Tregear. — Inaugural Address. 613 



Darsonich. When they are not fighting this knife is covered 

 ■with hide, so that they may not hurt themselves with it. 

 This weapon they use not only for fighting, but also to 

 cut up their meat when they are eating. It may be de- 

 scribed as an iron bracelet with a sharp cutting-edge outside, 

 the blade being about 2 in. to 4 in. wide." I have particularly 

 noticed this weapon, because the thought has struck me that 

 this bracelet-knife may be the progenitor or relative of the 

 quoit-like Asiatic weapon ascribed in the Bhagavat Gita to 

 the ancient Aryans. It is possible that the bracelet-knife of 

 the Murle people might be removed from the wrist and hurled 

 as a quoit-missile against an enemy. 



The excavations carried on by the American Expedition in 

 Southern Babylonia bear out the statements previously made 

 as to the extreme antiquity to which we must refer the 

 builders of the old cities. At the mounds of Niffer search 

 was commenced among ruins on a platform that was built by 

 a king named Ur-gur about two thousand six hundred years 

 before Christ. Below this was another platform which Sar- 

 gon I. built some twelve hundred years earlier, all the bricks 

 bearing the names of Sargon and his son Naram-Sin. Below 

 this were found ruins of temples erected about two thousand 

 years earlier than Sargon's platform ; so that we are presented 

 with evidence as to the advanced stage of civilisation that 

 the builders had reached about seven bhousand six hun- 

 dred years ago. Two interesting discoveries have also been 

 made in Egypt — one that of a city of which the name is un- 

 known, and that was once inhabited by some race that was 

 neither Egyptian nor that of the people whose chipped-flint 

 tools were found two or three years ago. In the newly dis- 

 covered city there was a cemetery containing two thousand 

 graves, and the bodies were not mummified nor embalmed, 

 but were found sitting with the knees bent up to the chin, in 

 that peculiar position which is common to ancient sepulture 

 among primitive people all round the world, in Great 

 Britain as in Polynesia. In some of the graves the skulls 

 were placed in the centre, and lines of bones were set out 

 from these like the spokes of a wheel ; but the ends of the 

 bones had been removed for the purpose of extracting the 

 marrow — a fact that points to ceremonial cannibalism at the 

 funeral rites. The other interesting Egyptian discovery was 

 made at the Island of Philae, on the Nile, an island whose 

 beautiful temples were threatened with destruction by the 

 projected building of a huge dam for irrigation purposes. An 

 alteration of level for the purpose of trying to save the ruin, 

 and only submerging the foundations, caused the institution 

 of an exhaustive survey of the island ; and it has been found 

 that the temple on Philae has (unlike many Egyptian temples) 



