344 proceedings: anthropological society 



Beneath the ruins representing these Semitic kings were the traces of 

 the earher civihzation of the Sumerians, a cultured people who had 

 occupied Mesopotamia for several thousand years. From them the 

 wedge-shaped characters of the language and many of the Semitic reli- 

 gious forms were borrowed. An important discovery was a perfect, 

 large marble statue of a Sumerian king called Lugal Da-udu of about 

 four thousand years before the Christian era. Large numbers of stone 

 vase fragments were found; some were inscribed with the names of the 

 kings of the fifth millennium before Christ; others were engraved with 

 intricate designs; and a few of them were inlaid with ivory and bright 

 stones. One bore the picture of the temple power; one had the oldest 

 representation of a musical instrument known to exist. Far down the 

 shaft was discovered a long spike of pure copper terminating in a 

 crouching lion. Lowest down, on the undisturbed desert level, were 

 found large numbers of pottery fragments, showing that perhaps fifteen 

 thousand years ago a people with considerable civilization occupied that 

 spot. An ancient Sumerian crematory was found. It was a circular 

 chamber with an oval platform connected with a furnace. The ashes 

 of the dead were brushed into the pit beneath the platform. The 

 Semite dead were buried in small house-like tombs of sun-dried bricks. 

 In these were found the pottery to contain food and drink for the spirits 

 of the dead, the jewelry of the women, and the seal cylinders of the men. 

 Several palaces were found and in them small collections of clay tablets 

 containing the business documents of the people. In one large chamber 

 were about five thousand of the tablets in a heap. In the residential 

 portion of the city were found the very narrow winding streets lined with 

 houses of but a single room. Many of the houses were provided with 

 vertical drains reaching into the ground forty feet or more, and with 

 cisterns. Frequently there had survived the oven in which the bread 

 was baked, the mortar for pounding the grain, the images of the house- 

 hold gods which were supposed to drive away disease, the toys of the 

 children, the needles and knives of the women, and many other things 

 necessary to life in those days. A public bath was found in the residen- 

 tial section of the city, provided with a vertical drain beneath the floor of 

 bitumen, a furnace for heating the water, and a cistern high up in the 

 building. The people of Bismya were among the oldest who have left 

 us evidences of a highly developed civilization, and the first occupants 

 of the place, ten or fifteen thousand years ago, were as civilized as the 

 present occupants of the surrounding desert. 



Mr. James Mooney was elected President of the Society for the ensuing 

 .year, and the following officers were re-elected: Vice-President, Dr. 

 John H. Swanton; Secretary, Dr. Daniel Folkmar; Treasurer, Mr. J. N. 

 B. Hewitt; Councilors: Mr. Fehx Neumann, Dr. I. M. Casanowicz, 

 and Mr. Francis LaFlesche. 



Daniel Folkmar, Secretary. 



