and on the Babylonian Lapidary Character. 243 
published by Westergaard, in the Memoirs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries 
of the North for 1844, and marked B, C, D, E, G, H, L, M, and NR, 
together with the inscription on the Venice vase of Artaxerxes. This work did 
uot reach me till about a month ago; but I had previously seen other copies of 
all these inscriptions but three.* The other inscriptions, I’, K, and O, have not 
yet reached me. 2ndly. The great inscription of the East India Company, con- 
taining 619 lines of lapidary characters brought from Babylon, the inscriptions 
on the Babylonian bricks, a comparative table of eighteen kinds of which is 
given by Grotefend at the end of his **‘ New Contributions to the Elucidation of 
Babylonian Wedge Writing, 1840 ;” the beginnings of certain inscriptions in 
the cursive character which Grotefend places in comparison with the legends on 
the bricks in this plate; a complete barrel inscription published by Mr. Rich ; 
and a fragment of an inscription on a clay cylinder, published by Sir R. K. 
Porter, which I discovered to contain a transcript of portions of the great inserip- 
tion of the East India Company ;—a most important discovery, as the equiva- 
lence of certain cursive and lapidary characters, which bore scarcely any resem- 
blance to one another, was thus demonstrated, as well as the equivalence to each 
other of different lapidary characters, as, for example, 111 and 2 8, in the pub- 
lished list, which are constantly transcribed by one and the same cursive cha- 
racter. All these Babylonian documents are of the age of Nebuchadnezzar the 
Great, and contain his name and titles, which Grotefend thought to be forms of 
prayer. Other Babylonian documents in the cursive character, containing con- 
tracts executed in the reigns of Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes, have been pub- 
lished by Grotefend in different numbers of the Zeitschrift fiir die Kunde des 
Morgenlandes. These I have not yet examined. 
It will be observed, on inspection of the table, that many of the cursive 
characters are exactly, or almost exactly, of the same form as the corresponding 
lapidary ones ; such are those numbered 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, &c. Another class, 
though decidedly differing, have, nevertheless, such a resemblance that their 
* I have to thank Mr. Norris, of the Royal Asiatic Society, for his kindness in transmitting 
to me a manuscript copy of the part of the inscription N. R., containing the names of the pro- 
vinces, several weeks before I received this work from my bookseller. He at this time remarked 
to me the use of No. 35, as an initial sign before names of countries, but not its phonetic value. 
Its signification, as ‘‘a country or province,” had been pointed out by Grotefend. 
2H2 
