THE NAME " CYRUS,"
[To Tea EDITOR. OF TIIIII "SPROTATOR."]
Stn,—AS Professor Plumptre has done me the honour of criticizing in your columns my note on the name of Cyrus (" Isaiah Chrono- logically Arranged," p. 163), I trust you will kindly allow me to attempt to remove some misconceptions of his, which not only affect say own character for accuracy, but, as it seems to me, obscure the true bearings of the question. In stating that the
" sun "-theory had been " long disproved by Lassen " (I have not the " Zeitsehrift fiir die Lunde des Morgenlandes " at hand, but
should think it must be more than thirty years ago), I was not
only.guided by my own judgment, but by the fact that the best recent scholars (Spiegel, liawlinson, Delitzsch) have come over to
Lassen's view. And in venturing on the statement that it had
been revived in England by Professor Plumptre, I paid that admirable writer the compliment of supposing that he had a better right to speak on a point of philology than (eminent as they both are in their respective lines) Canon Wostcott and Mr. Francis Newman. As to the name of "Pharaoh," the fact remains that the most recent writers, such as Lauth,
Ebers, and now, it appears, Canon Cook, are unanimously against the explanation referred to by Professor Plumptre.
I thought, when I wrote my note, that iu such progressive studies as those which relate to cuneiform and hieroglyphic monu- ments, the only results of which the young student of Isaiah
needed lo be informed were the most recent ones. An " equili- brium " produced by counting up earlier and competent but
misinformed critics, and recent but incompetent, because not specially trained ones, seemed and still seems to me of very little value. I regret to differ from a writer for whom in so many points I have so high an esteem, but have no alternative. —I am, Sir, &c.,
Balliol College, September 23, 1871. T, K. CILEYNE.
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