The Lewis Chessmen and What Happened to Them

A personal look at the twelfth-century ivory Lewis Chessmen, which have bewitched the speaker in the British Museum for some fifty-five years, and the adventures to which they have led him: bilingual books, films, explorations, adventures, replicas and even H. Potter and his peer group.

Lecturer: Irving Finkel. Irving 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. Irving is the author of several academic articles and books on ancient Babylon. He also studies the history of board games.