SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL ARCHÆOLOGY
9, CONDUIT STREET, W.
(ASSYRIAN AND EGYPTIAN TRANSLATIONS.)
21st Augt 1873
Dear Sir
Will you kindly inform me what which of your published texts translations are available for publication in the first volume of “Records of the Past” <1> or Assyrian and Egyptian Annals. Mr Smith <2> gives us text “A” of Assurbanipal <3> will you let us have your Esarhaddon and Nebuchadnezzar to go with it. Sayce <4> will supply from Schroeder <5> the Achæmenian text English Translations only
Next week you will receive Vol II Part 1. which has been pressed forward since my return to town (you are aware that I have been laid aside from severe illness)
As I have nearly 70 pages in type for Part 2. the December issue, it would be a favor if you would let me have at once intimation of any papers intended for that Part, or to be read this year. We can only expel trivial papers (verbum sape) <6> by having others of high quality on hand to crowd them out.
Dr Birch <7> has had some conversation with me as to a quarterly issue of the Translations, it would certainly be desirable but would involve very much labour and could only be carried out by always having on hand a supply of papers formally read, but referred and accepted & which need no after revision, still this new Society is the only one which publishes twice a year, an advantage due to the great liberality of its Members
I remain
Dear Sir
Yours truly
W R Cooper
Henry Fox Talbot, Esq DCL, FRS.Notes:
1. Records of the Past being English Translations of the Assyrian and Egyptian Monuments (London: Samuel Bagster & Sons).
2. George Smith (1840–1876), Assyriologist.
3. Assurbanipal, Assyrian King, reigned from 668 to 627 BC.
4. Archibald Henry Sayce (1845–1933), Egyptologist & Orientalist.
5. Probably Paul Schroeder (1844–1915), linguist and author of Die Phönizische Sprache, Entwurf einer Grammatik… (Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhausses, 1869).
6. ‘Verbum sapiente’, that is, ‘a word to the wise’.
7. Dr Samuel Birch (1813–1885), linguist, Keeper at the British Museum, London.