318 PHYSIOGRAPHY OF CENTRAL-ASIAN DESERTS AND OASES. 
part surrounded by a broad moat between it and a crescent-shaped plateau of 
culture débris left open on thesouth. The long embankment, 1o feet high, appears 
to be the remains of a wall built late in the city’s history when it had expanded to 
that extent. In size these ruins approach those of the Merv delta, while their 
older portions are much older in appearance. The only pottery found in small 
exploration pits to a depth of 2 or 3 feet on top of the citadel was wheel-turned, 
red, vesicular black, and light-gray, while similar pits on the plateau west exposed 
human skulls. Here may be a column of records down through the Greco-Bactrian 
age into horizons contemporary with Anau’s South Kurgan culture. 
EEMAN TEPE. 

SEES 
| Heman Tepe, about half a mile 
| southeast of Dshisak Station, stands 
) 65 feet out of the plain as a citadel 
of special importance to us, for, 
though of an ancient round-worn 
form, it rises into glazed-ware time. 
Its culture was explored with a 
few shallow exploration pits on top 
and has been exposed in terraces, 
cut in near its base, where natives 
have taken débris, presumably for 
fertilizer. In these were found two 
or three specimens of glazed ware 
and glass and much red and gray 
wheel-turned pottery, some of it 
withinciseddesigns. It isamound 
of rich culture, abounding in bones, 
ashes, and hearths. Here may bea 
column through the period of which 
so little is known, that between 
Mohammedan and early Greco- 
Bactrian times, perhaps overlap- 
Fig. 482.—Urmitan Kurgan. ping part of Kara Tepe (western). 

RIVER-CUT MOUNDS OF MILLITINSKAYA. 
The valley of Djillan-ooti Darya, otherwise known as Timur’s Gaie, is a 
remarkable example of the hydrographic complications brought about by uplift 
of mountains, whose round-worn, outlying, terminal spurs were well-nigh buried 
in waste. Before its uplift alluviation from the Zerafshan appears to have over- 
flowed, or nearly overflowed, the worn-down Millitinskaya spur and possibly 
coalesced with the Syr Darya plains, so that the Djillan-ooti Darya found its way 
out to the Syr Darya. Uplift resulted in the Djillan-ooti excavation of Timur’s 
Gate, widened during quiescence to a flood-plain about two-thirds of a mile wide. 
Even after this the ancients led Zerafshan water from Pendyakent through an old 
