The author's expertise and knowledge of the Sumerian language helped to hasten the early decoding of the Indus Valley seals.
A
striking example of the invaluable practical use of these Indian Epic
king-lists in recovering the true and original form of the names and
titles of Sumerian kings is furnished by its preservation of the kings'
names of the First Dynasty of the Phoenicians, which founded the Indus
Valley colony and some of whose seals are figured. This dynasty,
hitherto considered the first dynasty of the Early Sumerians, and
founded by the famous 'Ur-Nina,' was so great, that its galaxy of
inscribed monuments, sculptures, seals, and other works of art and
craft, and massive building, temples and storehouses, unearthed at
Telloh ('Lagash') the Pompeii of Early Mesopotamian antiquity', by M. de
Sarzec during a quarter of a century , from 1877 to 1900 still forms
the chief basis of our knowledge of the Early Sumerians. And it is
actually taken as such by Professor Langdon in his recent historical
sketch of the Sumerians in the Cambridge Ancient History, no further back than in 1923.
Nevertheless, a few months later, in the same year, that Assyriologist,
on finding a legendary list of Mesopotamian kings written by credulous
priest of petty and supposed alien dynasty at Isin, over a thousand
years ago after the epoch 'Ur-Nina,' and purporting to give a complete
list of the kings with their regnal years back to 241,000 years before
the Flood, accepts such a sem-fabulous list seriously in preference to
the sober testimony of the contemporary records of the historical
Sumerian kings on their own monuments. And, merely because he could not
find in this Isin list either the name 'Ur-Nina,' or those of the rest
of his dynasty, or indeed of nearly all the other historical Sumerian
kings, including the famous and prolific emperor Gudea, whose existing
monuments make up nearly the sum-total of known Sumerian history, he
throws over all these solidly-known historical kings with their
monuments, and declares that they were mere imposters in calling
themselves 'kings' and dynasties -- solely because he could not find
them in his Isin list! And in the extraordinary conclusion Professor
Sayce also has agreed.
But other Assyriologists may now be reassured. That interference from
the Isin list is merely 'a mare's nest.' Not only are 'Ur-Nina' and his
dynasty all there, I find, but they are made even in this Isin list the
first of all 'human' Sumerian dynasties in Mesopotamia, as we shall find
through the Indian king-lists, though their name and titles were not
recognized by the professors, mainly through having 'restored' the names
mostly with the wrong phonetic values. And thus one at least of the
several extra thousands of years which these scholars have generously
added to the date of the Sumerian in Mesopotamia, before Ur-Nina's
epoch, on the strength of their reading of this list, has now got to be
removed again.
'Sumerian,' of course, is not found written on any of these seas, for
this is merely another of those misleading label which Assyriologists
have arbitrarily affixed to this Aryan race. It has never once been
found employed by these people themselves, nor has the word ever been
found in any 'Sumerian' inscription or document, yet the public have
been led, or rather misled, to believe that it was the genuine name of
this pre-eminently civilized ancient Aryan people.
End excerpt.