Royal Asiatic Society,
5, New Burlington Street,
London
15 February 1856.
Dear Sir.
Many thanks for the copies of your paper, <1> which I shall distribute usefully, keeping one myself, & sending one to Rawlinson. <2> I am very much pleased to find that Rawlinson will have so valuable an aid, I will not say rival on such a matter. As to publication, where cuneiform types are wanted I believe nobody can do it but our printer, Harrison of St Martin's Lane. <3> His types were cast under my own constant superintendence. All Grotefend's <4> papers may be had I believe of William's & Norgate <5> in Henrietta St but you must define the papers, for several of them contain long inscriptions
The bilingual inscription or rather tablets I alluded to, are really vocabularies, and lists of grammatical forms, in Assyrian and a more ancient language which I have called Scythic, tho' very vaguely; at all events the language has postpositive particles of relation, and prepositive verbalising particles, of many of which we have the meaning pretty nearly ascertained. Rawlinson is of opinion that many if not all of those puzzling lists of Assyrian we have called ideographs, simple and compound, are nothing but Scythic words inserted bodily.
I am Dear Sir yours very truly
Edwin Norris
H. F Talbot Esq
Notes:
1. WHFT, "On the Assyrian Inscriptions," Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record, n.s. v. 2 no. 4, January 1856, pp. 414-424]. See Doc. No: 00786.
2. Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 1st Baronet (1810-1895), orientalist.
3. Harrison & Sons, printers, St Martin's Lane, London.
4. Georg Friedrich Grotefend (1779-1853), archaeologist and philologist.
5. Williams & Norgate, London booksellers and printers.