Mr Norris
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
April 24<1>
Dr Sir
If you see Sir H. Rawlinson <2> pray offer him my sincere congratulations upon his recent appointment – I do not trouble him with a letter on the subject.
Can you inform me when he proposes to leave England, and what arrangements it is proposed to make for the publication of the cuneiform researches and discoveries on which he has been engaged during the last 2 or 3 years. I presume some change will be requisite in his intentions which were to issue a transcript and English translation along with the lithographed inscriptions which have been copied and prepared in the British Museum
I remain Dr Sir Yours truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. This almost certainly was written in 1859, when on 16 April he was appointed Her Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Shah of Persia. He departed later that year for a short-lived tenure, triggered by his opposition to Russia. This interruption to his cuneiform studies is cited in Doc. No: 07951.
2. Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 1st Baronet (1810–1895), orientalist.