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Updated: June 6, 2025
The system of writing invented by the ancient Sumerians was adopted by the Semitic Babylonians, who modified it to suit their own language. Moreover, the archaic forms of the characters, many of which under the Sumerians still retained resemblances to the pictures of objects from which they were descended, were considerably changed.
They did not know how to build stairs and they therefore surrounded their towers with sloping galleries. Our engineers have borrowed this idea, as you may see in our big railroad stations where ascending galleries lead from one floor to another. We may have borrowed other ideas from the Sumerians but we do not know it.
The official religion of Babylonia was thus the Baal-worship of the Semites engrafted on the animism of the Sumerians. It was further modified by the introduction of star-worship.
In the dynasty of the Country of the Sea there is no doubt that we may trace the last successful struggle of the ancient Sumerians to retain possession of the land which they had held for so many centuries before the invading Semites had disputed its possession with them. Evidence of the Sumerian origin of the kings of the Country of the Sea may be traced in the names which several of them bear.
That in its origin this form of writing had some connection with that employed and, so far as we know, invented by the ancient Sumerians is possible.* But it shows small trace of Sumerian influence, and the disparity in the two systems of numeration is a clear indication that, at any rate, it broke off and was isolated from the latter at a very early period.
Side by side with these the monuments give evidence of a race of ill-defined character, whom we provisionally call Sumerians, who came, it is said, from some northern country, and brought with them a curious system of writing which, adopted by ten different nations, has preserved for us all that we know in regard to the majority of the empires which rose and fell in Western Asia before the Persian conquest.
To the Sumerians who first told the story, the great Flood appeared to have destroyed mankind, for Southern Babylonia was for them the world.
Under the Sumerians the wife could not obtain a divorce at all, and the penalty for denying her husband was death. These regulations were modified in favour of the woman in Hammurabi's code; for under its provisions, if a man divorced his wife or his concubine, he was obliged to make proper provision for her maintenance.
Perhaps Monsieur Bénédite is pressing his theme too far when he compares the close-cropped warriors on the handle with the shaven Sumerians and Elamites upon steles from Telloh and Susa, for their loin-girdles are African and quite foreign to the Euphrates Valley.
They regarded a well-filled treasure chest the highest ideal of all good citizens. Indeed they were very unpleasant people and did not have a single friend. Nevertheless they have rendered all coming generations one service of the greatest possible value. They gave us our alphabet. The Phoenicians had been familiar with the art of writing, invented by the Sumerians.
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