The first, the Sumerians, occupied before—perhaps long before—the close of the fourth millennium the land on the lower plain of the Tigris and Euphrates and on the sea coast, as it then was.[890] They possessed an advanced civilisation, with an organised government, many large cities, and considerable agricultural and industrial development.
Whence their emigration, to what family, Mongol or other, they belong, is not clear. It is settled they were not Semites, like the Babylonians and Assyrians. Their language (preserved in liturgies, etc.,[891] down even to the time of the Persian conquest) and their writing, adopted by the Babylonians and Assyrians, which runs, unlike the Hebrew, from left to right,[892] disprove Sumerian descent from Shem.
It is impossible at present to fix a definite period for their immigration. The dates assigned vary from 7000 to 4000 b.c. The statement, however, that “Aryans, Turanians, Semites were all in a nomadic condition, when the early Sumerian settlers in Lower Babylonia betook themselves to agriculture, builded great cities, and established a stable government,” seems hardly exaggerated, even though it postulates a very ancient era.
The second, the Semitic Babylonians, starting possibly from South Arabia by way of the Syrian coast, reached the lower part of the Tigris and Euphrates about 3800 b.c.[893] It was not, however, until some thousand years afterwards, that they effected a conquest of the Sumerians.
Like other defeated peoples, such as the Canaanites with the Jews, the Irish with the English, “Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores,” they grafted their policy on that of their victors, and perpetuated many of their racial characteristics and customs, as well as their religion. “The Semitic invaders seem to have been completely converted. In fact Babylonian religion has scarcely anything characteristically Semitic in it.”[894]
The third, the Assyrians proper, an offshoot from Babylonia, are found (before 2300 b.c.) pushing their way north along the Tigris, on whose western bank they founded their first city and earliest capital—Asur. Wars between them and Babylonia mark the history of centuries. Their definite suzerainty over that country was only established by Tiglath-Pileser III., c. 730 b.c.
Passing now to the dates of the connection between this Empire and Egypt, the first assigned is:
(a) Early dynastic, say about 4400 b.c., which would probably correspond to the early Sumerian periods. Some authorities indeed hold that Egypt was invaded by Babylonians, or was culturally permeated by the “proto-Babylonians,” or Sumerians. Of invasion we possess no proof, or even strong suggestion; of cultural permeation, to which Hommel, in especial, attributes the whole primeval culture of Egypt, some elements and some signs are possibly noticeable, but even these are Semitic, not Sumerian,[895] while their total compares insignificantly with those of native origin.[896]
Of these signs, the use by the Egyptians of the cylinder seal, of which the Royal tombs of the first Dynasty afford examples, stands out as the most important. As this characterised Sumer and Babylonia at all times, while it fell into disuse in the country of the Pharaohs, the seal was inferred to be an original product of Sumer, whence it reached Egypt in late pre-dynastic or early dynastic times.
But (as King[897] continues) “Recent research—such as Naville’s at Abydos, and Reisner’s at Naga-ed-Dêr—leaves small room for the theory that early Egyptian culture was subjected to any strong foreign influence in early dynastic times; thus the theory of the invasion by Semitic tribes must be given up.” Maspero maintains that as far back as the IVth or Vth Dynasties there were overland relations between Egypt and Chaldea.[898]