BUFFALO SOCIF/TY OF NATURAL SCIENCES 111 



BEVELED END STYLUS 



pression where it was impinged upon the clay. The characters 

 soon became so conventionalized that the original pictograph 

 was lost and can be discerned only after arduous study. 



The language which was written in these cuneiform char- 

 acters is known as Sumerian and the people as Sumerians. 

 Whence these Sumerians came into the Tigris-Euphrates valley, 

 whether by land or sea (Persian Gulf), is entirely unknown. No 

 attempt to prove kinship with any other known people or lan- 

 guage has been successful. The earliest remains in Babylonia 

 probably do not antedate 3000 B. C, and are characterized by a 

 comparatively advanced state of culture. The earliest documents 

 are written in Sumerian, which continued to be the language of 

 religion, legal procedure, and commerce for about a thousand 

 years. Then business documents began to be written in a Semitic 

 tongue with these same cuneiform characters, just as we write 

 English with Latin letters. It is due to this borrowing on the 

 part of the Semites from the Sumerians of their method of 

 writing, that Semitic Babylonian is also written in cuneiform and 

 is the only one of the Semitic group of languages that is written 

 without an alphabet. The amalgamation of these two races has 

 left traces of itself in the proper names found in these documents. 

 At first all names of persons are Sumerian, but gradually as the 

 Semitic race gained the preponderance and finally the supremacy 

 over the Sumerian population whose higher culture they adopted, 

 Semitic names appear, then finally entirely displace Sumerian 

 names. It is only when Semitic names are written in syllables 

 that they are to be distinguished with certainty from Sumerian 

 names. Here are a few examples of Semitic names from Tablets 

 Nos. 18 and 20 : En-zu-i-ki-sha-am, "the god Enzu has pre- 

 sented" ; En-zu-im-gu-ra-an-ni, "the god Enzu was favorable" ; 

 En-zu-ish-me-a-ni, "the god Enzu has heard me" ; A-bu-wa-qar, 

 "the father is dear." 



Clay that was to be used for writing material was well 

 washed to free it from sand. It had such great adhesive power 

 that tablets that were merely sun-dried and have remained buried 



