Rev^d D^r Hincks

Lacock June 17. 1860

D^r Sir

I regret that I overlooked your remark in the J.S.L. N^o VI p.402 on the sign <cuneiform> which I perceive you there valued as jib, identical with my tsib. In my next paper I will refer to it.

With respect to lashanau I was considerably influenced by Rawlinsons strong opinion expressed to me in conversation, that it was in fact two words.

I am sorry I cannot be at the Oxford meeting, as I sh^d have been glad to hear your Ethnological paper but I am going on the continent 2 or 3 days before the meeting.

I agree with you that there will be, for some time to come, considerable discrepancies between different translators – indeed each translator is found to modify his own views very considerably as he acquires more knowledge of the language. Nevertheless, considering the great accumulation of difficulties of every sort, I think a very respectable advance has been made – In a French book of considerable literary pretension published only a few years ago, a prediction is hazarded that no interpretation of the Assyrian will be found possible, and that “elle restera à jamais au dessus des forces de l’analyse”.

What we want now very much is the publication of some good texts in the original cuneiform writing.

I am hardly aware of what the Germans may have been doing on this subject during the last year or two – Oppert seems to have published a good deal, but I have not yet seen it. I really cannot understand Opperts argument, from Arithmetic, on the first line of the Michaux inscript^ns He says it is decisive, therefore I should like to give it an impartial examinatⁿ

I remain D^r Sir Yours very Truly

H. F. Talbot