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Document number: 8027
Date: 18 Jan 1860
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: NORRIS Edwin
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: Acc no 21889 (envelope only)
Last updated: 9th October 2014

Royal Asiatic Society,
5, New Burlington Street,
London,
18 Jany 1860.

Dear Sir

I think your opinion on all points, respecting the Hamitic of Assyria is correct, except perhaps your making it wholly distinct from the Susian. I have forgotten the little I had learned of the latter, but I have a vague notion that the Grammatical Hamitic tablets in the British Museum shew some remote analogy of structure; still more so with those of the second class Achćmenian, which I believe to be Persic, meaning the provincial Persian of Persis, and having nothing to do with the Persian Empire I wish to distinguish Persic from Persian, as I would Frankish from French, the conquerors having carried their name far beyond their own national territory.

I do not know what the trustees will do about the publication of the transcriptions. <1> They will be decided by Rawlinson I suppose, from whom nothing has yet been received. I should think it not unlikely that the syllabarium will form the commencement of a new volume. We have always two forms of explanation in of which the first seems Hamitic, the second Assyrian. As Ki, irtstis irtsit, for "earth". Ka and [bah?] "gate". &c &c. Often we find a crude form in one side, and a nomination on the other, as bar, báru, kal, kallu, &c. Once we have curiously Alep on the Hamitic side for a "bull" and buedu’ on the Semitic.

I am glad you are about to transliterate; and if I gain the assent of the Council, I will put it into the printer’s hands immediately.

Yours faithfully
Edwin Norris

[envelope:]
H. Fox Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham


Notes:

1. Probably Edwin Norris, Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 1st Baronet (1810–1895), orientalist, et. al., The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, produced by the British Museum, department of Egyptian Antiquities and lithographed by Robert Ewan Bowler (1794-1874), engraver, lithographer & artist, London.

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