SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL ARCHÆOLOGY
9, CONDUIT STREET, W.
24th Mch 1874
My Dear Sir
I am very glad to hear that you have sent your paper <1> to Harrisons, <2> pray make it a long one How would it do to illustrate it with a plate giving figures of Ishtar from Statuettes and Cylinders?
I presume that you have read Lenormants “Premieres [sic] Civilisations” <3> in which under the title of the Chaldean Veda, the legend of Ishtar is examined, if however you have not, I will lend the work from the Society’s library, it is but just out Mr Smith <4> will soon return with 2000 fragments more of philological than general interest
Lenormant is here busily decyphering the Achonosmid <5> Tablets
Pardon me for saying that I have not yet received your valuable glossary <6>
My Dear Sir Yours fally
W. R. Cooper
H. Fox Talbot. Esq. F.R.S.
Notes:
1. WHFT ‘Legend of Ishtar descending to Hades’, Records of the Past being English Translations of the Assyrian and Egyptian Monuments (London: Samuel Bagster & Sons), v.1 (1874), pp. 141–149, edited by Samuel Birch (London: Samuel Bagster under the sanction of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 12 vols., 1874–1881).
2. Harrison & Sons, Printers, London.
3. François Lenormant (1837–1883), French archaeologist, Les Premières Civilisations, 2 vols. (Paris: 1874).
4. George Smith (1840–1876), Assyriologist.
5. He probably means the ‘Achæmenid’ texts on which Lenormant worked.
6. WHFT, "Contributions towards a Glossary of the Assyrian Language," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland; part I, n.s. v. 3, 1868, pp. 1-64: part II, n.s. v. 4, 1870, pp. 1-80; part III, n.s. v. 6, 1873, pp. i-lxxx. This series was also issued as three offprints bound into one in 1874.