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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
240
would be the reverse of what happened in the neighbouring
lands of Armenia, Georgia, Troy, Crete, etc.
It is, nevertheless, remarkable that in the ancient Sumerian
reliefs and sculptures from the beginning of the third millen
nium B.c. and later, the Sumerians generally differ from the
Semites in håving Armenoid faces with the big curved nose
and high nose-bridge continuing in the line of the sloping fore
head, sometimes also with a weak receding chin.i In shape,
on the other hand, the heads do not resemble the high Armen
oid short-skulls, but look rather long-skulled. How much
weight should be given to these facts it is difficult to decide.
That the Armenoid type is found later on Assyrian reliefs is
of less importance, as the Assyrian empire may have been
founded by Mitanni from Asia Minor (cf. p. 230).
We do not know who the short-skulled peoples were who
dispossessed the long-skulls of Armenia at the beginning of
the Iron Age, but they may possibly have included the Nairi
peoples, who are first referred to in Assyrian inscriptions of
the thirteenth century b.c. as living in Southern Armenia,
near the Urmia and Van Lake, and who are mentioned with
the Khaldians at a later date. These peoples evidently entered
from the west. In a relief of a battle with the Khaldians—
the Assyrian King Salmanassar lll’s (860-825) bronze plate
on the gate at Balavat—the Khaldians are represented as two
different kinds of people, large men and dwarfs, the latter
always under the protection of the former.2 The meaning
of this seems to be that there was a ruling people, probably
of the tall, short-skulled Armenoid race, and a smalier subject
people, probably of the earlier long-skulled race, of whom
some still survived, though they afterwards disappeared,
leaving little trace of themselves in the later population of
Armenia.
After the Khaldians the Armenians likewise immigrated
from the west, chiefly in the sixth century b.c. Like the
former, they belonged to the Armenoid race, but they spoke
an Indo-European tongue. Their forefathers evidently came
1 Cf. the pictures in L. W. King, A History of Surner and Akad, pp. 40 ff.,
London, 1910. See also Eduard Meyer, Sumerier imd Semiten in Babylonien,
Abhandl. d. k. preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaftcn, 1906.
J Cf. Lehmann-Haupt, Armenien Einsi undJet^t, vol. i, p. 306 ; ii, p. 681 f.
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