Professor Romaine Newbold, who publishes this dream, explains that the
professor had unconsciously reasoned out his facts, the difference of
colour in the two pieces of agate disappearing in the dream. The
professor had heard from Dr. Peters of the expedition, that a room had
been discovered with fragments of a wooden box and chips of agate and
lapis lazuli. The sleeping mind "combined its information," reasoned
rightly from it, and threw its own conclusions into a dramatic form,
receiving the information from the lips of a priest of Nippur.
Probably we do a good deal of reasoning in sleep. Professor
Hilprecht, in 1882-83, was working at a translation of an inscription
wherein came Nabu--Kudurru--usur, rendered by Professor Delitzsch
"Nebo protect my mortar-board". Professor Hilprecht accepted this,
but woke one morning with his mind full of the thought that the words
should be rendered "Nebo protect my boundary," which "sounds a deal
likelier," and is now accepted. I myself, when working at the MSS. of
the exiled Stuarts, was puzzled by the scorched appearance of the
paper on which Prince Charlie's and the king's letters were often
written and by the peculiarities of the ink.
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