Killyleagh Co Down
1st September 1856
Dear Sir,I received your letter this morning. The inscriptions which I quoted as Gr. 2.6 is that on a cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar (in the British Museum; I believe; but I am not quite sure.) It is in three columns, and has much in common with the Great Inscription at the India House. Grotefend <1> published a lithograph of it.
I like your idea that mushi is wushi = [signs] usha. so, tum is [signs] Tum, the god of Heliopolis. By the way, Rapikh, when the battle was fought between Sargon and the king of Gaza, was not Heliopolis but Raphia, where a great battle was afterwards fought between the Syrians and Macedonion-Egyptians. I pointed this out to Rawlinson<2> many years ago, when he first published the reading "Rabak i.e. Heliopolis". Allow me to say that the king of Gaza who was here defeated was named Khanun i.e æêðç; a name which we meet with (applied to different persons) 2 Sam 10.1 & Neb. 3.13 & 30. Gesenius rightly compares it with the Persia Hanno. This is certainly not the same name as Canaan [hebrew]. The Assyrians would not have overlooked the ò in this last name; & ë is never compounded or interchanged with ç.
That the kajab was a measure of time is obvious from comparing Botta 41.38 with 41.28. &c<3> the former place we have "a [illegible] of 30 kajbu (2 ½ days)" - in the latter "a voyage of 7 days" in similar connexions. This & the known meaning of tum leave no doubt as to what mushi or wushi signifies.
I remain Dear Sir Yours vy truly
Edw Hincks
[envelope:]
H. Fox Talbot Esqre
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Notes:
1. Georg Friedrich Grotefend (1775-1853), archaeologist and philologist.
2. Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 1st Baronet (1810-1895), orientalist.
3. Paul-Emile Botta (1805-1870), French archaeologist.