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



with these terms by V t^yy satra? and ^>~ "^'^ mariu, the meanings of which 

 are equally uncertain. The connexion of the latter with the root "i")0 "bitter," 

 and thus with " the salt (sea)," appears to me very dubious. The word is 

 applied to Syria, but I believe as " the western country;" so that this proves 

 nothing as to the origin of the name. In the Babylonian inscriptions, and 

 generally on astronomical tablets, these two last words are replaced by 

 «-»-y X] X] ^t] a-iid >->-y X] \ y^, that is " sun-rising" and " sun-setting." The 

 monogram for " sun" has been explained under 1 ; the two other words are 

 explained on the Tablet K. 64,* by yr T^^gt < and Sf^ *^^ jryyyt- The for- 

 mer of these is tea . chu . u, corresponding to the Hebrew ^<V^ This is connected 

 with t^yy cE.<^y cAj . iV, rixy, which occurs repeatedly for " the rising of (the 

 sun.)" In fact, all the words in the compartment of the Tablet where the 

 former of these occurs are derivatives from the root ^5V1 = Hebrew i<V\ As 

 these two monograms are plainly opposed to one another, the meaning of the 

 other word must be " setting;" and it appears to be from the root 3"i;/, which is 

 one of those applied to the sun setting. The word is na'.rim.bu.u. Them is a 

 nasal, inserted euphonically to strengthen the accented syllable. This is more 

 frequently done by doubling the letter. It is the participle of the second con- 

 jugation, and would be in Hebrew characters (dropping the case-ending and 

 the nasal connected with it) 3^i?3. 



The next four words, concluding the first portion of the inscription, have 

 been already explained, being the same with the 6th, 10th, 11th, and 8th. 



The two words in the sixth line are monograms for the names of the gods 

 Nabiu and Marduk, as I have explained in my paper on " Assyrian Mytho- 

 logy," §§ 31 and 26. 



* [A closer examioatlou of this Tablet, and other similar ones, than I was enabled to give them, 

 has led Sir Henry Rawlisson to the conclusion that they were bilingual ; explaining, not the mean- 

 ing of monograms or ideographs, but that of words in a language which he calls Accadian, and 

 which he considers to be Scythic or Turanian. To this language the three words here occurring must 

 be referred. Ud. du was the Accadian word for "coming forth," and shu . wa that for departing ; 

 _^y had the four values ud, tu, jmr, and Ukh ; one of which, as yet unascertained (probably tu), 

 must have been the Accadian word for "sun." It is probable that mushi, "night," was also an 

 Accadian word; and perhaps ishdin, "one," and even others of the numerals that I have given 

 above may be so too. Ishdin is, perhaps, a corruption of ikhdin, and thus connected with the 

 Assyriac root (see p. 41). The Accadian language has much affinity to the Assyriac in its roots, 

 though wholly different in its grammatical construction. — July 21, 1852.] 



