
be a test before you're allowed to leave
the building now we have tablets from
almost the whole of this is you know
these are the salient points which I
want you to remember and tattoo on your
wrists when you get home firstly that
this is the oldest writing system we
know from archaeology secondly that it
began with pictographs the old-fashioned
05:25
word when you do a little picture of
something to give you an idea and the
kind of pictures they did were the sort
of thing that talented children of three
or four most average school children do
in their 17 which is to draw a little
blob for a head with an eye on it and
that's the sort of thing they did at the
outset so here you can see on these
extracts a drawing of a jug for beer
with a pointed bottom which would stand
up in the ground next to it there is a
draw a pictograph of an ear of barley
and below that there is a pictograph
05:57
which has a man's head and a bowl of
food which is the verb to eat so this is
a very simple kind of thing such as you
might expect the Martians to invent or
something of the kind and when the first
signs of this kind were brought into use
they had behind them behind there their
format the requirement to document and
Inland Revenue kind of matters they
wanted to measure wages in and out they
wanted totals that added up so that
06:28
really unpleasant people could come
and test what really measly people had
been keeping records for over the last
month so that plague which hangs over
our lives today is responsible for
writing at First Instance
and it was certainly not lovelorn poets
who took this and turned it into a
writing system so they could record
their low and lewd desires for posterity
it was a long time really before
literature trotted along and somebody
realized that you don't just use it for
07:00
this mundane purpose but he had this
brain opening quality and real writing
began and so forth so those are the
first kind of science they rather clear
they're rather easy to understand now
this is the worst slide in the world
probably but the second point I want you
to remember for your test is this that
the script evolved graphically in a way
which makes perfect sense so if you look
down the left-hand column those are
relatively simple to understand
pictographs of the first kind I'll give
07:29
you a clue the three and hover pieces
are a mountain the one below that which
is three hammered pieces and a triangle
with a slit up middle is a foreign slave
girl get the idea that's the sort of
thing and then they had all these
pictographs and basically two things
happened because in the outset the early
phases they drew with a point much as we
draw with the pieces with a buyer on a
piece of paper with a continuous line
and that fell out of use and they use
08:01
the cut read to reduce these curvy form
natural figures as you see on the left
any two sharp angular things which
consist of separate strokes of the
styles so there's a shift from realism
to a kind of abstraction and it's when
you get to the abstraction phase that we
are no longer really pictographic at all
and you don't depend so much on what the
sign looks like in terms of origin in
order to know what it means and you can
see from left to right about a three
08:32
thousand year period of development and
if you see one end of the other together
you would have no idea probably they
were connected but the same phenomena
with Egyptian because hieroglyphic and
damoff taking this you knew what came in
between you never think they were
connected but they are in the same
measure derivatives from a drawing point
of views so this script moved from a
simple business of drawing pictures or
ideas into a method of recording sound
and that is the essence of writing that
you have a set of marks which record the
09:05
sound of a language with its words and
grammar and all the components which
somebody else can put on the record
player and retrieve the words when they
read it this is a miraculous matter and
the shift from pictographic news to
writing sounds was the only real giant
leaf man has ever made apart from the
envelopment of the electric guitar about
1952 so these squat complacent priests
on the left with a fact belly in the
smug look isn't a Cimmerian of the third
09:36
millennium he spoke one of the languages
which is recorded in canary form
writings
he's right his language is unconnected
to any living language at all it's quite
bizarre the guy on the right is an
Assyrian who spoke the assyrian language
for which assyrian and babylonian
dialects and that is a semitic tongue
related to modern semitic languages so
you have one writing system for two
totally unconnected languages and this
is a very interesting matter but
scholars and boys and people who went to
10:08
school had to learn and read the
classics and Sumerian and they could get
by in both so they had a kind of
symbiotic relationship between the two
languages and this guy lives in the
British Museum
there are many conundrum about Cimmerian
grammar I have many time as whispered in
his ear asking for some kind of charity
and we never get a single word out of it
so this is what the time that the first
tablet was written down in about 1800 BC
that's what the process looks like you
10:38
hold the tablet in your left hand you
write with the stylus on your right hand
and there's no way of doing it apart
from that and what is the interesting
philosophical issues is that you can see
a modern counterpart of this almost
exactly on the tube very regularly
now what I find fascinating is not the
implication that the thing is unchanged
in all the intervening millennia what is
really interesting is that the
vocabulary of most people who use those
pocket devices very very little superior
to what the Sumerians were doing in 3400
11:08
BC that's to say you need a small number
of signs and in the modern world say you
have 12 signs do you're stupid
if you have 12 characters nine of them
mean light because you have to say like
like like like like and it has nothing
to do with the word like so this is a
philosophically interesting matter
because politicians and other clowns
argue that we are making progress and
really the study of history and the
asari of a theory ology does not support
that in any measure whatsoever now this
11:41
is what became of that script when it
was a fully developed and flexible
beautiful thing firstly it was written
by calligraphers that pictograph neither
in developed into the most sophisticated
fluent cuneiform this is written by
probably one of the best rides in the
country who worked for a fan of health
worked in his library this is part of
the Gilgamesh tablet and that the
writing is absolutely a joy to read and
you can see that the man who wrote that
12:14
tablet was a calligrapher and when he
finished it he must have put it down
with more than a sigh of
self-satisfaction so within the space of
and a few centuries and simple
pictographs when you say bottle of milk
no to the milkman in order to write
proper literature in that this kind of
thing it made a huge leap and then we
had literacy so now you get the
heartbeat how'd you know form works I'm
12:45
going to tell you about three things and
then and you won't get a lollipop
so one principle is you have one
sumerian sign for one word okay that's
perfectly straightforward and it's
intelligible because since they began as
pictographs that's how they began a
drawing of an apple and mend and so
forth so the deepest oldest level is one
sign for one word which is Sumerian
because that's the first language now
13:18
when you are a learning scribe writing
this tablet for Ashurbanipal you had an
interesting technique at your disposal
rather snooty rather smart that when
you're writing Babylonian if you wish to
you can write given word in Sumerian
with one sign like in the very
old-fashioned way which the learning
reader was then put into his own tongue
so in Sumerian the word for King is Lu
13:48
Gao so if we're an old scribe reading
Sumerian we see that sign there ah we
say Lu gala we know what that means the
boss but an Akkadian scribe 500 years
later who wants to refer to the king
himself can draw that old sign for King
but not read it Lu gal in the Sumerian
language but supply the equivalent in
his own language this is an intrinsic
part of the delight and joy that comes
to your life when you start studying
14:19
cuneiform and you see at the bottom the
helpful clue in white you do this all
the time because you write s with
obliques through the middle and when you
read it you don't say to essence with
the bleep through the middle you say
$2.00 and cities to do with money you do
it instantly
well that principle is a very common
thing in Sumerian and Akkadian writing
that you can use the one for the other
is that clear to everybody
splendid to then there is simple
14:52
syllabic writing because when you have
all those signs which are pictures most
of the words in the pictures are short
words
that stands to reason and so you can
draw a sign which has a short value just
for the sound to spell something else
for example you see there the words now
room which means River caliber which
means dog and family Robbie Hill is the
key so to write those three words you
15:22
have to have an AA rule and an ohm and
the syllabic spelling system was like
cutting a sausage with a bread knife you
have one syllable sign for each
component and you squash the sausage
back into a single word so the bulk of
text written in the babylonian or
assyrian tongue not the sumerian ones
are written synthetically in that
fashion you just have to learn about a
thousand signs to be comfortable about
15:54
it that made up to you straight forward
and i see at the bottom is another clue
for the modern reader how to spell the
word museum with mu z and boom then we
have this question of rebus writing also
part of the idea you familiar with the
the principle for example the the lower
two little pictures can be read and
rebus writing and what is it again and
16:26
what belief yes exactly go to the top of
the clock so the people who use those in
to silicones do this kind of thing all
the time in their imbecilic way so we
had before that goes for you too my name
is kate is for them normal writing so
say we're transported back into ancient
Sumer in about 3200 BC which in my
opinion is a rather wholesome idea they
would feel personally at home that the
16:59
other end of the chronology so the rebus
writing system is a very important
component too because you can see the
first line that the word share the
syllable share is actually the Cimmerian
word for barley
so if you're a Sumerian person you can
draw the little sprig of barley and
pronounce its share to mean barley of
course that sense reason but you can
also use the same sign when it doesn't
17:31
mean anything to do with barley as a
component syllable in a longer word so
for example if you have shared with gar
afterwards which means good or
benevolent you can write the share with
the barley sign which is nothing to do
with what you're saying and then we have
these other things which will also apply
in the next class when next teacher on
the syllabus will probably be referring
to these lamentable matters like
determinatives and compliments and
things like that
they're very handy they are one of the
18:03
few things in cuneiform writing which
are there to make life easier when you
start the process which will take you
between six and ten years before you get
anywhere you are very grateful for any
help you can get
and the determinatives are wanted and so
for example they have little signs for
wood and stone and plant and God and
River and leather and things like that
we have about fifteen the Egyptians have
about twelve thousand of them and the
determinate is working in such a way
that you're going to write the word tree
you can write before it the word wood
18:34
which gives the eye of the reader a kind
of clue because sometimes you can't be
quite certain of the reading until you
have such a help so if you plunk the
determinative in front of a certain kind
of now and it's often very handy and to
go with that we have what we call
phonetic compliments
so let's say we're reading this and
Akkadian texts together and we have to
sign Lu Gao which is the Sumerian word
for King sometimes they put room after
19:05
it to show that you take the legal sign
and you read an equivalent the
engine-room in this case shall room as
we had before as a kind of clue and this
is very handy indeed and it's a very
disconcerting and interesting experience
when you're reading in canary form
inscriptions when once in a while you're
confused and worried and there is
something on the tablet which shows that
the guy who wrote it
a little bit of helpful things rather
heartwarming miserable bastard now we
19:39
get what we call professionally the
snags em snag one right remember we
started off with the idea you can write
one word with one sign right that's
perfectly straightforward one sign can
have several different sounds okay I'll
let you just think about that
nightmarish situation so for example the
white sign there is the signs which
has the primary meaning mouth but when
you write car in the Cimmerian sentence
20:11
it can mean mouth and really severe word
oh you can read yeah good
it can mean mouths word speech nose or
tooth that sign can stand for those
words but in Cimmerian car is mouth in
his word gu is speech care is nose and
zoo is tooth so this means that when you
have that sign in a sentence it has the
capacity to mean any one of those words
20:43
unless you have some kind of clue to
help you and that is why it is so
important to have these phonetic
complements and other things which
establishes so for example if you write
with earring afterwards then you
know that you don't read it car you have
to read it the cure meaning which is
known so you don't confuse your nose
with your teeth which is never to be
recommended so the interesting thing is
I won't dwell on this melodramatic
matter in case sensitive people feel
faint but when you start learning
21:14
Cimmerian the business of leaping of a
high building head first onto the
concrete is massively appealing on a
daily basis and this snagged business is
one of the factors this is snag to are
you still with me
one sound can be written with several
different signs
oh haha what a joke it's true for more
than three thousand years it didn't
trouble anybody some historians have had
the
that might be why they died out so if we
21:46
take as a specimen the syllable GU which
in this day and age really only applies
to sticky yogurt things in the
supermarket there are about 17 different
signs all of which can be pronounced goo
and we label them in a systematic way
goo 1 blue 2 2 3 4 and so forth and so
forth so the reasons why that is true is
far too complicated for matter - first
few now you'll just have to believe me
because you just have to believe
everything I say because that's why I'm
here this is the Royal Institution so
that's perfectly reasonable but it is
22:18
quite astonishing when you first
discover this especially in view of snag
3 so this is that same thing where
there's no gaps between the words so
that really is a devilish matter when
the Persians develop cuneiform they put
a little kick between the words so that
you never have this agony but here you
have a whole sea of them there is a gap
in the middle and in the bottom I'll
explain in a minute but generally
speaking it's a sea of continuous things
22:49
like that and this is what happens when
you reconnect all this is your first
cuneiform sign so you look at it and
being exceptionally intellectually
gifted you go through all its possible
uses then you look at the next one and
go with all its possible uses and then
you find a match
so it's very unusual to get the wrong
match it's possible that's very unlikely
so you have out of a whole line two
23:20
things that go together which helps when
you look at the third one because you
can see should it go on the end of this
or should it be the beginning and I tell
you this is there couldn't be matter
even for a natural optimist like myself
but I can do it now on one leg one eye
and I feel very complacent about it now
if you look here there are and gaps in
the middle of this beautiful tablet now
the reason is this cuneiform writing was
right justified invariably
especially in literature and once in a
while you have a line where there aren't
23:52
enough equal space signs to fill the
line from beginning to end so if
horrible situation occurs they live the
gap in the middle that's very unusual
what else have we got
decisive oh yeah that's what we're here
for I carry this sorry got real about
that yes well the thing is um we've just
demolished the idea I hope
satisfactorily that we're not talking
about codes we'll be talking about
writing system that's the first thing so
what we are dealing with is real
decipherment in other words we have an
unknown writing system and you have to
24:24
make sense of it one way or another now
sometimes it's not so complicated for
example with linear B which is always
likely to be Greek and turned out to be
Greek and nobody fainted except the
people who did it
that is not so complicated what is
really desperately complicated is when
you have a canary format also
hieroglyphic materials well you don't
really know what the language behind the
is you haven't got any clues at all and
I maintain will to my dying day which is
probably very next week but that canary
24:58
would never ever have been deciphered if
we didn't have this trilingual and
hieroglyphs without a bilingual that
they do have is probably the same thing
although not quite so desperate but when
you imagine that you have a thing like
that with no gaps between the words I no
clue what the language might be no
relatives to go on you could run it
through all the computers in the world
and all you will get is gobbledygook or
possibly Legally God but you'd never get
me so this trilingual was a crucial
25:29
crucial thing and King Darius the person
at this mountainous rock at the place
called a history in Eastern Eastern
Persia and wrote a proud and description
about how he squashed the rebellion this
piece of all the people being squashed
up there under a curry Mazda and a long
narrative which was written in
Babylonian language our cuneiform from
Iraq in old Persian cuneiform which was
old Persian cuneiform from the old
26:01
person meaning old person and of course
the elamite language which is even more
barbaric since
Mirian and it became evident that these
lengthy inscriptions far above plain
were equivalence of one another so this
is where the indiana rowlandson and came
into his own hold on let me just show
you Indiana B organism
there's Indiana Bullington now you know
26:33
the better than me especially in this
August institution how often it is in
the world that the discovery of things
and the expansion of things is usually
accredited at the wrong person this is
the ficks law of the universe it is
certainly applicable here Rawlinson was
really good at mountain climbing so he
got this wild Kurdish boy and they
climbed up the side and they had ladders
and they made paper squeezes of the
three columns of writing and brought
them back to England and laid the
foundation for our understanding today
27:05
now rulings mean and what I've got a bit
out of speed here before I go really
rude about rural innocent let's go back
here this is the rocking question at bay
history so this is a ski you see on the
left you've got the text in Babylonian
on the lower right old Persian and the
Elam icon those two places so Babylonian
is Semitic old person was of course
known because person with a living
language annealer might nobody really
cared about so this is the first line of
the inscription in those three languages
27:38
so it was some considerable and
miraculous thing to decipher the Old
Persian anyway because it's written in
the kind of simplified cuneiform and it
wasn't rulings on who did that really
this van Greta fend was the first
scholar in the 18th in the nineteen in
about 1820 to look at these bits of
cuneiform in old Persian and cracked
them he did it on a kind of rational
basis about the names
so he started everything off and then
28:10
with this marvelous than sorry I
shouldn't be doing this with this
marvelous text brought back by audience
they had the whole thing in the three
different languages and on the basis of
what had already been deciphered Rahl
isn't really cracked the old person and
published a translation that was a very
impressive feat so you can imagine once
they realized that there's one text
involved if you look here and this is
28:45
the this is the Oh personally
inscription and they knew that this was
to do with King Darius and his naming oh
there's new something that diary are
whoosh and when they deciphered this
simple script they realized this was
dobry er moosh
spelling out the name of the Persian
King and it says as you can see I am
derives the great key in King of Kings
the king of Persia the king of countries
the son of his taxis the grandson of
Artemis the key minute so it's quite a
lot of information in that search
29:15
engines and quite a lot of names and
some repetition and once they knew this
was derailleurs and then it was very
very likely that this line and this line
we're going to be spelling dari our wish
as well so once they'd opened up the
whole of the Old Persian it was a very
clever thing to do the Persian but once
they've done that there was the really
big job of using that to prise open the
text of the Akkadian and they did it
with the starting point of spelling the
29:47
names and after that they've suddenly
found in the yellow text so to speak
some words that were submitted like the
word Naru for Rivard everybody jumped 30
feet in the air because once they knew
that this language where they got a bit
of a glimpse of how it was being spelled
was semitic then they were well away
because it's Arabic grandma's and vocab
Aries and Hebrew and Syriac and Aramaic
or all the vocabulary of all the Semitic
languages was piled in on it to try and
sort out words that made sense and
eventually they did it was a major
30:17
wonderful achievement so as I said great
offend them did a great job on the first
whole person and then we have this one
instance now when he done the Persian
thing he then published a very low need
or not
about the occasion and it was almost
entirely wrong and I'm gonna jump
backwards and forwards a bit because the
person who really deciphered the
babylonian on the back of the old person
30:48
was this crusty and unappetizing looking
individual called but Reverend Edward
hints who should have been memorialized
in this building is actually any other
human being because he was one of these
amazing persons he was a clergyman in
Kilauea in Northern Ireland he had a
parish he had five daughters so he was
quite busy and he wanted to decipher
hieroglyphs before anybody else whenever
he'd get hold of the publications he
immersed himself in his study when all
31:20
the girls had gone to bed seeing whether
he could beat from paly off or the great
Thomas young he was outside in the hall
to the post now this is the beauty of
this matter because Hinks puzzling over
the hieroglyphs in the scribbling on his
notepad had any idea that maybe this
cuneiforms stuff might give him a clue
about hieroglyphs it might be
interesting and possibly instructive to
31:50
have a look at it so he had a look at it
and he deciphered it he was the person
who realized that the signs were
polyvalent he was the first person who
tweaked it and he did it with a great
deal of intellectual brilliance and
brought in some hated his guts so this
Hinks was employed by the trustees of
the British Museum for a year in London
to work on the new inscriptions that
were being brought back by Laird and um
32:21
he could read a lot of stuff very
quickly and when he went home the
trustees
this would be moments of porn silence so
when he was safely out of the way in
Kilauea rowlandson got to work and he
published a revised understanding of the
bay history what was entirely dude
understanding now two small points about
this whole deciphering business and what
it brings out in low human beings when
32:55
ruling their area it was asked as an old
man how he deciphered kanae from writing
the babylonian thing he said he couldn't
remember in the meanwhile he dined out
very extensively on this heroic thing
dwelling on the ladder and the press and
all the rest of it but a grand rising to
himself the progress made by brains by
Reverend King so he's going down in
33:29
history as the father of a theory ology
well it's very annoying to all of this
then I just like to say that these two
photographs they showed an audience is a
fresh-faced young man with the
transcription of a history inscription
on the table in front of him looking
evilly into the semi future knowing
greatness awaking human the photograph
on the right is three weeks later when
so there you are so that's what happened
now now there's something else I have to
34:02
tell you about this deciphering busy you
see the people who knew they knew jolly
well that they deciphered it and they
were beginning to publish translations
of stuff Assyrian accounts and
Babylonian things and there were one or
two of the provincial universities in
Britain like Oxford and Cambridge where
the dongs who reigned supreme about
classical knowledge for generation upon
generation were forced to take on both
the barbaric findings of these
34:32
mountebanks they objected very strongly
indeed to having to give any credit
whatsoever to this idea of the
decipherment or change the things
they've been teaching unchanging for the
last 400 years so you can understand
perhaps why their professions self
threatened and in the end the Royal
Asiatic Society decided to bring it into
this and brouhaha so they got that farm
and even the third
cylinder in the middle to be copied by a
leaf aquifer and what they did was they
35:02
under sealed wrapping I am sure
distributed the cuneiform text Edward
Hinks at the top in the first track
below him a rather interesting person
who has to be on stage here and who
invented photography thank you very much
I'll definitely give you a lollipop that
is fox talbot that and guy had a place
on him and betting on horse races is
35:35
ever so dangerous but that was the
genius fox talbot who worked with light
he worked with physics he worked with
display of objects and he was a major
contributor at this time he also was
interested in physics in the study of
light and also home genius as well it's
a rather interesting parallel anyway so
there was Hinks and him and his rule a
pair who was a French or Belgian scholar
in France who was in the forefront of
the detachment and a picture of rule
36:07
insin trying to look like somebody else
and what what they did was they had
three months to come up with their best
reading of this thing without any
interference from anybody else and then
the Archbishop of Canterbury and other
were these sat around the table to
appraise their translations and they
decided that the decipherment was a fait
accompli and that from now on those who
were entrenched in their old ways had to
rethink their futures so this is a very
important cylinder I feel I owe it my
36:38
job for one thing and of course let's
offer philosophical mathematics you
might say they all four made the same
mistake but that's really no so I will
conclude by impeding this name Edward
Hinks on your mind that's where he was
born in Cork and he died in Kilauea and
he's got two of those round disks so in
my opinion and the world is littered
with unacknowledged geniuses but hints
is
really definitely one of them and I
taught all my family once for me with
37:11
the other side of Northern Ireland to
look for this rectory where we found it
and I thought gosh there ought to be a
blue plaque this is disgraceful and in
fact there was a blue block it was
outside on the wall at uncle level
heavily overgrown and I think utilized
by local dogs so the only people in
Northern Iowa the only living things in
Northern Ireland who regularly offer
obeisance at the shrine of Hinks are
these hounds and presumably there she
hounds so when I wrote this book I
37:41
didn't want to mention it again it's a
bit embarrassment to keep lady bringing
it's as I said quite transcendental that
they are some outside and if anybody
wanted one signed it's it's the same
price so I just mention that but the
thing is in that book I wrote something
about the poor Reverend Edward and said
that this was the name I couldn't think
of a more intense way of explaining how
important these deciphers are that they
shall be a magnet a fridge magnet with
38:11
inks on every fridge in Europe and I
tossed this idea into the world as of
course we we do andum after book could
be out for you I had a letter V somebody
in the administration of the post office
in Northern Ireland saying but we've
decided we're going to bring out a stuff
with Edward hints on having read what
you wrote about you so a small injustice
has been addressed so there you are
thank you very much
38:39
[Applause]
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