s 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. Halevy 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.

[Illustration: 147.jpg LIST OF ARCHAIC CUNEIFORM SIGNS.

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 hav