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not been suddenly superseded by the language of the Semitic invaders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.
The system of writing invented by the ancient Sumerians was adopted by
the Semitic Babylonians, who modified it to suit their own language.
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