I long hesitated if I would include this lecture by Irving Finkel in my blog as it has no obvious links to the Silk Road or other related areas, but this lecture definitely has a number of qualities which makes it outstanding in its field and so witty, funny, interesting and informative that anyone interested in history and archaeology should have it seen at least once in his lifetime!
Most interesting, it has a link with the current exhibition in the British Museum:" I am Ashurbanipal King of the World, King of Assyria" (which is still on till 24 February 2019!!)
For your information Irving Leonard Finkel (born 1951 is a British philologist and Assyriologist. He is currently the Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum, where he specialises in cuneiform inscriptions on tablets of clay from ancient Mesopotamia.
In 2014, Finkel's discovery of a cuneiform tablet that contained a Flood narrative similar to that of the story of Noah's Ark, described in his book The Ark Before Noah, was widely reported in the news media. The ark described in the tablet was circular, essentially a very large coracle or kuphar and made of rope on a wooden frame. The tablet included sufficient details of its dimensions and construction to enable a copy of the ark to be made at about 1/3 scale and successfully floated, as documented in a 2014 TV documentary.