纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 016洪水纪念碑（7）

But gradually, around four thousand years ago, stories like Gilgamesh began to be written down. Insights into the hero's hopes and fears could now be shaped, refined and fixed - an author could be sure that 'his' narrative and 'his' understanding of the tale would be transmitted directly, and not constantly reshaped by other storytellers. Hardly less important, a written text can be translated, and so a story could pass easily into many languages. Literature written down like this can always become world literature. David Damrosch again:

"Gilgamesh is now very commonly assigned as a very first work in all the literature courses, and it shows I think a kind of early globalisation. It's the first work of world literature that circulates widely around the ancient world. The great thing about looking at Gilgamesh today is that we see that, if we go back far enough, we find there's not a clash of civilisations between the Middle East and the West. We find in Gilgamesh the origins of a common culture - its offshoots, that go off into Homer, and the '1001 Nights', and the Bible - so it is really a sort of a common thread in our common global culture."

With the Epic of Gilgamesh, represented here by Smith's Flood Tablet, writing changed its nature. And it has changed 'our' nature - for literature like Gilgamesh allows us not just to think our own thoughts, but to inhabit the thought worlds of others - and that for me is also the point of the Museum, and the power of the objects that make up this thread of human history that I'm tracing. They lead us to other existences.

In the next programme, we have the creation of another 'new world' of thought that has changed both us and the world we inhabit - mathematics.

The transcript for this programme will be published when the programme is broadcast.