1. Stems. Besides a few uncommon spellings (as etc., see above, A, 4) nothing particular can be observed with regard to the formation of both verbal stems, present and past. The latter in a few cases appears to be formed from the former in a so-called ‘regular’way, and to be used instead of the original preterite, as in (18) ,(92 v.), etc. The verbal compounds also do not show many peculiarities, and only a few more or less archaic prepositions, as , etc., deserve to be mentioned.

A rigorous restriction of space in the Journal, which to the editor has all the virtues of necessity, and to the contributor most of the features of calamity, confines me to a few lines of preliminary matter. I should have wished to explain the use in these papers of the words “ ideogram ” and “ ideographic ”, but I cannot. I should also have liked to include entries on the important characters yin and yany of the dualistic system, which occur in my own collection of Honan relics, but are unknown to either Lo Chên-yü or Wang Hsiang, but this too is impossible. Let us therefore proceed to business.

It is not unlikely that the earliest trace of the Kurds is to be found on a Sumerian clay-tablet, of the third millennium B.C., on which “ the land of Kar-da ” or “ Qar-da ” is mentioned. This “ land of Karda ” adjoined that of the people of Su, who dwelt on the south of Lake Wân, and seems in all probability to have been connected with the Qur-ṭi-e, who lived in the mountains to the west of the same lake, and with whom Tiglath-Pileser I fought; the philological identity of these two names is, however, uncertain, owing to the doubt about the precise value of the palatals and dentals in Sumerian.

A previous article on the same subject appeared in the Journal for 1918, p. 263. Mr. A. F. Kendrick has kindly supplied a photograph, observations, and a description of the following fabric :—

Woven silk textile in the Victoria and Albert Museum, No. T. 122. 1921.