524 ANNUAL KEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 31 



distant China, which hitherto (had) been reported only from Jem- 

 det Nasr, near Kish," makes its appearance. " Below this begin to 

 appear the black and green sherds of the El-'Ubaid type," the pot- 

 tery, namely, found at El-'Ubaid near Ur. We are thus taken back 

 to the time when the alluvial plain of Babylonia was only beginning 

 to be formed at the head of the Persian Gulf.^ 



My own belief is that the royal tombs of Ur, modern as they are 

 when compared with the strata below them, belong to a pre-Sumerian 

 time and to a pre-Sumerian race, which would explain the existence 

 of human sacrifice to which they testify. The Sumerians called 

 themselves " the black-headed people." This implies that there was 

 also a blond race in the country from which their black hair and eyes 

 distinguished them, and the conclusion is confirmed by the further 

 fact that whereas Sumerian art represents them as broad skulled, 

 most of the early skulls discovered at Ur and examined by Sir Arthur 

 Keith prove to be dolichocephalic. Berossus, the Babylonian his- 

 torian, tells us that the plain of Babylonia was originally inhabited 

 by peoples of various origin, and an early Sumerian poem published 

 by Professor Langdon explicitly states that in the prehistoric days 

 Lugal-banda, king of Der, on the eastern side of the Tigris, invaded 

 the country and expelled " the wicked Murru " — the Amorites of 

 Semitic writers — from Erech, the future capital of a Sumerian dy- 

 nasty.* On the Egyptian monuments, it must be remembered, the 

 Amorites of Palestine are depicted as blonds with fair hair and blue 

 eyes. I believe that in these blond Murru we must see the Mesopo- 

 tamian Mitannians of later history; in a letter of the Mitannian 

 king Dusratta, Mitanni is called Murru-khe, or " Murru-land," and 

 I have tried to show elsewhere that the name given to the Mitannian 

 neighbors of the Plittites in eastern Asia IMinor which has been read 

 Kharri, or Khurri, ought to be Murri.' The latter have been iden- 

 tified with the Sanskrit-speaking tribes of whom we hear in the Hit- 

 tite tablets.^ At any rate, we may safely assume that they were of 

 Caucasian origin. And we may, I think, further assume that the 

 people, represented by the artistic treasures and human sacrifices 

 in the royal tombs of Ur, were the Murrian or Amorite predecessors 

 of the Sumerians. At Tepe Gawra, near Ninevah, Doctor Speiser 

 has discovered tM'o strata of cultural remains below the stratum which 

 belongs to the Early Bronze Age and the appearance of the Sumer- 

 ians. In this last, the copper objects resemble those found at Ur and 



•Early Art in Sunieria. Times, Feb. 11, 1930. 



* Langdon, Weld-Blundeil collection in the Ashmolean Museum, vol. 1, p. 5 : Legend of 



Sr?"''?K;"'-n~^' ."f'T/" *^' '""^ °' ^"-"^^ «°<^ '^l''^'*^ l^-'t the impious Amorite 

 depart (Kengi Un nlgin-ba MurrQ galu scnuzu Icliu-mu-zl) 

 "> Ancient Egypt, pt. 3, September, 1921. 



thi MZf\^''''T''; 'Tl!^ ""^'"^ ^^^ "Kliurri" the non-Indo-European population and 

 the Mitanni or Maiteni the Indo-Europoans (Archiv orientalni. vol. 1. No 3. p. 296). 



