*NOTE SPECIAL TIME*
Paul Michael Kurtz, "Knowledge Infrastructure ca. 1900: The Case of Assyriology at the British Museum"
Abstract:
Stripping himself in excitement at the British Museum, George Smith stated, in 1872, “I am the first man to read that after more than two thousand years of oblivion.” What he read both shocked and awed: an account of the Deluge – yet from a still more ancient age and in a different language than Genesis. Controversy ensued, of biblical proportions. But how did that clay fragment make its way to London, from Iraq, and how could that now famous text become visible in the first place, buried not only under earth but also beneath crystalline deposits?
This paper presents an initial foray into the history of infrastructure in Semitic philology during the nineteenth century. Focusing on the transport of cuneiform tablets from Iraq, on the one hand, and their storage, organization, and processing at the British Museum, on the other, it examines material problems and material solutions at the bedrock of philology. It considers the affordances essential to making, transmitting, and inculcating textual and linguistic knowledge. Along the way, this exploration examines processes of experimentation and boundaries between experts and technicians and addresses larger questions of epistemic objects, actor-networks, and cooked data.
Reading:
E.A. Wallis Budge, The Rise & Progress of Assyriology (London: Hopkinson, 1925), 143–74. Available digitally on Archive.org.