RECENT DISCOVERIES IN THE REALM OF ASSYRIOLOGY, ETC. 175 



Uigour tangri, tingri, God, heaven ; Yakutish tafiara, heaven, 

 deity (vide Professor Vambery, Etymologisches Worterbuch der 

 TurJco-Tatarischen Sprachen.) 



As to the question of burning versus burial in Akkad, it may be 

 worth while to mention that, as we know, in Idian at the present 

 time both practices are in vogue among the Hindus. All caste 

 people, I believe, are burned when they die, as are also some who 

 belong to no caste at all. But many who have no caste or are of 

 very low caste are buried even at the present day. The latt.er 

 custom seems to have prevailed in India in pre- Aryan times. 



Rev. James Neil, M.A. — First, may I ask when we in England 

 shall know more about those invaluable tablets of Tel-el-Amarna. 

 I was much struck, when Mr. Pinches spoke about the convey- 

 ance of land, by the fact that the only tablet referring to that 

 speaks of a plantation and houses. In a Paper recently read 

 here, I called attention to the fact that to this hour there was 

 not anywhere throughout the East, and there never was in 

 ancient times, any individual holding, in broad acres. In all 

 Eastern lands lots were cast every year for every rod of arable 

 ground, owned, as it was, in common by the whole village. Now 

 it is very interesting to see that in all cases where a holding 

 in severalty is mentioned, it was that of plantations and houses, 

 not of broad acres. Almost everything is the same to-day as 

 in Mr. Pinches' pictures of this wonderfully primitive life. I 

 do not know that I could quite yield to so early a date as 

 3800 B.C., but, not being an Assyriologist, it becomes me to 

 speak very modestly on this point ; but the life referred to is 

 evidently very ancient. In the East, as I have said, life is much 

 the same now as then. Money is still lent in times of distress 

 without interest, and they punish infidelity with death. This 

 last is going on now everywhere throughout Palestine and all 

 Syria, and the Turks try in vain to stop it. As to the words 

 of address to the wife, about which Mr. Pinches spoke of feeling 

 some difficulty, it is most interesting to observe that the expres- 

 sion "Be thou the Mother of Millions" is to this very hour the 

 Eastern symbolic way of addressing a bride on the occasion of 

 her marriage by all her relatives and friends. It is indeed an 

 ancient life that Mr. Pinches' Paper reveals, but it is, most of it, 

 the life of to-day. 



The Hon. Secretary (Capt. P. Petrie). — With regard to the 



