Dr Birch
B. Musm
Lacock Abbey Chippenham
May 23
Dear Sir
I have not been able hitherto to come up to London to study in the British Museum, as I had intended, and I must therefore ask you for some news, if you have a leisure moment for writing.
Is Mr Smith <1> returned from Assyria and has he met with a tolerable amount of success? I do not know whether you have seen Professor Schrader’s new work, Die Höllenfahrt der Istar, <2> which will be very useful in spreading a knowledge of the Assyrian language among the German literati, who have hitherto neglected it in a way not usual in so learned a nation.
I expect that the Egyptian volume of Records of the Past <3> will be very interesting. Messrs Bagster <4> inform me that they are ready to commence printing the 2d vol. of Assyrian Records <5> and I am going to send them next week my translation of the inscription of Tiglath Pileser I. <6>
Believe me Truly yours
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. George Smith (1840–1876), Assyriologist. He returned to the Museum on 9 June 1874 and soon after submitted a report to the Trustees. He didn’t return to Kuyunjik until 1876.
2. Eberhard Schrader, Die Höllenfahrt der Istar ein altbabylonisches Epos. Nebst Proben assyrischer Lyrik (Geissen: 1874).
3. Records of the Past, being English Translations of the Assyrian and Egyptian Monuments, v.1, 1874. [See Doc. No: 02791].
4. Jonathan Bagster (1813–1872), publisher, London.
5. See Doc. No: 03398.
6. WHFT had previously (March 1857) translated the inscriptions of a cylinder dating from the reign of the Assyrian King Tiglath Pileser I (1115–1077 BC). [See Doc. No: 00092, and H J P Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot; Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (London: Hutchinson Benham, Ltd, 1977), pp. 304–305].