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V.—Sumerian Origins and Racial Characteristics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2011

S. Langdon
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Extract

In 1901 Léon Heuzey wrote in his Catalogue des Antiquites chaldeennes that we possessed at that time only one complete statuette of early Sumerian art. He referred to the remarkable marble figurine of a priest or priest-king excavated at Lagash and published on plate 6 bis oi Découvertes en Chaldée. Although this object, of unusual height for a statuette in the early period (it is about 18 inches high), came from the hand of the sculptor with the details of the skirt unfinished, its artistic merits are so great that it must be placed at the end of the period, probably as late as Urukagina, priest-king of Lagash about 2900 B.C. The arms of this figure are finely delineated and free from the body. The head and features are delicately cut and the neck is of normal length (fig. 1). In earlier statuary the neck is always unnaturally short and the whole figure has a squat appearance. Here, too, the execution of the eyes is of a new school, the eyeball being cut in the stone itself, whereas the earlier artists cut a deep socket and inset the eye with a ball of nacre or shell by means of bitumen. De Sarzec the excavator of Lagash had, however, the good fortune to purchase a statuette from an Arab of Chattra in the vicinity of Telloh, the site of ancient Lagash. It is the figure of a woman, and the appearance is so squat, the execution so rude, and the details so archaic, that it henceforth served as the standard specimen of early Sumerian sculpture. The balls have fallen from the eye-sockets. She wears a heavy woollen garment, with false frills, the costume already known from bas-reliefs and shell etchings as the early national dress of the Sumerians. On the earliest bas-reliefs, this petticoat is usually worked plain from the hips to the knees, and the lower part ends in a flounce of parallel tassels. These represent locks of wool, and on the primitive designs the tassels simply end in a point and are not scalloped as on other monuments published here (see fig. 2). In the case of male figures the body is nude from the waist upward. The dress consists of nothing but this woollen petticoat, which Heuzey calls a kaunakes. But the woollen garment worn by women is longer and is hung from the left shoulder, so as to cover the left breast.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 70 , 1920 , pp. 145 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1920

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References

page 145 note 1 Published in Decouvertes en Chaldée, pl. Iter; and see also King, L. W., History of Sumer and Akkad, p. 112Google Scholar ; Heuzey, Leon, Catalogue des Antiquites chaldeennes, no. 82Google Scholar.

page 145 note 2 For examples of the most primitive petticoat, see King, L. W., History of Sumer and Akkad, p. 41Google Scholar, fig. 1; Heuzey, Catalogue des Antiquites chaldeennes, no. 5.

page 146 note 1 The figure of a woman will be found on fig. 3, first small figure before the king in the upper register.

page 146 note 2 Fig. 5. This remarkable object was published, together with some painted pottery and bronze implements discovered in the same place, by Bode, Baron de in Archaeologia, vol. xxx, 248–55Google Scholar. Their connexion with Sumer and Elam was pointed out by M. Rostovtzeff, The Sumerian Treasure of Astrabad, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. vi.

page 146 note 3 The force of the ending ku is supposed to be that of the ordinary genitive suffix ge-ga-ka with Semitic inflexion. Loan-words of this type should on this assumption be composed of a construct and genitive, see the writer's Sumerian Grammar, p. 25, note 3. But many examples occur of noun and adjective in such words, cf. sangumahhuku, ‘the great priest’, iv Rawlinson, 8 b, 51. The word tug-gii-en means literally ‘garment from which the neck is exposed’, and is composed of a noun (gú = neck) and a participle (en = going forth). Albright, Revue d'Assyriologie, xvi, 177, has discovered that the literal Semitic translation is asit kišadi. The ordinary Semitic rendering is nahlaptu, but only i n syllabars. The texts have invariably the Sumerian word gu-én, which was probably rendered in the current speech by guannakku.

page 147 note 1 Grice, Records from Ur and Larsa, 94, 12. For the gù-én as a garment for soldiers, see Revue d'Assyriologie, 12, 115. The gú-én dar-a, or kaunakes of many colours, is mentioned in Grice, ibid. 165.

page 147 note 2 Cuneiform Tablets of the British Museum, iv, 38 A 5. Strassmaier, Cambyses, 363, 2; Cyrus, 7, 6; Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, iv, 137, 8. For the Belit of Babylon, Strassmaier, Cambyses, 137, 3, that is, Zarpanit consort of Marduk.

page 147 note 3 As on the Stele of the Vultures, Heuzey, Catalogue, No. 10.

page 147 note 4 Túg gu-én sig ni-te-na-ge = nahlapta santa sa puluhti, a red mantle of fright, Cuneiform Tablets, xvi, 28, 68.

page 147 note 5 Ebeling, Keilschrifttexte aus Assur, No. 66, 8.

page 147 note 6 King, Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, No. 44, 5.

page 147 note 7 Streck, , Asurbanipal, ii, 326, 17.Google Scholar

page 147 note 8 It was woven from wool, Johns, Deeds and Documents, 945, 6.

page 147 note 9 See James Edgar Banks, Bismya, or the Lost City of Adab, p. 138.

page 148 note 1 See Découvertes en Chaldee, pl. 2 bis, 2 ter. Fig. 3 in this article.

page 148 note 2 The dress of the figure of Lidda indicates clearly that it represents a woman. It has been ordinarily taken for a male.

page 148 note 3 Three views of this monument are given in Banks, Bisntya, 190-7; and see also King, History of Sumer and Akkad, p. 97. Fig. 7 in this article.

page 148 note 4 Twenty-eight inches high.

page 148 note 5 Banks discovered also a fine Semitic head of the early period, groved eyebrows, and eyeballs inset. He asserts (p. 257 of his Bismya) that the inset eyeballs are of ivory, but they are almost certainly mother-of-pearl or shell.

page 149 note 1 The monument is published by Heuzey and Thureau-Dangin in the Comptes rendus de I'Acadetnie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1907, 769 ff., and by Toscane in Maspero's Recueil de Travaux, vol. xxx, Textes divers. See also King, History of Sumer, p. 95, and Découvertes, pl. 47.

page 149 note 2 See King, History of Babylon, 137–8.

page 150 note 1 See Heuzey, Catalogue, no. 165.

page 150 note 2 Découvertes, 1 ter, no. 4.

page 150 note 3 The proto-Elamite has features and tonsure of the beard absolutely identical with those of the Sumerians. Compare the Elamitic dress and heads on fig. 4 with those of the Sumerians on fig. 2.

page 150 note 4 King, History of Babylon, p. 138, fig.35.

page 150 note 5 This head is reproduced in Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, no. 54, p. 9, and in King, History of Babylon, p. 136. The only published statuette of this kind from Assur is given by Meissner in his Babylonien und Assyrien, Abbildung 22.

page 150 note 6 That is for use in private life. A more elaborate form of kaunakés draped from the shoulder became the habit of the gods. The Semites and other adjacent peoples continued to wear the new type of kaunakés, whose manufacture spread throughout western Asia and passed into Greece.

page 151 note 1 Thureau-Dangin, , Recueil de Tablettes cuneiformes, 13, iv 6.Google Scholar

page 151 note 2 Thureau-Dangin, Alt-sumerische und akkadische Konigsinschriften, 38, col. I 26.

page 151 note 3 See the inscription on the monument of Lupad, copy by Toscane, p. 4, fragment col. II, e-šu-šam.

page 152 note 1 That is, we must find place for a Semitic conquest and their later absorption in the old Sumerian centres between the Sumerian remains of the north and those of the age of Ur-Nina (2900).

page 152 note 2 A torso of the early Sumerian period from Assur also has a small hole drilled into the clasped hands, which Andrae, the excavator of Assur, regards as the support of a sceptre or staff. That is of course an equally possible alternative. For a description of the Assur statuette see Mitteihmgen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, no. 54, p. 14. On the other hand the very early figure found by at Bismaya holds a cup in its hands. The cup is, however, worked as one piece in the stone, and the right hand which grasps the cup is supported by the left, a posture of the hands entirely unique and different from the liturgical pose of the Istabalat and Assur figures. These figures more probably represent rulers with a sceptre. For the Bismaya statuette see Banks, Bismya, or The Lost City of Adab, 138. For a Sumerian holding a weapon resembling a boomerang see fig. 2 in the illustrations.

page 153 note 1 Découvertes, pl. 2 bis.

page 153 note 2 Cylinder A 20, 25.

page 153 note 3 The bas-reliefs of these two rulers are reproduced on the title-page of C. F. Lehmann's Šamašsumukin. See ibid., pp. 22 and 25.

page 153 note 4 For those of Gudea, see Découvertes, pl. 28, and for those of Arad-Sin and Rim-Sin, sons of Kudurmabuk and kings of Larsa, see L. W. King, Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities (in the British Museum), p. 146; Menant, , Glyptique Orientate, i, 171Google Scholar. One of Gimil-Sin, king of Ur, is mentioned in the Guide, p. 144, no. 57.