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writers, not only that a number of these precedents are borrowed by the 

 Jewish people, but that in some cases peculiar Assyrian words have passed 

 into the Talmud with them. There is one thing about the Assyrian calendar 

 I should like to mention. The inscription which fixes the date of the 

 capture of Babylon is an interesting document which I hope very shortlj'' to 

 publish as a whole with annotations. It abounds in all sorts of information 

 about omens and lucky days ; for instance, days which were lucky to marry 

 on, and days which were unlucky ; days ou which fowls might be eaten, 

 and days on which fish could be eaten. There is a maxim with regard to 

 marriage which is rather a warning to some of us. It reminds one of the 

 saying, '' Never be born on a Friday." It is this : " Take a wife in a 

 certain month, and you will be miserable all your life." (Laughter.) The 

 curious thing is, that with the exception of the note upon the month 

 Tamuiuz, the tablet is almost entirely a civil one, and not a religious one. 

 We find, however, in other tablets, that the seventh, the fourteenth, the 

 twenty-first, and the twenty-eighth days are called Sabbath days, or white 

 days, on which the king and all his subjects had to abstain from work. It 

 is curious to know that the Sabbath day is called, not a blessed day, but an 

 evil day, and this, not because the day itself was evil, but because it was a 

 day on which it was evil, or wicked, to do any work. The amount of infor- 

 mation to be gathered from the tablets is really very great indeed. We have 

 an enormous number of them in the British ]\Iuseum, and hope to have in 

 time about as many as the Museum will hold. I trust, however, to see a 

 great many more studying this subject. We who do study have our 

 jealousies and bickerings amongst ourselves, but still we should all like to see 

 more engaged on the work. To Sunday-school teachers and clergymen, the 

 information to be gathered from these tablets would be of the greatest 

 possible value. They do not need a deep knowledge of the inscriptions 

 themselves, but just a knowledge of the evidence which is to be gathered 

 from them. I have recently been told that the books of which the fewest 

 copies are sold are those which might be used to illustrate Biblical know- 

 ledge. People get frightened at them, possibly on account of the names, 

 but I am convinced that if they would go through the British Museum, 

 taking their Bibles and note-books with them, many a Sunday-school 

 lesson and sermon would be made more interesting and forcible, (Applause.) 

 The meeting was then adjourned, 



