[The text of the original letter that appeared in The Illustrated London News of Sept. 27, 1924 in response to Sir John Marshall's having publicized the ancient Indus discoveries in the issue seven days previously is given below. It was this letter that pushed back Marshall's original estimate of the age of the newly discovered civilization by roughly 1,500 years, contemporaneous with ancient Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Egypt.]
Professor A. H. Sayce, D.Litt. LL.D., D.D., the famous Assyriologist, writes to us as follows :-—
The remarkable discoveries in the Panjab and Sind, of which Sir John Marshall has given an account in “The Illustrated London News," September 20, are even more remarkable and startling than he supposes. The inscribed "seals "' or plaques found at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro are practically identical with the Proto-Elamite ‘‘ tablettes de comptabilité" discovered by De Morgan at Susa. The form and size of the plaques are the same, the “unicorns" are the same, and the pictographs and numerals are also the same. The identity is such that the “seals"’ and tablets might have come from the same hand. The tablets, which are very numerous, have been published by Scheil in the “Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique de Perse,” VI. (1905) and XVII. (1923). They belong to the third millennium B.C., and extend from the age of the Babylonian King Manistusu (B.C. 2600) to that of the Third Dynasty of Ur (B.C. 2300). A native king a little later has added a text in the same pictographs to a cuneiform inscription. It is evident, therefore, that as far back as the third millennium B.C. there was intercourse between Susa and the North-West of India. The discovery opens up a new historical vista, and is likely to revolutionise our ideas of the age and origin of Indian civilisation. So far as I can gather from the description of the painted pottery accompanying the plaques, it resembles that of the Susian *second style,"’ which was contemporaneous with the tablets. An inscribed “‘ seal"’ from Harappa was published by Terrien de la Couperie in an early number of the ‘‘Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology.”
A. H. Sayce.
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Our readers will remember that in last week's issue of “The Illustrated London News" we published a notable article by Sir John Marshall, CJ.E., Litt.D., Director-General of Archaeology in India, which dealt with the new light thrown upon an early civilisation in India by the recent excavations at Harappa in the Panjab and Mohenjo-Daro in Sind.
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