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Updated: June 6, 2025
The belief in Hades went back to those primitive ages when the Sumerians of Eridu conceived of the earth as floating on the deep, which surrounded it as a snake with its coils, while the sky covered it above like an extinguisher, and was supported on the peak of "the mountain of the world," where the gods had their abode.
We may therefore regard it as certain that the Hebrews derived their knowledge of Sumerian tradition, not directly from the Sumerians themselves, but through Semitic channels from Babylon.
The writing of Persepolis did not show any pictures at all. They consisted of v-shaped figures that were repeated endlessly and suggested nothing at all to the European eye. Nowadays, when the puzzle has been solved we know that the original script of the Sumerians had been a picture-language, quite as much as that of the Egyptians.
It would be strange indeed if the Sumerians had not evolved a Dragon myth, for the Dragon combat is the most obvious of nature myths and is found in most mythologies of Europe and the Near East. The trailing storm-clouds suggest his serpent form, his fiery tongue is seen in the forked lightning, and, though he may darken the world for a time, the Sun-god will always be victorious.
Though it would be rash to dogmatize on the subject, the view that connects its origin with the Sumerians appears on the whole to fit in best with the evidence at present available. It was without doubt this proto-Elamite system of writing which the Semites from Babylonia found employed in Elam on their first incursions into that country.
Sumerians and Akkadians are the names given to these non-Semitic settlers who preceded the Babylonians in the control of the Euphrates Valley. The names are derived from the terms Sumer and Akkad, which are frequently found in Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions, in connection with the titles of the kings.
This supposition is not inconsistent with the suggestion that the dynasty of the Country of the Sea was Sumerian, and that under it the Sumerians once more became the predominant race in Babylonia. The new chronicle also relates how the dynasty of the Country of the Sea succumbed in its turn before the incursions of the Kassites.
In Babylonia the Semites eventually predominated and the Sumerians as a race disappeared, but during the process of absorption the two languages were employed indiscriminately.
Here far-sighted engineers and stronghanded rulers turned the waters of Babylon into waters of life, and the Sawâd became a great heart of civilisation, breathing in man-power Sumerians and Amorites and Kassites and Aramaeans and Chaldeans and Persians and Greeks and Arabs and breathing out the works of man grain and wool and Babylonish garments, inventions still used in our machine-shops, and emotions still felt in our religion.
Sumerian civilization had profoundly influenced the Semitic tribes for centuries before the Semitic conquest of Babylonia, and when the Sumerians became more and more a conquered race, finally amalgamating with their conquerors and losing their racial and linguistic individuality, they were conquered by an alien race but not by an alien culture.
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