Lacock Abbey, Chippenham
Aug. 28. 1856

Dear Sir

I presume that I am indebted to you for a copy of your last paper in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy which I received by the post I have read it with much interest and instruction. Before reading it however, I took the inscription presented in your first page, and endeavoured to make a translation of it myself, according to a practice which I frequently adopt and find to be very useful - The following is the translation which I thus obtained using two letters to designate words that remained doubtful -

On the 6^th day of the month -

A and B

were weighed (meshkulu) root ì÷ùñ

six kasbu of A

six kasbu of B

on the reverse

May Nebo and Merodach bless the King my master!

On then looking at your Translatⁿ I had the satisfactⁿ to find that the Reverse agreed entirely with regard to the prior part of the inscription I regard your interpretation as highly curious, but not altogether proved as yet.

I desiderate proof that mushi signifies the night, for though you refer to line 47 of Bellino's ^<1> thuscylinder I think it is open to a question whether that passage bears the meaning you ascribe to it "in the course of a night."

Your explanation of the colophon to Bellino's cylinder appears to me very successful and very curious so also the explanation of as a "unit" - I observe that in p.39 you quote a work of Grotefend's ^<2> thus, Gr. 2.6 Allow me to enquire where this inscription is to be found, as I have never met with a Copy of it?

Believe me to be Yours very Truly
H. F. Talbot

P.S. I think the word for "night" may have sounded Vushi rather than Mushi - And if so, I think I can offer an explanation of the word. It is neither more nor less than the Egyptian word for night, ushi or oushi, which the Assyrians have borrowed as they have 2 or 3 other undoubted Egyptian words. See Tattam's Egyptⁿ dict^{y <3>} p. 368. Eushi in another dialect. Also found in Arabic according to Tattam.

Rev^d D^r Hincks

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Notes:

1. Karl Bellino (1791-1820), German Assyriologist.

2. Georg Friedrich Grotefend (1775-1853), archaeologist and philologist.

3. Henry Tattam and Thomas Young, A compendious grammar of the Egyptian language as contained in the Coptic and Sahidic dialects; with observations on the Bashmuric: together with alphabets and numerals in the hieroglyphic and enchorial characters... (London: J. and A. Arch, 1830).