Record · Ancient world · West Asia · 1872 · Mysteries & discoveries

How a clay tablet shook Victorian Britain, December 3, 1872

Edited by Song Letter · Researched and written with AI assistance, checked against the sources below · How we make it

Published 2026-07-28 · Reviewed 2026-10-11 · 6 min read

a broken clay tablet covered in cuneiform — The Flood Tablet, the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh series, from Nineveh, in the British Museum. British Museum, London. Mike Peel / CC BY-SA 4.0. Source

TL;DR — On December 3, 1872, George Smith told a learned society he had read a flood story on a Nineveh tablet: a ship, a dove, a swallow and a raven.

George Smith, a self-taught reader of cuneiform at the British Museum, announced on December 3, 1872, that a clay tablet from Nineveh told of a great flood. In his own later account, the lecture was given “before the Biblical Archaeological Society” on “the 3rd of December, 1872.” The tablet was the eleventh in a series of twelve about the hero Smith called Izdubar, the Gilgamesh of later readings, and the “wide interest” it drew, in Smith’s words, sent him back to Nineveh with a newspaper’s money.

Quick facts

When: Layard excavated at Nineveh and Nimrud between 1845 and 1851; the first large group of library tablets was found between March and May 1850; Smith lectured on December 3, 1872; expeditions in 1873 and 1874
Where: Nineveh (Kuyunjik), the Southwest and North Palaces; the British Museum, London
Who: George Smith; Henry Rawlinson; Austen Henry Layard; Hormuzd Rassam; the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph
Outcome: Smith's reading of the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh series put a Babylonian flood story before the public and sent him back to Nineveh with newspaper money

Nineveh's tablets reach London

The tablets came from excavations two decades earlier. Jonathan Taylor of the British Museum, writing for the Ashurbanipal Library Project, records that Austen Henry Layard “excavated at Nineveh and Nimrud between 1845 and 1851,” and that “sometime between March and May 1850 the first large group of Library tablets was found, in Rooms 40 and 41 of the SWP at Kuyunjik,” the Southwest Palace on the mound of Kuyunjik. “In late 1853 Hormuzd Rassam was excavating at the North Palace on Kuyunjik. He found there a second large group of tablets.”

The scale was large. The project counts “more than 30,000 clay tablets bearing cuneiform inscriptions” excavated by the British Museum at Nineveh “between the 1850’s and 1930’s.” Yale’s Cuneiform Commentaries Project gives “some 31,000 tablets and fragments.”

A printer's apprentice at the British Museum

Smith was an unlikely reader for them. The Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, in its account of him, says he “had essentially no schooling and worked as a printer’s apprentice, but he taught himself to read cuneiform.” He worked close to the British Museum and spent his spare time there until he came to the attention of the museum’s Assyriologists, “especially Henry Rawlinson,” who “gave Smith a job, sorting the 15,000 cuneiform clay tablets in the Museum that had been excavated from the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh.”

By 1872, according to the account printed in his Chaldean Account of Genesis, Smith “had made out that the series of Izdubar legends” contained “twelve tablets or books,” and that “the tablet describing the Deluge was the eleventh.”

What the eleventh tablet said

Smith’s 1876 translation gives the storm and its end: “Six days and nights passed, the wind, the whirlwind, (and) the storm, overwhelmed. On the seventh day at its approach the rain was stayed.” The ship came to rest: “In the country of Nizir rested the ship; the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship.”

Then came the birds. “I sent forth a dove and it left. The dove went, it returned, and a resting-place it did not find, and it came back. I sent forth a swallow and it left,” and the swallow too came back. “I sent forth a raven and it left. The raven went, and the carrion on the water it saw, and it did eat, it swam, and turned away, it did not come back.” Smith titled the book in which he printed this translation The Chaldean Account of Genesis.

Newspaper money and a return to Nineveh

The lecture drew a response Smith described himself. “In consequence of the wide interest taken at the time in these discoveries,” he wrote in Assyrian Discoveries, “the proprietors of the ‘Daily Telegraph’ newspaper came forward and offered to advance a sum of one thousand guineas for fresh researches at Nineveh,” on terms “that I should conduct the expedition.” The book records “the excavations undertaken in 1873 and 1874 on the site of Nineveh,” and says that at the close of the first expedition the newspaper’s proprietors “presented the firman and excavating plant to the trustees of the British Museum.”

Smith did not live long after. The Linda Hall Library records that he “died Aug. 19, 1876, at the age of just 36.”

A flood story in Sumerian

Mesopotamia had other flood stories. A Sumerian one, translated by the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature at Oxford, tells of a king named Zi-ud-sura whom the gods spared: “An and Enlil treated Zi-ud-sura kindly,” and “because of preserving the animals and the seed of mankind, they settled Zi-ud-sura the king in an overseas country, in the land Dilmun, where the sun rises.” The surviving pieces of that text do not include the birds. The dove, the swallow and the raven that Smith read in 1872 belong to the tablet from Nineveh.

Key facts

Layard excavated at Nineveh and Nimrud between 1845 and 1851; the first large group of library tablets was found between March and May 1850 (Taylor, ORACC).
Hormuzd Rassam found a second large group of tablets in the North Palace at Kuyunjik in late 1853 (Taylor, ORACC).
The British Museum excavated more than 30,000 tablets at Nineveh between the 1850s and 1930s (ORACC); Yale’s project counts some 31,000 tablets and fragments (CCP).
Smith had “essentially no schooling,” trained as a printer’s apprentice and taught himself cuneiform; Henry Rawlinson hired him to sort the tablets (Linda Hall Library).
Smith lectured on the flood tablet before the Society of Biblical Archaeology on December 3, 1872 (Smith, Assyrian Discoveries).
In Smith’s translation the ship rests on “the mountain of Nizir,” and a dove, a swallow and a raven are sent out in that order (Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis).
The Daily Telegraph’s proprietors offered one thousand guineas for Smith’s excavations at Nineveh in 1873 and 1874 (Smith, Assyrian Discoveries).
The Sumerian flood story settles its survivor, Zi-ud-sura, in Dilmun (ETCSL).

FAQ

Who was George Smith?

A British Assyriologist who, according to the Linda Hall Library, had almost no schooling, began as a printer's apprentice and taught himself to read cuneiform. Henry Rawlinson hired him at the British Museum to sort the tablets from Nineveh. He died in 1876 at 36.

When did George Smith announce the flood tablet?

On December 3, 1872, in a lecture before the Society of Biblical Archaeology, as he recorded in his book Assyrian Discoveries.

What does the Gilgamesh flood tablet say?

In Smith's translation, a storm lasts six days and nights, the ship comes to rest on the mountain of Nizir, and the survivor sends out a dove and a swallow, which return, and then a raven, which does not.

Where did the flood tablet come from?

From the library tablets excavated at Nineveh. The first large group was found between March and May 1850 during Layard's excavations, and a second in 1853 by Hormuzd Rassam.

Are there other Mesopotamian flood stories?

Yes. A Sumerian flood story tells of Zi-ud-sura, whom the gods spared and settled in Dilmun. Its surviving fragments do not include the scene of the birds.

Sources

The whole world at about the same time: The world in AD 1850

Cite this article

APA: Song Letter. (2026, October 11). How a clay tablet shook Victorian Britain, December 3, 1872. Our Earth's History. https://ourearthshistory.com/west-asia/ancient/clay-tablet-shook-victorian-britain-george-smith/
Chicago: Song Letter. “How a clay tablet shook Victorian Britain, December 3, 1872.” Our Earth's History, October 11, 2026. https://ourearthshistory.com/west-asia/ancient/clay-tablet-shook-victorian-britain-george-smith/.
MLA: Song Letter. “How a clay tablet shook Victorian Britain, December 3, 1872.” Our Earth's History, 11 Oct. 2026, https://ourearthshistory.com/west-asia/ancient/clay-tablet-shook-victorian-britain-george-smith/.

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