1895.] yj- [Briaton. 



possible, in the avowedly corrupt condition of the inscriptions, 

 to construct a sane grammar from such disjecta membra ? 



A careful study of the human faces on the oldest Babylonian 

 monuments seems to tend strongly in favor of the Semitic the- 

 ory. In the excavations at Tello and Niffer we have well-drawn 

 portraits of the people who lived on the Sumeriau plain six 

 thousand years ago. To my own eye, they belong wholly to 

 the white race, and frequently unmistakably to its Semitic 

 branch. This also is the conviction of so eminent an ethnog- 

 rapher as Fr. Ratzel. In his discussion of the subject he writes : 

 " All of them, even the common people, the captives and the 

 eunuchs, present the Semitic traits. Xot one in the most re- 

 mote degree approaches the Turanian type." * All the professed 

 physical anthropologists who have examined • the ancient por- 

 traitures, without prejudice, have arrived at this same conclu- 

 sion. 



Even if there was a Sumerian language, related or not to the 

 Susie, it by no means follows that those who spoke it were the 

 authors of the ancient culture. On the contrarj^, there is evi- 

 dence the other way. The primal centre of progress was not 

 in Sumer, not among the litoral people of the Gulf, but up the 

 river, far inland. As McCurdy observes : " We can have no 

 hesitation in vindicating for the region north of Babylon, the 

 claim put forth in Genesis, that the seat of the earliest civiliza- 

 tion was the place of the parting of the rivers." f 



A curious bit of linguistic evidence illustrates this. The 

 earliest Babylonians knew no metal but copper, and used it only 

 for ornaments. When they first became acquainted with pearls 

 and adopted them as ornaments, thej^ called them " fish-copper," 

 ^. e., ornaments from fishes. This shows that they were an in- 

 land people. I 



♦Friederich Ratzel, Volkerkunde, Bd. iii, s. 739 (Leipzig, 1888). Lehmann, on the other 

 hand, cannot see anything Semitic in the faces from Tello ! {Shamashshamukin, p. 173). 

 It is enough to say that they have full, strong beards, abundant curly hair, nose promi- 

 nent and curved, the bridge raised, eyes straight, skull symmetrical and arched, in order 

 to satisfy any somatologist. 



f History, Prophecy and the Monuments, Vol. i, p. 124. S Reinach, a most competent 

 authority, declares that the most ancient Babylonian art "n'est pas Egyptisant," but 

 arose independently. Revue Archeologique, 1893, p. 101. 



tHaupt, in his article, "Wo lag das Paradies?" in Veher Land mid Meer, lS9b. The 

 copper from Tello is entirely pure, without a trace of tin. It doubtless came, as Virchow 

 maintains, from deposits of this character in Trans-Caucasia. Verhand. Berliner Antltrop, 

 Ges., Bd. xix, p. 336. 



