Irving Finkel

There was a man called Rundle Clark, who was an Egyptologist.

And Rundle Clark came in on the Monday and gave us one lesson about Egyptian sculpture or something like that.

And the next day he died.

Bang.

Bang.

So the professor called me into his room and said, look, it's going to take me a while to get an Egyptologist.

They don't grow on trees.

But there's another person in this department who teaches another ancient language called Lambert, and he teaches cuneiform.

So what I suggest is you go and do a bit of cuneiform with Professor Lambert, and then when I get an Egyptologist, you can convert back.

Yes.

So I went in and said, I want to learn cuneiform.

And Professor Lambert, who was rather a Sherlock Holmes kind of figure, aesthetic, bony, sarcastic, cruel.

Cruel.

Cruel.

Absolutely terrifying.

And I said, I wanted to learn cuneiform.

And he wasn't at all pleased because this was a time in Britain when professors...

resented having students to teach because it butted into their research time.

It was that sort of arrangement.

Anyway, I started it off.