38 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XIII. 



ancient carved object of turquois has as yet come to light in Persia or 

 Turkistan/ while a great variety of gems appears in the Persian intag- 

 lios, particularly in those of the Sassanian epoch (226-642 a. d.) among 

 which turquois is strikingly absent.^ It is no less because of this lack 

 of archaeological evidence that I hesitate to believe in the proposed 

 identification of se-se with turquois, as regards the older accounts of the 

 Pei sht and Sui shu. 



Furthermore, the important question arises, — what is the antiquity 

 of the turquois in Persia? When were the turquois mines of Persia 

 first operated, at what time did turquois begin to play an active r61e 

 in the culture and life of the Persian people? It is evident that all this 

 is a matter of consequence for our se-se problem. I am certainly not 

 competent to decide this question, the final solution of which must come 

 to us from one of our co-workers in the Arabic or Persian field; but even 

 to an outsider who has merely a scant knowledge of this subject some 

 observations spontaneously present themselves which render him very 

 cautious or rather skeptic in assuming, as has.so often been done without 

 any substantial evidence, a considerable antiquity for the acquaintance 

 of the Persians with the turquois. There is, first. of all, no ancient 

 Iranian word for the turquois. Avestan literature, as far as I know, 

 makes no alkision to it. A great authority, W. Geiger,^ emphasizes 

 the fact that the minerals characteristic of Iran, as turquois, ruby, 

 lapis lazuli, are not even mentioned in the A vesta. The lack of an 

 Iranian word for it, with the additional absence of an ancient Sanskrit 

 word, renders the supposition highly probable that neither the Aryans 

 nor the Iranians had any knowledge of turquois. The word ferozah is 

 New Persian, consequently not older than the ninth century; in Middle 

 Persian or Pahlavl, the language of the Arsacids and Sassanians, no 

 word for the turquois seems to be preserved, unless it is represented by 



1 In a collection of ancient intaglios found in the environment of Khotan and 

 described by A. F. R. Hoernle (A Report on the British Collection of Antiquities 

 from Central Asia, pt. I, p. 38, Calcutta, 1899) objects of spinel and lapis lazuli occur, 

 but none of turquois. F. Grenard (Mission scientifique dans la Haute Asie, Vol. 

 Ill, p. 143, Paris, 1898) found in a cave near Khotan a wooden image with eyes formed 

 by rubies. In the famous treasure discovered in 1877 on the northern bank of the 

 Oxus described by A. Cunningham (Relics from Ancient Persia, Journal Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal, 1881, pp. 151-186) and O. M. Dalton (The Treasure of the Oxus, 

 London, 1905), despite a great number of ornaments, no turquois has been traced. 

 Also in the works on Persian art (M. Dieulafoy, L'art antique de la Perse; Perrot 

 and Chipiez, History of Art in Persia, London, 1892) no reference is made to turquois. 



^ Compare the Sassanian precious stones as enumerated, for instance, in Ed. 

 Baumann, AUgemeine Geschichte der bildenden Kiinste, Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 538, G. 

 Steindorff's Description of Sassanian Gems in Mitteilungen aus den Orientalischen 

 Sammlungen des Berliner Museums, No. 4, and J. Menant, Cachets orientaux, 

 Intailles sassanides {Cat. Coll. de Clercq, Vol. II, pt. i, Paris, 1890). In none of these 

 publications is turquois pointed out. 



' Ostiranische Kultur im Altertum, p. 147 (Erlangen, 1887). 



