10 
tliese were obtained by commerce it is a proof of its extent and 
activity. Jeliii took possession of the kingdom of Israel in 884 
B. c. and died in 866 b. c., between which years the war men- 
tioned on the obelisk must have occurred. A later Shalman¬ 
eser, in 721 B. c., came up against Hoshea, king of Israel 
(2 Kings, ch. xvii. 3-6), took Samaria and carried away the 
inhabitants. 
June 6th. —A paper, by the Rev. J. Kenbick, was read 
on the ‘‘ Cuneiform character,” being a continuation of those 
previously communicated to the Society. 
It is a natural inquiry, in closing our account of the deci¬ 
pherment of the cuneiform character. What has been the rjain 
from these inscriptions to ancient history ? The obelisk of 
Nemroud gave us an insight into the state of the Assyrian 
power and its relations to its neighbours in the 9th century 
B. c. and into the condition of Syria, Judaea, and Palestine. 
But other inscriptions carry us still higher. Besides those on 
stone and marble there is a large class of tablets of daij, in all 
the collections of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities, often of 
a prismatic shape, which English antiquaries call cylinders, but 
to which the French have given the more appropriate name of 
haril, for they very much resemble a small keff, diminishing in 
size from the middle towards each end. On these, when soft, 
characters were impressed with a wedge-shaped instrument, 
and they were then baked. Clay thus treated is a more dura¬ 
ble record, not only than paper or parchment, but even than 
the hardest metals, being exempt from the influences which 
corrode bronze or iron, and even disintegrate granite. Their 
contents are most various, but among them are some historical 
documents of high antiquity. It was on one of these that the 
experiment of comparative translations was made, as I formerly 
mentioned, by Mr. Fox Talbot and his friends. It relates to the 
w'ars and conquests of Tiglath Pileser, whom the translators 
consider as the first of that name, and as having lived 1,100 
years b. c. Very singular has its fate been. Four copies of it 
exist in the British Museum, which had been buried under the 
four corner stones of the great temple of Assur, at Kalaschergat, 
