国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

to Egypt. Flinders Petrie gives in "Illahun, Kahun, and Gurol" (plate VII, fig. 27)
a representation of such a sickle found at Kahun in which the cutting edge is
formed by flakes of flint set in wood. And De Morgan found such flakes in
abundance both in Egypt and in Susiana. Similar flakes abound in the earliest
cultures at Anau; obviously the sickle would be one of the first implements to
be made of copper after the introduction of that metal. It would not be surpris-
ing if future researches should show that the Anau and Trojan form with the
bent-back tang was a survival from a much more ancient time.

The persistence of forms in objects of daily use through thousands of years
is one of the most remarkable evidences of that conservatism that has till recently
hindered the development of the inventive faculty of man in all directions. For
nineteen centuries the Italian peasant has used agricultural implements identical
in form with those in the Pompeian collection at Naples. This identity, as shown
in Pompeii, covers the widest range of survivals still in use throughout the modern
world, to mention only certain surgical and drafting implements, the same forms
in faucets and valves in plumbing, and in some kinds of bits for horses, and in the
dice for gambling. Here, too, we find in the Pompeian astragali the same "knuckle-
bones" which occur abundantly in the early culture-strata of Anau on the one
hand, and were used in games by the Greeks, and are still in use by modern
youth, marking perhaps a stage in a real sequence of tradition. The same method
of yoking oxen has followed the ox from ancient Chaldea westward through the
millenniums; and the American cowboy uses the lasso as it has come down to
him with the horse from ancient Irania. The same form of spindle-whorls occurs
in great quantities through eight thousand years of pre-Christian culture at
Anau, and still later in the medieval city, where they differ only in being glazed.
They had the same forms, too, though decorated, in Troy after the first city.
It would seem that all of our stocks of forms and of ornament have their roots
in many prehistoric centers, and that until the recent advance in mechanics and
chemistry modification in forms was due almost wholly to the requirements in
working newly discovered materials; and that the addition of new concepts was
due to the comminglings of traditions from primitive centers of independent
evolution.

I come now to what is, for several reasons, perhaps the most remarkable
of the finds from this culture. Between 40 and 43 feet above the base of culture,
there came to light numerous terra-cotta figurines of both human and animal
forms. Of these the human figures all represent women, and those of animals
are clearly meant for bulls or cows. They are shown on plates 46 and 47. As
a rule they are roughly formed, but in one instance (plate 46, figs. 10a and 10b)
the modeling is surprisingly artistic in so far as it was the evident intention of
the maker.

These female figures belong undoubtedly in the class of images of the life-
creating and life-nourishing goddess.* As Beltis, Ishtar, Nana, Anat, Astarte,