The third volume in a collection of letters from Edward Hincks, the Irish Assyriologist and decipherer of Mesopotamian cuneiform. It contains his letters from 1850 to 1856, covering his discovery of the Biblical king Jehu son of Omri' on the famous Black Obelisk of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III, to his correspondence with Henry Fox Talbot, pioneer of photography, who was also interested in cuneiform. Amongst Hincks's correspondents were Birch, Bopp, Grotefend, Hamilton, Lassen, Layard, Edwin Norris, Renouard, and Peter le Page Renouf. Of vol. 2: "The letters...detail both the joy of shared enthusiasms and the superficially polite ways in which ambitious scholars could back stab. The fine points of translation will be fascinating for Egyptian and Near Eastern scholars."-Book News