But in no other
way does the find affect our conception of the history of the country,
and we may therefore pass on to a consideration of such recent
discoveries as throw new light upon the course of history in Western
Asia.
With the advent of the First Dynasty in Babylon Elam found herself
face to face with a power prepared to dispute her claims to exercise a
suzerainty over the plains of Mesopotamia. It is held by many writers
that the First Dynasty of Babylon was of Arab origin, and there is much
to be said for this view. M. Pognon was the first to start the theory
that its kings were not purely Babylonian, but were of either Arab or
Aramaean extraction, and he based his theory on a study of the forms of
the names which some of them bore. The name of Samsu-imna, for instance,
means "the sun is our god," but the form of the words of which the name
is composed betray foreign influence. Thus in Babylonian the name for
"sun" or the Sun-god would be _Shamash_ or _Shamshu_, not _Samsu_; in
the second half of the name, while _ilu_ ("god") is good Babylonian, the
ending _na_, which is the pronominal suffix of the first person plural,
is not Babylonian, but Arabic. We need not here enter into a long
philological discussion, and the instance already cited may suffice to
show in what way many of the names met in the Babylonian inscriptions
of this period betray a foreign, and possibly an Arabic, origin.
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