Smith, George (4)

an eminent English Assyriologist, was born about 1840. Originally a bank- note engraver, he began, in 1857, the study of the cuneiform inscriptions, and after publishing several interesting discourses in a German periodical, was called in 1867 to a position in the British Museum, where he rendered important aid to Rawlinson in the preparation of volume three of his Cuneiformn Inscriptions of Western Asia. He made two visits to the ruins in Assyria, one in 1872, and another in 1876, and during the latter died at Aleppo, August 19 of that year. Among his other contributions to antiquarian science are Chaldecean Account of Genesis (1876), and many papers in the Journal of the Society of Biblical Archaeology.