Trying to pin down a rumour

[Earniel]

Okay, fellow tolkien-fans, I come to you in hopes I can pick your collective and extensive brain.

A friend of mine came with a vague story about a clay tablet with would have inspired Tolkien to write the text that is featured on the inside (or outside) of the One Ring. If I'm not mistaken, that text in question is the few lines of the poem: "One Ring to rule them all, one Ring them find them all, One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them".

Now my friend has heard the story of a professor, so it increasingly lost detail in the telling. The clay tablet in question, likely to be a cuneiform tablet, would have been accessible to Tolkien via his alleged role of chairman of some cultural society.

As far as I know Tolkien studied many old writings so it isn't unlikely he ever looked at cuneiform. He also does strike me as the type that might have been part, if not head, of a cultural society that was connected to a Middle-eastern dig. In the bibliography of published works by Tolkien listed in the Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien is mention of at least one report on a archeological excavation, albeit an English one.

But I've never heard of a specific source (or at least don't remember it now) that inspired Tolkien to write these lines in the ring-poem. Tolkien's influences and sources have been studied quite extensively, and even often discussed here, so maybe somebody else here knows better.

Personally I think the story somewhat unlikely, mostly based on the presumption that I would have heard the story before if it had been true since it connects two interests of mine. But hey, what do I really know?

So I come to you. Do any of you remember any story like this one? Has anyone an idea of the specific elements: they clay tablet, the head of a cultural society, the middle-eastern connection, an extrenal origin of the ring-poem, are true?

I would very much like to hear your thoughts on this one.