The original of the document here translated (K 4806) is unfortunately muchinjured, and the text presents great—Dr. Jensen has said insuperable—difficulties to the translator. Dr. Sayce has attempted a version of Col. I. in his Hibbert Lectures, p. 495. Dr. Jensen has made some good remarks on the piece, and given a version of Col. I. 8–15 in his Kosmologie (pp. 91 sqq). A closer studyof the entire text reveals important points of contact between this document and others, published in the same volume of inscriptions, from which I have attempted to extract a connected sense elsewhere (Glimpses of Babylonian Religion, P.S.B.A., Feb. 1892). These will be noticed in due course. In general, it may be said that, in spite of a few still enigmatical expressions, it is clear that we have in this interesting relic of Babylonian religion an Office or Liturgy, in which rubrics or ritual directions are interspersed with prayers and invocations of gods.

About 100 members assembled for the preliminary meeting on Sunday night, the 4th September, in the Whitehall Rooms of the H6tel Metropole, where refreshments were served. The Chairman and some other members of the Organizing Committee received the guests.

To my second paper on the Báabís in the J.R.A.S. for 1889 I added an Appendix (App. IV, pp. 1000–1008), wherein I briefly described some of the chief Bábí works of which I had obtained MSS. in Persia, arranging these according to their authorship and the date of their composition, where these could be determined. Of the MSS. themselves (some of which were of composite character) I gave no description. This I now regard as an error of judgement, since, for many reasons (and chiefly that in the future, when they shall pass into other hands, there may be no difficulty in identifying them), it is desirable that their contents should be clearly and succinctly stated. This defect in my previous work I now propose to remedy; but I should not perhaps have done so were it not that since the year 1889 I have acquired a considerable number of new MSS. from authentic sources, a description of which may facilitate the identification of Bábí MSS. in other collections. To each of these MSS. I shall now give a distinctive press-mark, which shall be inscribed on the title-page, and which shall serve for its future identification. The whole class I denote by the letters BB (the first B indicating that they are Bábí MSS., the second that they form part of my collection).