RECENT DISCOVERIES IN THE REALM OP ASSYRIOLOGY, ETC. 165 



12 Bel-upahhir son of Tullubu ; 

 Ugard son of Sippe ; 

 Nabu-sum-usur, son of the potter ; 



15 and the scribe, Marduk-etir. Babylon, 

 month Tebet, day 9th, year 19th, 

 Saosduchinos king of Babylon. 



18 -4 £ this time, in the city of Lamima, (?) 



want and famine is in the land, 



the people without food 

 21 are dying. 



Notes. 



Page 124. Mr. Hormuzd Rassam tells me that the Shatt 

 al Hai is, in his opinion, " a natural outlet from the Tigris to 

 the Euphrates, because, from the nature of its channel, and 

 the flat banks that surround it, there is not the least sign of 

 any embankment having been formed from the soil which 

 naturally would have existed had " the Shatt " been dug out 

 by human hands." 



The suggestion that Tell Loh means " the mound of tho 

 tablet" I first heard some years ago from Prof. Hommel. 

 It is also to be found inM. de Sarzec's DScouvertes en Chaldee, 

 p. 8, footnote. With regard to this etymology Mr. Rassam 

 writes to me that in Arabic Tel-loh is written *J Jj, and 

 not ^1 Jj. "There is a tradition," he says, "in Southern 

 Mesopotamia that Noah lived, after the Deluge, in those 

 parts, and the word * J may therefore be a corruption of 

 y ." The derivation which I propose, namely, that 



Loh is a corruption or shortening of Lagas, depends greatly 

 upon the old pronunciation of the g in that word. With 

 regard to the disappearance of the last syllable, as, that 

 may have taken place in comparatively recent times. It is 

 worthy of note that a gentleman whose native tongue is 

 Arabic, when speaking of the king whose name has been 

 transcribed Hammuragas, always called him Hammuraga. 

 Probably the next stage of weakening would" have been 

 Hammurah — the same mutilation as the name Lagas seems 

 to have suffered. 



