34. The general evolution of the PI consonants, together with the special question of dialectical differences arising therefrom, has been set forth by Dr. Bloch. It will be sufficient here to note the chief features in that development, with special reference to Gujarātī.

In the January number of this Journal there appeared a most interesting article by Mr. M. Longworth Dames on “The Portuguese and Turks in the Indian Ocean in the Sixteenth Century”. The article furnishes an admirable introduction to this engrossing, if little known, subject; and it is only by way of supplement that I am writing the following notes.

The territory occupied by the Kurdish race in historic times seems to have been the district called by the Greeks Kardûchia, and by both Greeks and Romans Corduene or Gordiaea, and by the Syriac writers Qardū, whence the earliest Arabic authorities derived the name Qardā, the country bounded roughly on the north by Armenia, on the west by the river Euphrates, on the south by the Arabian desert, and on the east by the ancient kingdom of Media. Strabo, the Greek geographer, states that Armenia and Atropatene consisted of prosperous districts, but that the northern part was a mountainous country occupied by wild tribes, such as the Kyrtii, nomads and brigands dispersed over the whole of Armenia and extending eastwards over the Zagros mountains. More closely he defines the land of the Gordiaei, whom the earlier writers called Kardūchi, by locating it on the banks of the Tigris and by adding that one of its chief cities was Pinaka, the modern Finik, “a very strong fortress, having three hill-tops, each fortified with its own wall, so as to form as it were a threefold city; yet Armenians subjugated it and Romans took it by storm, although the Gordiaei were apparently good builders and skilled in siege-works, for which reason Tigranes so employed them.”

This Semitic root occurs regularly in Hebrew, Phœnician, and Aramaic in the form r-š-p, although Syriac agrees with Assyrian in having the metathesis š-r-b. The regular Semitic form of this root exists in Assyrian in the word raššubatu, flame, conflagration, brilliancy, terror, and is the cognate of Hebrew réšeph. The root rašābu, blaze, has been entered in the lexicons with the meaning “be powerful, terrible”, and the error still persists, although Jensen indicated the correct root of rašābu, rašbu, and rašubbu, blazing, in his Mythen und Epen, 580. A passage which finally disposes of the old error is CT. 19, 22, 11, izi ú-gug-ga = rà-šub-bat īšāti, Syn. of kibbat īšāti, flame of fire. The syllable ra is written with the sign UD, which has the value ra, RA. 10, 74, 18. But it is a rare value and consequently the passage was never understood. The Sumerian word ugug is a derivative of the root gug, to burn.

In recent years a large number of economic tablets from Senkereh have appeared in the commerce of antiquity dealers. The Louvre in Paris and the Yale Babylonian Collection in America secured a great many. A small collection was sold to the Museum of the University of Wales in 1914, which contains a contract of sale written at Ellasar. The Rev. Chas. Overy, M.A., of Radley College, near Oxford, secured a perfect specimen of the Senkereh archives when he was in the service of the British Army in Mesopotamia. He has kindly shown me the tablet and permitted its publication in our Journal.