Edwin Norris (24 October 1795 – 10 December 1872)[1][2] was a British philologist, linguist and intrepid orientalist who wrote or compiled numerous works on the languages of Asia and Africa.
His best-known works are his uncompleted Assyrian Dictionary and his translation and annotation of the three plays of the Cornish Ordinalia.
Norris was born in Taunton, Somerset, England, on 24 October 1795 and served as a Clerk for the East India House and was also an assistant secretary in the Royal Asiatic Society during the 1830s.
He deciphered the Assyrian lion weights from Nineveh and he discovered the weight measurement system of this civilisation and established conversions in 1853[3] and started the Assyrian Dictionary.
The work was meant to further the study of the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia but was unfinished at the time of his death in 1872.