Note 45 — Chapter I

M. Lenormant reproduces this tablet in his Histoire ancienne de l'Orient (9th edition, vol. i. p. 420). The whole of the last chapter in this volume should be carefully studied. It is well illustrated, and written with admirable clearness. The same theories and discoveries are explained at greater length in the introduction to M. Lenormant's great work entitled Essai sur la Propagation de l'Alphabet phenicien, of which but one volume has as yet appeared (Maisonneuve, 8vo., 1872). At the very commencement of his investigations M. Oppert had called attention to the curious forms presented by certain characters in the oldest inscriptions. See Expédition scientifique de Mésopotamie, vol. ii. pp. 62, 3, notably the paragraph entitled Origine Hiéroglyphique de l'Écriture anarienne. The texts upon which the remarks of MM. Oppert and Lenormant were mainly founded were published under the title of Early Inscriptions from Chaldæa in the invaluable work of Sir Henry Rawlinson (A Selection from the Historical Inscriptions of Chaldæa, Assyria, and Babylonia, prepared for publication by Major-General Sir Henry Rawlinson, assisted by Edwin Norris, British Museum, folio, 1861).