Irving Finkel

And one of them has this, Oh my Astragal, oh my Astragal, woe is me, woe is me.

And that's all we have.

And I think this is an example of a genre of literature called the gambler's lament, because they use knuckle bones or astragals as dice.

And I'm sure there were people who bet sack of this or a roomful of that on the throw of the knuckle bones.

And this extract in the school text is probably from a literary tablet in which somebody lost everything

even though they weren't coins, because I think you're right.

It's a natural thing to fit to a crew.

And also, maybe men and women play differently, because there are some games which were played in harems among girls on a hot afternoon where nobody was going to win anything.

But the rules tablet, which gives this kind of backhanded information about it,

is couched in such a way that it talks about people in a bar.

Because the movement of the pieces is calculated in terms of food and drink and women, what you win.

So the landscape in which the rules are couched for credibility is just exactly that set up.

Yes.

Well, the British Museum is a magical place and it's a special case because there's a lot of flurry and dispute now about what museums are and what they're for and why they exist and whether they should ever have existed and all these sorts of issues which people go on about.

But the British Museum is unlike almost all museums in the world because it's to do with the achievements of mankind

from the beginning onwards.

So it's a kind of celebration of art and more, but it's not an art museum.

It's to do with the struggle of the human race against all the things that beset it and how it has triumphed.

and how marvelous it is, and the things that have happened, and not turning a blind eye to all the contrasting, horrible things that have happened.

But it's the narrative of the human race, as I see it, as discernible in objects.