proceedings: anthropological society 343 



Goths. It contains an epitaph and dates back to 830-840 A.D., or the 

 time of the introduction of Christianity into Scandinavia by St. Ansgar. 

 The inscription contains an allusion to Theodoric the Great, who 

 ruled as Ostrogothic King of Italy. Another part of the inscription 

 refers to four kings of the Danish island of Zealand. The names of 

 these four, who were brothers, and their sons, can be identified with 

 names mentioned in Jordanes' saga. The Rok runic inscription affords 

 one of the most important fragments of historical evidence connecting 

 the Ostrogothic kindgom of Italy with the Goths of Scandinavia, and 

 contains more points of resemblance with Jordanes' saga than any 

 known historic source. 



The evidence of relationship between the Gothic and Scandinavian 

 languages, found in the modern Germanic and Scandinavian tongues, is 

 also of great importance. The most essential point of resemblance 

 between these languages is the mutual retention in certain cases of "gg" 

 before "w" and "J" ("ggj"was changed into "ddj" in Gothic); as, forin- 

 stance, in the genitive plural Old Enghsh tweza (two), Danish twaeggie, 

 Gothic twaddje, modern Swedish twegge. Compare also the English true 

 with Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian trygg, Icelandic tryggr, Gothic 

 triggws. 



At the adjourned •474th regular and 35th annual meeting of the Society 

 held at 4 o'clock. May 5, at the National Museum, Dr. Edgar J. Banks, 

 field director of an expedition to Babylonia in 1903-1905 under the 

 auspices of the Universit}^ of Chicago, read a paper, illustrated with 

 lantern slides, on Bismya; or, the Lost City of Adab. Bismya flourished 

 in central Babylonia throughout a period of two thousand years pre- 

 vious to 2000 B.C. The mounds extend a mile or more along the bed 

 of an ancient canal, about halfway between the Tigris and Euphrates 

 rivers, and five days' journey south of Bagdad. The highest of the 

 mounds reach about fifty feet above the level of the desert. The surface 

 is covered with pottery fragments. The workmen employed were 

 Arabs of the hostile Bedier tribe. An agreement was entered into with 

 the chief of the tribe to emploj^ workmen only from him, and in return he 

 promised to protect the excavators from the depredations of surrounding 

 tribes. At the head of each gang was a piclonan who loosened the dirt 

 and searched through it for antiquities. With him were two scrapers 

 with triangular hoes with which they scraped the dirt into baskets. 

 The scrapers received sixteen cents a day and the basket men twelve, but 

 the pay of each man was doubled for the day on which he found an anti- 

 quity of value. Near the surface were found bricks of the temple wall 

 having on their under side the inscription of Dungi, King of Ur, of about 

 2200 B.C., and below them bricks bearing his father's name, Ur-Engur. 

 At a lower level was found a gold inscription of Naram-Sin and bricks of 

 his father Sargon, the first known Semitic kings, of about 2800 B.C. 

 Until recently the date of these kings was supposed to be about a 

 thousand years earlier. 



