Note 890 — Chapter XXX · NO ROD, ALTHOUGH CLOSE INTERCOURSE WITH EGYPT

From the find (made during the war by a Sikh regiment on the Tigris above Samara) of an alabaster vase (now in the Ashmolean Museum), which from archæological reasons must be placed among the very earliest remnants of Sumerian civilisation, it is evident that—given the discovery was in situ—the frontiers of the Sumerian Empire must have extended much farther north than has been hitherto generally supposed. Owing to the deposits of the two rivers, the sea has receded some hundred and twenty miles.