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Global stories from the BBC’s 40 Language Services, with Faranak Amidi

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services.

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services

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The Fifth Floor: The tale of the Gilgamesh Dream tablet

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An orange clay 'tablet' with tiny script written all across it

07/01/2022 GMT

The tale of the Gilgamesh Dream tablet

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, The tale of the Gilgamesh Dream tablet

The significance of a clay tablet from ancient Mesopotamia, recently returned to Iraq

The significance of a looted clay tablet from ancient Mesopotamia, recently returned to Iraq.

An ancient clay tablet looted from Iraq in 1991 was recently returned to the country. The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet is part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world’s oldest surviving works of literature. BBC Arabic’s Eli Melki  trained as an archaeologist, and he explains what makes this tablet so remarkable.

The magic of mahjong
We revisit a story from BBC Chinese, about the enduring appeal of mahjong, which started as an exclusive game played at the imperial court. Suping and editor Howard Zhang share their insights.

When the Koreans came to town 
It was a town in the middle of nowhere in northern Mexico. “Not even lizards came here”, say the locals. But suddenly Pesquería’s population grew, and shop and restaurant signs started being written in Korean. It started with a new car factory and the arrival of Korean workers, as BBC Mundo´s Carlos Serrano explains. 

The Passengers of the Yomei Maru. Part two. 
Ilia Kizirov continues the tale told in his BBC Russian podcast, about a group of nearly 800 children caught up in the Russian Civil War. In May 1918, they were sent from Saint Petersburg to 'feeding colonies' in the countryside, but they ended up on the wrong side of the front line. They fled east, and finally returned home more than two years later, after a journey on a Japanese freighter that took them around the world.  

(Photo: The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet. Credit: REUTERS/Saba Kareem)

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