July, 1913. Notes on Turquois. 37 



turquois, if the mineralogical condition of the present time, provided 

 the fact is correct, will be admitted as evidence/ It cannot, however, 

 be admitted as already demonstrated, that in other early passages the 

 turquois is disguised under the word se-se ; there is no forcible argu- 

 ment in favor of such a guess (supposition it can hardly be called) ; on 

 the contrary, the valuation and utilization of the stone speak strongly 

 against it. 



Another moot question is the historical position of the turquois in 

 those regions which are covered by the word se-se; there is no great 

 antiquity and, accordingly, no archaeology of the turquois in western 

 Asia. It does not appear in Assyria, Babylonia or ancient Persia; it 

 hardly plays any role in Greek and Roman antiquity.^ Egypt' is the 

 only country in the Old World which may lay claim to a great antiquity 

 in the utilization of the turquois mined in the Sinai Mountains, and some 

 objects inlaid with turquois mosaic and assigned to the Siberian bronze 

 period, though neither their locality nor their time is exactly ascertained, 

 may be of considerable age (see p. 58). So far as I know, no really 



1 Personally I am not convinced. It will be seen below that the first actual 

 knowledge of the turquois dawns upon the Chinese as late as the Mongol period when 

 a newly coined word for it appears, and when the word se-se continues with quite a 

 different meaning. It is inconceivable to me that the knowledge of an object, when 

 it is once acquired (and particularly of an object so striking to the eye as a turquois), 

 can ever become lost. The tradition of the Mongol period is entirely cut off from 

 that of the T'ang, the two not being interrelated. If the se-se of Ferghana were the 

 turquois, why are the se-sS objects occurring in China in the T'ang period not so 

 described that a plain conclusion as to this material can be drawn? But they were 

 evidently ijiade of some building-stone. For this reason the question may be justly 

 raised whether the account of the T'ang shu in regard to the mountain near Tash- 

 kend where s^-s^ is produced really possesses great importance; it is somewhat 

 vague, the name of the mountain not even being given; the report is evidently 

 reproduced from hearsay. The earlier accounts of the Pei shi and Sui shu, which 

 ascribe these jewels to an adjacent region without making reference to a definite local- 

 ity, seem to me to be more to the point. All that can be safely laid down therefore is 

 that se-se occurred in the territory of Ferghana and Sogdiana during the time from 

 the fifth to the seventh century. In view of the other texts quoted above which 

 must be equally taken into account in a consideration of this question, there is no 

 reason to place all emphasis on this one statement; s^-s^ occurred in Persia and 

 Syria, and were traded in Khotan. Thus, they held the territory of western Asia 

 and the dominion of the Western Turks. And as will be seen farther on, they were 

 brought over to China by Mariicheans or Nestorians. 



^ H. Blumner, Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Kiinste bei 

 Griechen und Romern, Vol. Ill, p. 248 (Leipzig, 1884). It is still more doubtful to 

 me than to Blumner if the callaina or callais of Pliny, as has been supposed, refers to 

 the turquois; the evidence favoring this theory. is extremely weak; Pliny's statement 

 that the stone is produced in Farther India or beyond India and in the Caucasus 

 (nascitur post aversa Indiae, apud incolas Caucasi) where we positively know that 

 no turquois is found proves that he does not speak of the turquois. Compare p. 2, 

 note 2. "Turquois, hardly ever used by the Greeks, was rarely employed by 

 Graeco-Roman artists" (D. Osborne, Engraved Gems, p. 284, New York, 1912). 



' The ancient Egyptian turquois-mines in Wadi Maghara and Wadi Sidreh in the 

 Sinaitic Peninsula were first discovered in 1849 by Major C. Macdonald, then visited 

 by H. Brugsch (Wanderung nach den Tiirkisminen und der Sinai-Halbinsel, Leipzig, 

 1866), and examined anew in 1905 by W. M. Flinders Petrie. 



