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 have troubled themselves to make such an invention and afterwards have stultified themselves by carefully appending Assyrian translations to the majority of the Sumerian compositions which they copied out.  Moreover, the nature of these compositions is not such as we should expect to find recorded in a cabalistic method of writing.  They contain no secret lore of the Babylonian priests, but are merely hymns and prayers and religious compositions similar to those employed by the Babylonians and Assyrians themselves.

But in spite of its inherent improbabilities, M. Halevy succeeded in making many converts to his theory, including Prof.  Friedrich Delitzsch and a number of the younger school of German Assyriologists.  More conservative scholars, such as Sir Henry Rawlinson, M. Oppert, and Prof.  Schrader, stoutly opposed the theory, maintaining that Sumerian was a real language and had been spoken by an earlier race whom the Semitic Babylonians had conquered; and they explained the resemblance of some of the Sumerian values to Semitic roots by supposing that Sumerian had not been suddenly superseded by the language of the Semitic invaders of Babylonia, but that the two tongues had been spoken for long periods side by side and that each had been strongly influenced by the other.  This very probable and sane explanation has been fully corroborated by subsequent excavations, particularly those that were carried out at Telloh in Southern Babylonia by the late M. de Sarzec.  In these mounds, which mark the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Shirpurla, were found thousands of clay tablets inscribed in archaic characters and in the Sumerian language, proving that it had actually been the language of the early inhabitants of Babylonia; while the examples of their art and the representations of their form and features, which were also afforded by the diggings at Telloh, proved once for all that the Sumerians were a race of strongly marked characteristics and could not be ascribed to a Semitic stock.