148 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1891. 



Telloli, or more accurately Tell-loh (Arabic Tall-lub i. c, ''Mound of 

 Tablets"), seems to represent the site of the ancient Chaldean city 

 Shirpurla, or Lagash. It is situated in the midst of a morass about 5 

 miles east of the Sliatt-el-Hai, an ancient canal connecting- the Euphrates 

 with the Tigris. Telloli is about GO miles north of Mugheir (Arabic el 

 Magha'ir, "The Caverns," i. e., the Biblical Ur of the Chaldees whence 

 Abraham went forth. Gen. xi, 31) and 45 miles east of Warka (the 

 Erech of Nimrod, Gen. x, 10) in about the same latitude as Warka, oidy 

 a little furtlier south. 



The inscrriptions 'covering the flgnre are composed in the so-called 

 Froto-Chaldean, i. c, the language of Sumer (the Biblical Shinar) and 

 Accad (Gen. x, 10) representing the non-8emitic idiom of the aborigines 

 of Mesopotamia. According to some authorities this ancient language 

 is said to be allied to the Turko-Tartaric family of speech of which the 

 modern Turkish is the best known representative. 



The writing is in the early liieroglyphic forms of the cuneiform script, 

 and it runs not from left to right in horizontal lines as in the later 

 Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions, but from above downward, beginning 

 at the right and thence x)roceeding toward the left in parallel vertical 

 columns, the face of the characters being turned towards the right, not 

 to the left as in Chinese. The same arrangement is met with in the 

 Egyptian hieroglyphics. 



The writing always begins in the upper right-ha-ud corner, viz: 



\ (} L F A 



AV R M G I? 



X S N H t; 



y T O I D 



Z U P K E 



The inscription covering the figure is known as inscription B of 

 Gudea. 



Prof. Haupt has also prepared a translation of the inscriptions, a copy 

 of which has been placed on the book table. 



The casts of the Assyrian seals loaned by Prof. D. G. Lyon, of Har- 

 vard College, referred to in the last report, were labelled and placed on 

 exhibition. Lal)els were also prepared for a miscellaneous collection 

 from Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, made by Dr. Geo. W. Samson, and 

 the collection was placed on exhibition. 



Labels were also prei)ared for the British Museum collection of Egyp- 

 tian photographs, for a series of Egyptian paper impressions, and for a 

 collection of Egyptian originals, but none of these could be placed on 

 exhibition owing to lack of space. 



