British Museum, W C
9th February 1871
My dear Sir
As the Society of Biblical Archæology will require a President in the list of Officers and Council it will submit to the fist meeting on the 3rd or 4th Saturday of the present moment I write to ask if you would kindly consent to be nominated to the office.<1> Should you do so and could come up to deliver an Inaugural Address on the occasion it would give the new society a very fair start Originally we had hoped to have obtained Rawlinson<2> but he is overwhelmed with the Presidency of Two Societies – Asiatic and Geographical in addition to his official duties. You will no doubt by this time have received the printed papers. Our rules and laws are all prepared principally on the model of those of the Royal Society of Literature and have only to be read and ratified at the first meeting. The 3d Volume of Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia is at length out and you have I hope received your copy.<3>
Yours truly
S. Birch
H. Fox Talbot Esqe
Notes:
1. Because of his residence then in Scotland, WHFT felt that the travel involved would make this impossible. He declined, instead suggesting Birch as a good candidate - see Doc. No: 09754.
2. Sir Henry Creswick Rawlinson, 1st Baronet (1810-1895), orientalist.
3. British Museum, Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, v. 3, 1870.