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Document number: 01506
Date: 09 Jan 1877
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: BIRCH Samuel
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Last updated: 1st September 2003

BM

9th January 1877

My dear Sir

Your paper on the Cypriote inscriptions <1> has just arrived and many thanks for it. Mr Cooper’s <2> at present very seriously ill and staying at the Consumption Hospital Ventnor <Block F?>. He has written home to say that although rather stronger his respiration has not improved Ur A Cotes of 7 Whitehall Yard London SW is acting for him ad interim. The Society now numbers 475 members but does not increase at the same rate as it did a year or two back.

The Smith Fund <3> is now over £600 about £647 having been received and more subscriptions being promised but it must I think be closed in March and arrangements made about the application of it – which will no doubt be a subject of serious consideration. Some of the children will be got into schools as soon as presentations can be obtained

There is nothing very new in Assyrian at present Rassam <4> is at Constantinople but whether he has been successful or not up to the present moment I do not know. The Turks are not very pliant at the present moment and much occupied on matters of more importance to them. I gave him a letter to Safvet Pacha <5> who is said to be a highly educated Turk and helped Smith on a former occasion. The VII & VIII volumes of the Records of the Past <6> are now out

Yours very try

S Birch

H. Fox Talbot Esqr

Notes:

1. See Doc. No: 00231.

2. William Ricketts Cooper (1843–1878) Secretary, Society of Biblical Archaeology, London.

3. Fund in the memory of George Smith (1840–1876), Assyriologist.

4. Hormuzd Rassam (1826–1910), Turkish archaeologist.

5. Variant spelling of Safvhet Pacha, Turkish Minister of Public Instruction. On 10th February 1876, Birch proposed to thank him. See Birch to BM Trustees, 10th February 1876, Original Papers v.48

6. Records of the Past being English Translations of the Assyrian and Egyptian Monuments (London: Samuel Bagster & Sons), v.7: Assyrian Texts, and v.8: Egyptian Texts.