The man in the center with the full white beard is Mr. Finkel, an expert on cuneiform writing. The British Museum has 130,000 cuneiform clay tablets waiting to be deciphered. Finkel has a clay tablet ...

Cuneiform as a robust writing tradition endured 3,000 years. The script--not itself a language--was used by scribes of multiple cultures over that time to write a number of languages other than ...