纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 016洪水纪念碑（4）

That a Hebrew biblical story should already have been told on a Mesopotamian clay tablet was an astounding discovery - and Smith knew it - as a contemporary account tells us:

"Smith took the tablet and began to read over the lines which the conservator who had cleaned the tablet had brought to light; and when he saw that they contained the portion of the legend he had hoped to find there, he said, 'I am the first man to read that after 2,000 years of oblivion'. Setting the tablet on the table, he jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself!"

But this really was a discovery worth taking your clothes off for. This tablet, now universally known as the Flood Tablet - had been written down in what is now Iraq in the seventh century BC, 400 years before the oldest surviving version of the Bible narrative. Was it thinkable that that Bible narrative, far from being a specially-privileged revelation, was merely part of a common pool of legend that was shared by the whole Middle East?

It was one of the great moments in the nineteenth century's radical rewriting of world history. George Smith published the tablet only 12 years after Darwin's 'Origin of Species'. And in doing so, he opened a religious Pandora's box. Professor David Damrosch, from Columbia University, gauges the Flood Tablet's seismic impact: