[APPENDICES]
I.—Recent Explorations in Turkestan in their Relation to the Sumerian Problem.
II.—A Chronological List of the Kings and Rulers of Sumer and Akkad.
[APPENDIX I]
RECENT EXPLORATIONS IN TURKESTAN IN THEIR RELATION TO THE SUMERIAN PROBLEM.
In the second chapter of this volume the opinion was expressed that, in spite of the unsoundness of certain arguments in favour of the theory, the original home of the Sumerians was to be sought beyond the mountains to the east of the Babylonian plain.[1] The arrival of the Sumerians on the banks of the Euphrates would thus have been a single episode in a series of similar migrations from the east, which, during the historical period, are known to have made their appearance in that quarter of Western Asia. Until recently it was only possible to suggest that such migratory movements were to be traced to racial unrest in more distant regions, and few data were available for supporting any detailed theory as to the causes of this occasional pressure westwards. Important evidence, which has both a direct and an indirect bearing on the problem, has, however, been obtained as a result of recent explorations in Russian and Chinese Turkestan.
The two expeditions conducted by Mr. Raphael Pumpelly, on behalf of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in 1903 and 1904, the results of which have now been fully published, were occupied mainly with work in the Transcaspian province of Russian Turkestan. The physiographical observations collected by the first Pumpelly Expedition were supplemented during the second of them by archaeological evidence, obtained by excavations at Anau near Askhabad, and in the Merv Oasis, under the direction of Dr. Hubert Schmidt, of Berlin, who joined the staff of the expedition for that purpose. Both classes of evidence have a direct bearing upon the problem under discussion.