No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2011
Much as I dislike discussions which have anything of the character of controversy, I am tempted by the interest I naturally take in Cuneiform research, to put together a few explanatory notes, with a view of remedying the confusion that Dr. Hincks's recent publications in the Literary Gazette have introduced into certain later portions of the Assyrian and Babylonian history.
Page 398 note 1 See No. 1944, of April 22, 1854, and No. 1959, of August 6, 1854.
Page 399 note 1 I may here observe that one element of the royal names of Assyria and Babylonia is usually a monogram, representing a verbal root, which may be pronounced as a participle, or the aorist, or even as the verbal noun: 
or 
thus represents the root nadan “to give,” and may bo pronounced as nadin, or iddin, or perhaps even as adin.
Page 400 note 1 See the last note to my letter in the Athenæeum of March 18, 1854.
Page 400 note 2 Thus on the Chaldsan bricks “builder” of the palace or temple is written indifferently 
and 
, banu and mubani, &c., &c.
Page 401 note 1 I may here note, that 
the final element in so many Babylonian names, is the monogram for the root 
“to protect;” and is, I believe, always pronounced as the participle vatsur, or utsur, rather than as the aorist yutsur.
Page 401 note 2 These dates, which Dr. Hincks announced to the Trustees as discoveries in April of the present year, were communicated by me to Mr. Birch and Mr. Vaux, early in 1851, on being permitted to examine the Warka tablets, in their rooms at the Museum.
Page 401 note 3 The last letter of the name is, in the passage here referred to, incorrectly printed as Sff 
The true form is 
or 
, (No. 224 of my alphabet), of which the ordinary phonetic power is duk. In this name, I presume that 
must be a determinative, and that . represents some object of which the name is nit. It is however just possible that the name 
may be prononnced phonetically Nabu-imduk, or Nabo-induh, answering in fact to the Nαβαѵѵίδοϰο of Abydemus, as quoted by Eusebius, and to the Nαβοάѵδηλο of Berosus, as quoted by Josephus; and in the latter form I would further suggest that the λ was the error of a copyist for ϰ; at any rate it is quite certain that the same king, whose name is generally written Nαβόѵηδο, or Nαβόѵιδο, has also the appellation of Nabannidoeh and Naboandel (for Naboandech), precisely as in the inscriptions the two names of 
or 
and 
are used indifferently. The explanation also which 1 would offer of this singular jumble ia as follows: the verbal element in names may be prononnced as the aorist or the participle, apparently at option. In this name I suppose the root to be 
, which is constantly used in the inscriptions with a great variety of meanings; here it probably means “to console,” Nabu-nit (for Nabu-nid, the final sonant being always sharpened) signifying “Nebo the comforter,” while Nabu-induk is “Nebo consoles you.” I confess I have never seen any other instance of a pronominal suffix being added at option in the composition of a proper name; but there must, I presume, be some such irregularity to account for the discrepancy of orthography which occurs both in the Greek and Cuneiform rendering of the name.