Abstract
THE discoveries at Tell Asmar (Eshnunnu or Ash-nunnak), announced by Dr. H. Frankfort in his letter to the Times of March 26, constitute an addition of no little importance to the evidence linking up the early civilisations of Mesopotamia and the Indus valley, especially if his conjectural relation of the new finds to the culture of Mohenjo Daro should be confirmed by subsequent investigation. The excavations of the Oriental Institute of Chicago on the site of private houses of the age of the Dynasty of Akkad (c. 2550 B.C.) on the northern outskirts of the Tell have brought to light two seals, of which the character points unquestionably to an Indian origin. One, a cylinder seal, shows a design of a procession of animals, elephants and rhinoceros with crocodiles, which in subject and convention is both alien to Mesopotamia and referable to the Indus civilisation;. while the second is of more common Indian form, a square stamp seal with a pierced knob on the back, and bearing a design of concentric squares which does not appear elsewhere in Mesopotamia, but occurs on similar seals at Mohenjo Daro. Further evidence pointing in the same direction has been found in the form of etched carnelian beads resembling Indian specimens, kidney-shaped inlays of bone identical in shape with some in shell from Mohenjo Daro, and two sherds of pottery showing a decoration with knobs, unknown in Mesopotamia, but also occurring at Mohenjo Daro. Certain distinctive features in the seals, however, lead Dr. Frankfort to think that either they belong to a slightly earlier or later phase of Indian civilisation than that at Mohenjo Daro or they may have come from another site within the same cultural area, the latter alternative being the more probable.
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India and Babylonia. Nature 129, 501 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129501a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129501a0