That this people were not indigenous to Babylonia is highly probable, but we have little data by which to determine the region from which they originally came. Prom the fact that they built their ziggurats, or temple towers, of huge masses of unburnt brick which rose high above the surrounding plain, and that their ideal was to make each “like a mountain,” it has been argued that they were a mountain race, and the home from which they sprang has been sought in Central Asia. Other scholars have detected signs of their origin in their language and system of writing, and, from the fact that they spoke an agglutinative tongue and at the earliest period arranged the characters of their script in vertical lines like the Chinese, it has been urged that they were of Mongol extraction. Though a case may be made out for this hypothesis, it would be rash to dogmatize for or against it, and it is wiser to await the discovery of further material on which a more certain decision may be based. But whatever their origin, it is certain that the Sumerians exercised an extraordinary influence on all races with which, either directly or indirectly, they came in contact. The ancient inhabitants of Elam at a very early period adopted in principle their method of writing, and afterwards, living in isolation in the mountainous districts of Persia, developed it on lines of their own. [* See Chap. V, and note.] On their invasion of Babylonia the Semites fell absolutely under Sumerian influence, and, although they eventually conquered and absorbed the Sumerians, their civilization remained Sumerian to the core. Moreover, by means of the Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia Sumerian culture continued to exert its influence on other and more distant races. We have already seen how a Babylonian element probably enters into Egyptian civilization through Semitic infiltration across the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb or by way of the Isthmus of Suez, and it was Sumerian culture which these Semites brought with them. In like manner, through the Semitic Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Kassites, and the inhabitants of Palestine and Syria, and of some parts of Asia Minor, Armenia, and Kurdistan, all in turn experienced indirectly the influence of Sumerian civilization and continued in a greater or less degree to reproduce elements of this early culture.
It will be seen that the influence of the Sumerians furnishes us with a key to much that would otherwise prove puzzling in the history of the early races of Western Asia. It is therefore all the more striking to recall the fact that but a few years ago the very existence of this ancient people was called in question. At that time the excavations in Mesopotamia had not revealed many traces of the race itself, and its previous existence had been mainly inferred from a number of Sumerian compositions inscribed upon Assyrian tablets found in the library of Ashur-bani-pal at Nineveh. These compositions were furnished with Assyrian translations upon the tablets on which they were inscribed, and it was correctly argued by the late Sir Henry Rawlinson, the late M. Oppert, Prof. Schrader, Prof. Sayce, and other scholars that they were written in the language of the earlier inhabitants of the country whom the Semitic Babylonians had displaced. But M. Halévy started a theory to the effect that Sumerian was not a language at all, in the proper sense of the term, but was a cabalistic method of writing invented by the Semitic Babylonian priests.
Drawn up by an Assyrian scribe to assist him in his studies of early texts. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
The argument on which the upholders of this theory mainly relied was that many of the phonetic values of the Sumerian signs were obviously derived from Semitic equivalents, and they hastily jumped to the conclusion that the whole language was similarly derived from Semitic Babylonian, and was, in fact, a purely arbitrary invention of the Babylonian priests. This theory ignored all questions of inherent probability, and did not attempt to explain why the Babylonian priests should have troubled themselves to make such an invention and afterwards have stultified themselves by carefully appending Assyrian translations to the majority of the Sumerian compositions which they copied out. Moreover, the nature of these compositions is not such as we should expect to find recorded in a cabalistic method of writing. They contain no secret lore of the Babylonian priests, but are merely hymns and prayers and religious compositions similar to those employed by the Babylonians and Assyrians themselves.
But in spite of its inherent improbabilities, M. Halévy succeeded in making many converts to his theory, including Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch and a number of the younger school of German Assyriologists. More conservative scholars, such as Sir Henry Rawlinson, M. Oppert, and Prof. Schrader, stoutly opposed the theory, maintaining that Sumerian was a real language and had been spoken by an earlier race whom the Semitic Babylonians had conquered; and they explained the resemblance of some of the Sumerian values to Semitic roots by supposing that Sumerian had not been suddenly superseded by the language of the Semitic invaders of Babylonia, but that the two tongues had been spoken for long periods side by side and that each had been strongly influenced by the other. This very probable and sane explanation has been fully corroborated by subsequent excavations, particularly those that were carried out at Telloh in Southern Babylonia by the late M. de Sarzec. In these mounds, which mark the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Shirpurla, were found thousands of clay tablets inscribed in archaic characters and in the Sumerian language, proving that it had actually been the language of the early inhabitants of Babylonia; while the examples of their art and the representations of their form and features, which were also afforded by the diggings at Telloh, proved once for all that the Sumerians were a race of strongly marked characteristics and could not be ascribed to a Semitic stock.
The system of writing invented by the ancient Sumerians was adopted by the Semitic Babylonians, who modified it to suit their own language. Moreover, the archaic forms of the characters, many of which under the Sumerians still retained resemblances to the pictures of objects from which they were descended, were considerably changed. The lines, of which they were originally composed, gave way to wedges, and the number of the wedges of which each sign consisted was gradually diminished, so that in the time of the Assyrians and the later Babylonians many of the characters bore small resemblance to the ancient Sumerian forms from which they had been derived. The reading of Sumerian and early Babylonian inscriptions by the late Assyrian scribes was therefore an accomplishment only to be acquired as the result of long study, and it is interesting to note that as an assistance to the reading of these early texts the scribes compiled lists of archaic signs. Sometimes opposite each archaic character they drew a picture of the object from which they imagined it was derived. This fact is significant as proving that the Assyrian scribes recognized the pictorial origin of cuneiform writing, but the pictures they drew opposite the signs are rather fanciful, and it cannot be said that their guesses were very successful. That we are able to criticize the theories of the Assyrians as to the origin and forms of the early characters is in the main due to M. de Sarzec’s labours, from whose excavations many thousands of inscriptions of the Sumerians have been recovered.
The main results of M. de Sarzec’s diggings at Telloh have already been described by M. Maspero in his history, and therefore we need not go over them again, but will here confine ourselves to the results which have been obtained from recent excavations at Telloh and at other sites in Western Asia. With the death of M. de Sarzec, which occurred in his sixty-fifth year, on May 31, 1901, the wonderfully successful series of excavations which he had carried out at Telloh was brought to an end. In consequence it was feared at the time that the French diggings on this site might be interrupted for a considerable period. Such an event would have been regretted by all those who are interested in the early history of the East, for, in spite of the treasures found by M. de Sarzec in the course of his various campaigns, it was obvious that the site was far from being exhausted, and that the tells as yet unexplored contained inscriptions and antiquities extending back to the very earliest periods of Sumerian history.