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The Buddhist Origin of the ‘Sumerian’ Heads From Memphis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

D. H. Gordon
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Extract

In the museum of the Department of Egyptology at the University of London there is a collection of terra-cotta heads and figures discovered by Sir Flinders Petrie in the workmen's quarter at Memphis. They have been published by the Egyptian Exploration Fund in the volumes Memphis I, Palace of Apries (Memphis II), and Meydum and Memphis III.

My interest was aroused by the fact that there were among them a number of terra-cottas of Indian type, but I soon found that the dates given by Sir Flinders Petrie differed greatly from those which, on stylistic grounds, I should have myself assigned to figures of this type had they been discovered in India. In addition to this I felt very sceptical about the ‘Sumerian’ heads, which I considered had survived in a manner little short of miraculous. This article is an attempt to show that the ‘Sumerian’ heads are not in fact Sumerian at all but the heads of Buddhist priests, and that the whole collection covers a period not exceeding one hundred and fifty years: probably that of middle first century B.c. to the end of the first century A.D.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , Spring 1939 , pp. 35 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1939

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References

page 35 note 1 Here I have unconsciously adopted the attitude of Tarn, who in his The Greeks in Bactria and India says of these somewhat ambiguous steppe-dwellers: ‘I must follow the general usage and call them Iranians, but it will be understood that this refers to a common inheritance of language and custom and not to blood which cannot be traced.’

page 36 note 1 Text-figs, 1 and 2 show Kuvera-type figures from Memphis. Plate xvn, fig. g, is a Gandharan Kuvera of black schist, the arrangement of the robe over the left shoulder is identical with Text-fig. 2. This figure is seated in the ‘Western’ manner on a throne; more definitely ‘Indian’ Kuvera figures from Mathura are shown squatting in the same attitude precisely as those from Memphis

page 38 note 1 Mentioned by Warmington in The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, where in a note he quotes Fergusson, J., Hist, of Architecture, I. 149–50 (3rd ed., 1893)Google Scholar, as his source.

page 38 note 2 In writing this article I have freely consulted both H. G. Rawlinson's Intercourse between India and the Western Word, 2nd ed., and E. H. Warmington's The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India.