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15-702: The International Board Game Studies Association grew out of a colloquium organised by Dr Irving Finkel at the British Museum in 1990. A volume of papers related to this event was subsequently published by the British Museum Press as Ancient Board Games in Perspective . After the initial colloquium, Dr Alexander de Voogt , then of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, convened a second colloquium, held at

30-433: 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, as documented in

45-452: A 2014 TV documentary Secrets of Noah's Ark that aired as an episode of PBS 's NOVA series . The reconstructed ark was floated with partial success given that the bitumen used as sealant for the vessel walls immediately succumbed to leaks and a gasoline powered pump had to continuously be used to pump out water. Finkel studies the history of board games , and is on the editorial board of Board Game Studies . Among his breakthrough works

60-567: A European event. Source: Source: Irving Finkel Irving Leonard Finkel (born 1951) is an English philologist and Assyriologist . He is 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 . Finkel

75-514: A Research Fellow at the University of Chicago Oriental Institute . In 1976 he returned to the UK, and was appointed Assistant Keeper in the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum, where he was (and remains) responsible for curating, reading and translating the museum's collection of around 130,000 cuneiform tablets . In 2014, Finkel's study of a cuneiform tablet that contained

90-554: A scheme agreed by the Charity Commissioners in 1891 enabled these to be drawn together into one endowment. Reverend William Rogers (1819–1896), rector of St Botolph's and a notable educational reformer and supporter of free libraries, was instrumental in setting up the institute and ensuring that the original charitable aims were met. Bishopsgate Library is a free, independent library, open every weekday and late night on Wednesdays. The Special Collections and Archives beneath

105-709: Is the determination of the rules of the Royal Game of Ur . He also owns a replica set of the Lewis chessmen which were used as props in the first Harry Potter film. Finkel founded the Great Diary Project, a project to preserve the diaries of ordinary people. In association with the Bishopsgate Institute , Finkel has helped to archive over 2,000 personal diaries. In 2014, the V&;A Museum of Childhood held an exhibition of

120-472: The East End of London near Spitalfields and Shoreditch . The institute was established in 1895. It offers a cultural events programme, courses for adults, historic library and archive collections and community programme. The Grade II* listed building was the first of the three major buildings designed by architect Charles Harrison Townsend (1851–1928). The other two are the nearby Whitechapel Gallery and

135-597: The Horniman Museum in south London. His work combined elements of the Arts and Crafts movement and Modern Style (British Art Nouveau style) , along with the typically Victorian . Since opening on New Year's Day 1895, the Bishopsgate Institute has been a centre for culture and learning. The original aims of the institute were to provide a public library, public hall and meeting rooms for people living and working in

150-451: The City of London. The Great Hall, in particular, was erected for the benefit of the public to promote lectures, exhibitions and otherwise the advancement literature, science and the fine arts . The Bishopsgate Institute was built using funds from charitable endowments made to the parish of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate . These had been collected by the parish for over a period of 500 years, but

165-655: The University of Leiden in 1995. It was agreed by the members of the International Board Game Studies Association to meet biennially, and the next event was held at Leiden in 1997. An associated journal, sponsored by the University of Leiden, was established and the first volume of the Board Game Studies Journal was published in 1998. The colloquium continued as a biennial forum, meeting in a different European city every two years, while

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180-571: The diaries of children written between 1813 and 1996. Finkel has written a number of works of fiction for children. He appeared in the 2014 memoir The Boy in the Book by Nathan Penlington . Finkel lives in southeast London with his wife Joanna and has five children. Bishopsgate Institute Bishopsgate Institute is a cultural institute in the Bishopsgate area of the City of London , located in

195-498: The journal was published annually. From 2002, the colloquium became an annual event. The journal was discontinued as a physical publication after seven issues, but reconstituted as an online journal on the De Gruyter platform. The annual Board Game Studies Colloquium is now the largest and single most important academic conference related to the study of board games. It has occasionally been hosted outside Europe, but it now established as

210-926: The library hold important historical collections about London , the labour movement , free thought and co-operative movements, as well as the history of protest and campaigning. There are over 250,000 images in the collections – including the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society (LAMAS) Glass Slide Collection, the London Co-operative Society and the London Collection Digital Photographs – as well as ephemera, papers, publications and letters. They have shared some of their images from LAMAS in 1977 on Historypin . This collection contains images of many of London's famous landmarks, including churches, statues, open spaces and buildings, as well as images showing social and cultural scenes from

225-470: Was born in 1951 to a dentist father and teacher mother, one of five children, and grew up at Palmers Green , North London . He was raised as an Orthodox Jew but became an atheist as a teenager. He earned a PhD in Assyriology from the University of Birmingham under the supervision of Wilfred G. Lambert with a dissertation on Babylonian exorcistic spells against demons. Finkel spent three years as

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