Briuton.] "" [April 19, 



kind appears in Bab^'lonian Semitic* What is not less signifi- 

 cant, the inscriptions themselves are entirely silent about any 

 such conquest.f 



Furthermore, professional comparative linguists have been 

 nonplussed at the strange features of the alleged Sumerian. Its 

 friends at first wished to class it with the " Turanian," espe- 

 cially the Ural-Altaic, languages. The " Finno-Tartar " was a 

 favorite group. But specialists in the Ural-Altaic tongues 

 unanimously declared that an}' such connection was an " abso- 

 lute impossibility."! Then recourse was had to the " Alarodian " 

 and the Dravidian; but with no better success. So that finally 

 the conclusion they were driven to was, that it was an independ- 

 ent stock by itself, without affinity, like the Basque, or, perhaps, 

 the Etruscan. 



There is nothing impossible in this. Historically, such 

 isolated examples are numerous. But the difficulty lies in 

 the alleged forms of the language themselves. They seem so 

 uncouth as to cast doubts on the whole theory. One word will 

 have more than fifty diflferent meanings assigned it ; the system 

 of affixes is most capricious ; its supposed system of " vocalic 

 harmony " is unexampled in any other tongue ; it omits a num- 

 ber of sounds absent also in Semitic — a suspicious coincidence ; 

 and so many disparities in its grammar have to be explained 

 away by assertions of " impure " and " dialectic " texts that the 

 whole assumes an air of uncertainty. § 



In view of such difficulties the question is urged. Are not 

 the supposed affixes merely the phonetic determinatives of 

 ideograms, which are themselves used sometimes for their ideo- 

 graphic, sometimes for their ikonomatic values, just as we find 

 them in the Mayan hieroglyphs of Central America? Or, if 

 there is a fond which is non -Semitic in the Sumerian (a likely 

 enough supposition), do not the above facts show that it is im- 



* A supposed instance is egal, palace, literally " great house " (e, house, gal, great, in 

 " Sumeriaa"). But may not the few expressions of this kind, as well as the names of 

 gods, Nergal, Anu, etc., merely be borrowings from neighbors? 



t Smith, uhisuprd. 



X Prof. Douner, of Helsingfors, has shown that no connection can exist between the 

 Sumerian and any of the five stocks of the Ural-Altaic languages. See Proc. Fifth Inter- 

 nal. Orient. Cong. A not less competent authority, Dr. Heinrich Winkler, says that it is 

 "absolut unmijglich." Ural-Altdische VOlker und Sprachen, p. 1G9. 



? Delitzsch, Assyrische Grammalik, ubi suprd. 



