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m.-On a Tablet m the British Museum, recording, in Cuneatic Characters, an 

 Astronomical Observation; with incidental Remarks on the Assyrian Nume- 

 rals, Divisions of Time, and Measures of Length. By the Rev. Edward 

 HiNCKS, D. D. 



Read November 12, 1855. 



1 HE inscription to which I now request the attention of the Academy is a 

 very short one; but it records a fact which possesses some interest, and which 

 suggests some curious inferences. It is in perfect preservation ; and it does 

 not contain a single word of unknown or doubtful signification, nor a single 

 phonograph of which the proper reading is uncertain. The only doubts con- 

 nected with it respect the mode of reading four words expressed ideographi- 

 cally, two of which occur twice. 



I will begin with giving a representation of the characters as exactly as 

 this can be done by means of types. I merely insert points to separate the 

 twenty-one words into which the thirty-eight characters which compose the 

 inscription are to be resolved. It contains eight lines, three of which are on 

 the opposite side of the Tablet from the others, and form a complete sentence. 

 The Tablet is marked as K. 15. 





TTT 

 TTT 



m 



TIT 



sti ^irr V- 



As is usual in Assyrian inscriptions, the characters are partly phonetic and 

 partly ideographic. I will first give a reading of the whole inscription, acconi- 



