1895.] ^'J [Eriuton. 



acknowledged that little progress lias been made in their decipher- 

 ment. The " second column " of the great Behistun inscription 

 is held to be Proto-Medic (Neo-Susic). It is described as a 

 tongue employing suffixes only, with at least four well-marked 

 tenses, and with a kind of declension of nouns.* It has been 

 declared to be "non-Aryan and non-Semitic," but there is 

 nothing in its morphology as described to exclude it from the 

 Aryan family. 



It has been the custom with most Assyriologists to take for 

 granted that all the tribes mentioned, as well as others inhabit- 

 ing Elymais and Media in early da^'S, as the Parsua, Anduia, 

 Namri, Ellipi, etc., were neither Aryan nor Semitic. In this 

 spirit Dr. Winkler, in his lately published History asserts that 

 it was not nntil the reign of Psalmaiiasar II (about 850 B.C.), 

 that the Aryan Medes (the Western Iranians) appear in Sem- 

 itic history, their predecessors in the region having been non- 

 Aryan.f 



It is difficult to see any sufficient grounds for such an assump- 

 tion. The Cosssei and their northern neighbors, the Mardi, 

 whom Strabo describes, were certainly Aryans, and if the Kas- 

 shu were the ancestors of the former, they, too, were of Aryan 

 lineage. The Elamites of " Shushan the palace " maintained 

 their power till a late date ; their descendants were the Uxii of 

 the Alexandrinian conquest; and these were surel}^ not of an 

 alloph3'llic stock. They were either Semitic or Ai'yah. A 

 thousand years B.C. the powerful and warlike Minnean nation 

 mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah was on the southern shore 

 of Lake Urumia, and that they were of Aryan speech is at- 

 tested by such names of their kings as Iranzu, Ulusunu, etc.| 

 The theory which has been advanced by some that the Ossetes 

 of the Caucasus, who speak an archaic Aryan tongue related 



*F. H. Weisbach, Die Achamenldenischen Inscliriften zweiter Art, p. 46 (Leipzig, 1890). 

 Inscriptions in Neo-Susic date between 1100 B.C. and 370 B.C. Weisbach calls the lan- 

 guage in which they are written " Finuo-Tartaric, richly mixed with Aryan words." Id., 

 p. 11. On the other hand, Dr. Heinrich Winkler, an excellent authority, formally denies 

 that it can be classed with any Ural-Altaic language. Urcd-Altaische ViJlkcr and Sprachen, 

 p. 169. As Weisbach has shown the linguistic unity of Ansaulc, Susie (Elamitic), and 

 Neo-Susic (old Medic) in his Ansanische Insclirijlen, 1891, p. 34, this applies to the whole 

 group. 



t Geschichte Babyloniens imd Assyriens, s. 242. 



X Jeremiah, chap, li, ver. 27. An admirable article on " Das Reich der Manmier," by 

 Waldemar Belck, may be found in the Verhand. Berliner Anthrop. Ges., 18i)4, p. 479, sqq. 

 He does not identify their ethnic relations, but to me the proper names admit of no doubt 

 that they were Aryans. 



