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Sumerian Origins and Racial Characteristics. by PROFESSOR S V.—Sumerian Origins and Racial Characteristics. By PROFESSOR S. LANGDON, M.A. Read 5th February 1920. IN 1901 Leon Heuzey wrote in his Catalogue des Antiquites chaldeennes that we possessed at that time only one complete statuette of early Sumerian art. He referred to the remarkable marble figurine of a priest or priest-king exca- vated at Lagash and published on plate 6 bis oi Decouvertes en Chaldee. Although this object, of unusual height for a statuette in the early period (it is about 18 inches high), came from the hand of the sculptor with the details of the skirt unfinished, its artistic merits are so great that it must be placed at the end of the period, probably as late as Urukagina, priest-king of Lagash about 2900 B.C. The arms of this figure are finely delineated and free from the body. The head and features are delicately cut and the neck is of normal length (fig. 1). In earlier statuary the neck is always unnaturally short and the whole figure has a squat appearance. Here, too, the execution of the eyes is of a new school, the eyeball being cut in the stone itself, whereas the earlier artists cut a deep socket and inset the eye with a ball of nacre or shell by means of bitumen. De Sarzec the excavator of Lagash had, however, the good fortune to purchase a statuette from an Arab of Chattra in the vicinity of Telloh, the site of ancient Lagash. It is the figure of a woman, and the appearance is so squat, the exe- cution so rude, and the details so archaic, that it henceforth served as the standard specimen of early Sumerian sculpture.1 The balls have fallen from the eye-sockets. She wears a heavy woollen garment, with false frills, the costume already known from bas-reliefs and shell etchings as the early national dress of the Sumerians. On the earliest bas-reliefs, this petticoat is usually worked plain from the hips to the knees, and the lower part ends in a flounce of parallel tassels. These represent locks of wool, and on the primitive designs the tassels simply end in a point and are not scalloped as on other monuments published here* (see fig. 2). In the case of male figures the body is nude from the waist 1 Published in Decouvertes en Chaldee, pi. i ter; and see also L. W. King, History ofSumerandAkkad, p. 112; Leon Heuzey, Catalogue des Antiquites chaldeennes, no. 82. 2 For examples of the most primitive petticoat, see L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, p. 41, fig. 1 ; Heuzey, Catalogue des Antiquites chaldeennes, no. 5. VOL. LXX. u Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universitaets- u. Landesbibliothek Duesseldorf, on 21 Aug 2018 at 23:50:56, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261340900011061 146 SUMERIAN ORIGINS AND RACIAL CHARACTERISTICS upward. The dress consists of nothing but this woollen petticoat, which Heuzey calls a kaunakes. But the woollen garment worn by women is longer and is hung from the left shoulder, so as to cover the left breast.1 The identity of this mantle with the Greek KawaKrjs was proved by Heuzey in the Revue archeologique, 1887, pp. 259 ff. With the aid of expert workmen of the Gobelin tapestries that skilful archaeologist discovered the process of weaving this curious cloth. The Sumerians sought to give the garment the appearance of a sheep's fleece, and in order to do this the woof is looped at parallel intervals from the warp. In other words, if the weaver wished to produce a false flounce, he chose a strand of the warp and when he reached that point he knotted the woof to the warp and dropped a loop of the required length and brought the woof back to the warp where it was knotted again. By repeating this process each time at the same place in the warp the weaver produced a false flounce or frill, and he could in the same manner affect more frills in parallel stages. These flounces are part of the garment and are not sewed on to the cloth. It is really tapestry work and looks surprisingly like a real fleece. The proto-Elamites of the same period also wore the kaunakes (fig. 4), and the prehistoric people of Turkestan who belonged to the same group wore it also. This is proved by the bas-relief on a gold cup of the Copper Age found at Asterabad in Persian Turke- stan.2 The accompanying plate with illustrations of dress from Elam and Asterabad, all from the early Copper Age before 3000, prove that the kaunakes was the early national dress of this entire group of people (see figs. 4 and 5). Heuzey could find no Babylonian or Sumerian word from which the Greek KawaKTjs could be derived. The Greeks themselves knew that the garment was imported from Asia, and, in the time of Aristophanes, Ecbatana the capital of Persia was famous for its manufacture. Since the Greek word ends in ak it is suggestive of a Babylonian word which had been borrowed from Sumerian. For the Babylonians in borrowing Sumerian compound words usually attached akka, ukku to the word. So we have Sumerian asur borrowed by the Baby- lonians as asurakku, running water; nig-na = niknakku, censer; sanga-tnah = sangamahkuku, high-priest.3 Now in Sumerian the name of a wrell-known gar- 1 The figure of a woman will be found on fig. 3, first small figure before the king in the upper register. 2 Fig. 5. This remarkable object was published, together with some painted pottery and bronze implements discovered in the same place, by Baron de Bode in Archaeologia, vol. xxx, 248-55. Their connexion with Sumer and Elam was pointed out by M. Rostovtzeff, The Sumerian Treasure ofAstrabad, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. vi. '•'• The force of the ending ku is supposed to be that of the ordinary genitive suffix ge-ga-ka with Semitic inflexion. Loan-words of this type should on this assumption be composed of a construct and genitive, see the writer's Sumerian Grammar, p. 25, note 3. But many examples occur of noun and adjective in such words, cf. sangumahhuku, 'the great priest', iv Rawlinson, 8 b, 51. The word tug-gii-en means literally 'garment from which the neck is exposed', and is composed of a noun Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universitaets- u. Landesbibliothek Duesseldorf, on 21 Aug 2018 at 23:50:56, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261340900011061 SUMERIAN ORIGINS AND RACIAL CHARACTERISTICS 147 ment is gii-in, and a variant writing is gu-an-na} This word is widely employed in the late period, especially as the name of the garment of the goddess Aja, consort of the sun-god.2 Now the figures of the various goddesses are constantly represented on seals clothed in the long false-flounced mantle of the post-archaic period. See the figure of the goddess who stands before the seated deified king Ur-Engur on the seal, fig. 6 in this article. There can be little doubt but that this new form of the Sumerian kaunakes is the gu-en of the inscriptions. The Sumerians in the archaic period regarded it as a habit proper for kings and dignitaries or for the king's bodyguard only.3 After that period they attached a religious significance to it, and on the monuments only deities wear it in Sumer. In the mystic rituals priests put on the kaunakes to frighten the demons,4 and a clay figurine of a sick man is clothed in a kaunakes for the same purpose.5 But the Babylonians and Persians continued its use in private life and soldiers in the age of Hammurabi wore it.6 The son of Teuman the Elamite tore his kaunakes as a sign of sorrow when Assurbanipal invaded and pillaged that country.7 Although the syllabars and bilingual texts translate the word gu-en by nahlaptu, mantle, it is certain that they also made a loan-word of it which should be guenakku, guanakku, and as such it reached the Greeks in the form But the kaunakes ending in a single tasselled flounce was soon replaced by the kaunakes or petticoat of three, four, or five flounces, that is, the entire garment is worked in flounces and the tassels scalloped. All the known statuettes have the petticoats in tasselled folds, except one which was found by the American excavators at Adab, the modern Bismaya.9 The petticoat in folds is found on (gil = neck) and a participle (en = going forth). Albright, Revue d'Assyriologie, xvi, 177, has discovered that the literal Semitic translation is asit kisadi. The ordinary Semitic rendering is nahlaptu, but only in syllabars. The texts have invariably the Sumerian word gil-en, which was probably rendered in the current speech by guannakku. 1 Grice, Records from Ur and Larsa, 94, 12. For the gu-en as a garment for soldiers, see Revue d'Assyriologie, 12, 115. The gil-cn dar-a, or kaunakes of many colours, is mentioned in Grice, ibid. 165. i Cuneiform Tablets of the British Museum, iv, 38 A 5. Strassmaier, Cambyses, 363, 2; Cyrus, 7, 6; Zeitschrift fiir Assyriologie, iv, 137, 8. For the Belit of Babylon, Strassmaier, Cambyses, 137, 3, that is, Zarpanit consort of Marduk.
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