Michael’s Grove
20 May 1867.
My dear Sir,
I should have replied before to your last note, <1> but have been too unwell to write, at 72 we must expect such visitations. As you correctly say the passage does not prove the death of [Tarqú?], but he never appears again, and I am inclined to think that the term “night” must mean death. Perhaps Sargina’s enuba amius-su [as I read it] means the same thing, unless [Moodoch?] Baladan turns up again which I do not remember. Your Nos 121 shuratsa, I read distinctly surani, and am incline to translate “like falling princes,” or with Oppert <2> “sient muros dirutos.”
I think simtu must be fate, from [cuneiform] appoint, the appointed; the Greek πιτιρώριένα? (“is my spelling right?”) latin fatum, “said.” Kurkish yar( –) (I forget the adjunct) “written” &c, and ubil is merely carry away, like upla, from the same root. Simter ubil-su in Esar iii.19 surely After Hazad fate had carried [him] off. I think “ki dahutut” No 123, “as gifts.” I am very much pleased with your nabali zibutat. When did Schindler <3> get his “musical instruments.”? It is not in Castell I shall take the first opportunity of consulting the Syriac Bible, where “instruments of music” occurs frequently. –
174 Gimirri. I see pretty clearly [cuneiform] in the Behistun paper impression twice, somewhat damaged I confess: this would make Nimri, or Namri, a capital identification, which may not however be satisfactory to the Welshman. We have certainly curious coincidences occasionally turning up: see for instance the white people in Africa seen by Lander who were called Cumrie and lived on the river Menoy. I do not think I have seen a funnier ones than
Please excuse this jumble, written without referring to my papers. I have hurried my writing, having been ashamed just now from seeing the date 10 May, on your note
Yours faithfully
Edwin Norris
Notes:
1. Letter not located.
2. Prof Julius Oppert (1825–1905), German Assyriologist, active in Paris.
3. Valentin Schindler (1543-1604), German philologist and Orientalist; Lexicon Pentaglottum, Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Talmudico-Rabbinicum, & Arabicum (Hanover: Typis Joannnis Jacobi Hennei, 1612).