AiTTIQUITY OF MAN SAYCE 527 



hieroglyphs. At any rate, iron was already worked at a consider- 

 ably earlier date than the foundation of that empire; in one of the 

 Hittite tablets a king (Anittas), who seems to have flourished about 

 1900 B. C, speaks of '' an iron chair," and " an iron boomerang," 

 having been brought to him from Buruskhanda, where the principal 

 silver mines were.^° 



The date of the Kara Eyuk documents is fortunately known. The 

 forms of the characters, as well as the Assyrian proper names oc- 

 curring in them, point to the age of the Third Dynasty of Ur (2418- 

 2300 B. C), and this dating has been verified by the discovery of 

 two sealings published by M. Thureau-Dangin and myself, one of 

 which gives the name of Ibi-Sin, the fifth king of the Third Dynasty 

 of Ur (2324-2300 B. C.) while the other has the name of Sargon I, 

 the son of Ikimum of Assyria. We may, therefore, assign the bulk 

 of the tablets to about 2300 B. C They were preserved in chests 

 of stone or terra-cotta, which took the place of our safes, and often 

 bore the " crest " or name of the banker to wliom they belonged. 

 Thus, Professor Hrozny has disinterred one of them in the form of 

 a terra-cotta box, on the lid of which a monkey is molded in relief.^^ 

 They appear to have been kept in the vaults of the banks or offices 

 of the companies established at Ganis. It is all very modern and 

 implies a long preceding period of development and history. 



We can trace it back a few centuries. In 2750 B. C, Sargon, the 

 founder of the dynasty of Akkad and of the first Semitic Empire, 

 carried his arms into Cappadocia, and made his wa}^ as far as a 

 mountain called Galasu, which Doctor Weidner would identify with 

 Ganis, and from which he brought back various plants, including 

 the rose tree, for acclimatization in Babylonia. The chief object of 

 the expedition seems to have been to support the Assyro-Babylonian 

 damgari or trading agents and commercial travelers who lived there 

 and were occupied with the trade in minerals. A sort of " commer- 

 cial treaty " was made, and a century later we find Naram-Sin, the 

 grandson of Sargon, receiving homage from Zipani, King of Ganis, 

 and other princes in that part of the world, one of whom was Pamba, 

 the Hittite. It is worth mention that Khati in Hittite signified 

 " silver," so that the Khatti or Hittites would have been " the Silver 

 men " who mined and exported that metal to the ancient world. 



I need not dwell upon the length of time presupposed for the rise 

 and development of all this trading activity with the means of 

 traffic and use of writing which it implies. The archeological rec- 

 ord of civilization is being steadily pushed back and the disturbing 

 discrepancy between the facts of archeology and literary criticism is 



" K. B. K., vol. 3, 2, No. 22.75. The ideographs PA-GUR, which I have translated 

 " boomerang," signify literally " a bent rod." Ilrozni' suggests the translation " scopter." 

 n Illustrated London News, Oct. 2, 1926. 



