Smith found a scrap of tablet containing the missing part of the Flood story [from Gilgamesh]. He telegraphed word of his find back to the Daily Telegraph, giving Edwin Arnold the scoop he wanted, and his feat was reported in newspaper stories around the globe.

It is appropriate that the recovery of this ancient text was announced to the world by the most modern of means. The world’s first telecommunications system, commercial telegraphy had been pioneered by Samuel Morse in the 1840s. It came into wide use around the world in the 1860s, and the first successful transatlantic telegraph line was laid in 1866, just seven years before the Daily Telegraph sent Smith to Iraq. On the day that Smith made his great discovery, the New York Times ran an article reflecting on this convergence of ancient and modern modes of communication: “It is hardly possible to conceive of two more opposite literary productions than the modern newspaper and the crumbling and mysterious records found among the ruins of antiquity…. There is something startling in associating the two together, in thrusting them into sudden and unexpected juxtaposition; and this is what has just been done by a London journal, which has sent Mr. George Smith, the well-known archaeologist, to puzzle out the antique inscriptions of Assyria.” The ancient tablets were joining forces with the latest technology as they circulated out into the world.

~ David Damrosch, The Buried Book (45-46)