38 The Rev. Edward Hincks on a Tablet in the British Museum. 



word is in the genitive, and it would be natural to read it mu . shi. The pre- 

 sent text is, however, a proof that the last character did not include a case- 

 ending. Here, and again as the fifteenth word of the inscription, it is a nomi- 

 native. I, therefore, consider it to be a compound ideograph, the component 

 characters possibly signifying, " closing of the eyes."* The pronunciation can 

 only be conjectured until an equation for these two characters in phonographs 

 shall be found. In the mean time, I read it provisionally lUtu, considering 

 this to be the form which the Hebrew 1IT7 would probably assume in Assy- 

 riac. The root from which this word appears to have been derived occurs 

 in Assyriac, namely 717, to which I assign the meaning " to be at rest." From 

 this root we have the verb in the third conjugation ulil, T7!<, " I put to rest," 

 applied to arrows put up in their quiver ; the derived noun HI, " a quiver," and 

 another derived noun, luUon, which occurs in the great inscription at the India 

 House, and which, it appears to me, can only signify " repositories." 



9. The next word, which occupies the third line, is viushqulu, an adjective 

 which signifies "equal," and with which the substantive verb must be supplied. 

 The root is vptt'. In Hebrew it signifies " to compare by weight," and the 

 primary meaning has been supposed to be "to suspend ;" but in Assyriac it 

 signifies " to compare with respect to quantity of any kind, to bring to an 

 equality in respect to quantity ;" or briefly, to " measure or weigh." Here it 

 is applied to equality in respect to duration, and on Bellino's cylinder the suqlim 

 rabti is a measure of length. This is literally " the great measure," or, as 

 the Assyrians used the positive for the comparative, " the greater measure." 

 I believe this to be "the cubit," the same which is elsewhere called the 

 j^.(^ "El t^y, Mil . ma . a't, and which is also denoted by the monogram tTTTE: 

 (India House Inscription, viii. 45, and vi. 25; Bel. 44, &c., compared with 

 50, &c.) The lesser measure was, I take it, the gar, ^. This character is so 

 explained in one of the syllabaries that I discovered. I conjectiu-ed some time 

 ago that this measure was three-fifths of the cubit ; and the grounds of my 



* [Ideograpliically, the former character signifies " to give," and not " to close," which is a 

 strong objection to the statement here made. I am now, therefore, decidedly of opinion that this 

 word should be read mushi, this being a foreign word for "night," which the Assyrians adopted 

 without declining it. Or, as Sir H. Eawlinson supposes, they wrote " mushi," but read this by 

 the Assyrian word for " night," which may have been what I have here given.— July 21, 1856.] 



