SUMERIAN LANGUAGE. The language supposed to have been spoken by the non-Semitic inhabitants of the Euphrates valley who were gradually absorbed by the invading Babylonians. This language. according to the view of a ma jority of Assyriologists, has been preserved in a number of inscriptions. The first successful decipherers of the cuneiform characters, Hineks, Rawlinson, and Oppert, observed that the wedge shaped signs were employed in writing languages not akin to the Assyrian, that the inventors of this system of writing cannot have been Semites, since the signs have syllabic values and some characteristic Semitic sounds are not represented, and that one of these languages was used in Babylonia itself. llineks thought that these languages were Aryan; Rawlinson regarded them as Scythian. meaning by this term Mongolian; Oppert considered the Babylonian non-Semitie tongue as Kasdo-Scythian. The term `..-keeadian' was first used by Rawlinson in 1855, the term 'Sumerian' by Oppert in 1869. There was prac tical unanimity among all Assyriologists before 1874 as to the agglutinating and non-Semitie character of this language. In that year, how ever, lialt7.vy began his protest against the very assumption that the Sumerian language ever ex isted. He first attempted to prove that the Sumerian language did not belong to the Tura nian family and that the Turanian people can not he supposed to have lived in Babylonia, and then maintained that the texts claimed to be Sumerian could be regarded as composed in an ideographic writing invented by the Assyrians in addition to the phonetic system and having the same values in pronunciation. Of the Sumerian signs in the syllabary, lie found Semitic values for 114. In 1876 Halevy modified his view by admitting that the Sumerian signs could not have been pronounced like the ordinary Assyrian words. In his opinion, the so-called Sumerian was only a hieratic or priestly system of writing used as a cryptography for purposes of conceal ment. it was made from the other not only by the peculiar choice of ideograms, hut by the apocopation of the closing vowel or syllable, changes of vowels and consonants. transpositions of syllables, and transfers of rarer meanings to common forms. Consequently it was to be re garded not only as a priestly system of writ ing. but as an artificial language constructed for certain occult purposes. Against this theory es pecially Oppert and Lenormant, Sayee, and Schrader urged many arguments, such as the im possibility of finding real Semitic values for the Sumerian signs and the improbability of an artificial language having been created as a secret means of communication between priests and then used for inscriptions in which kings recount their victories and their building enterprises. In 1880 Haupt indicated the existence of two dia lects. Emeku and Einesal, of the Sumerian as ,110W11 by certain differences observed by earlier scholars without full appreciation of their sig nificance. Even in view of this fact, explained Uy Halevy as due to varieties of cryptography, the difficulty of classifying the Sumerian, the apparent silence of the monuments concerning a nation speaking this language and conquered by the Babylonians, and the manifest influence of the Semitic speech on the vocabulary, led some scholars to hesitate. Meanwhile the study of
the Sumerian, on the assumption that it was a real language, continued. Lehmann's investiga tions rendered it probable that the native name of the people speaking this language was Shumcri and that their home was in South Babylonia, in distinction from the .11;1,•t:di, who were the Sem ites and had their centre in North Babylonia.
The Sumerian is found in bilingual syllaharies and word-lists, bilingual hymns and prayers, bilingual inscriptions of kings, and many unilin gual inscriptions. Of these the earliest show the least evidence of a Semitic influence. These are in the Enteku dialect. Those in the Einesal dia lect naturally reveal more traces of the Semitic vernacular. Even within the Emeku dialectical lilrerenees have been observed, and the Eincmal«h may represent a dialect spoken in Miluhha. (See Mix_EANs.) Sumerian loan-words in the As syrian,—of which Leander has counted 217—are taken from the Einehni. dialect. The Sumerian is made up of monosyllabic roots and shows no ten dency to triliterality; it is fond of compounds, which are rarely found in the Semitic languages, and expands its nouns by many prefixes and suf fixes; it has no gender. The plural is often formed by duplication, as kur-kur, 'lands,' si-si, 'horns,' and sometimes by iii; the genitive is sometimes expressed by the suffix ye or yid ; in stead of prepositions it has post-positions, such as -shit, 'to,' -/a. 'from,' -do, 'with;' the pronouns are either independent or pronominal suffixes, but altogether different from the Semitic; the nu merals resemble the Semitic only in making the twenties, thirties, etc., in the plural while the forms are entirely different; the verb has prac tically the same derived stems as the Semitic and Hamitic, but has a greater variety of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. The attempts to discover the affinities of this language have not yet been successful, hut it is probably the oldest known language in the world. From the Sumerian vo cabulary it is evident that the people who spoke this language had reached a comparatively high civilization. The sexagesimal system was in vogue, and the beginnings of astronomy and mathematics with 1111161 plausibility ascribed to the race who spoke the lishan Shumiri or Sumerian language.
BintloGRaritY. Lenormant, Lettres assyri oloyiqucs (Paris, 1874) ; Halevy, Recherches critiques sur l'origine de la civilisation baby lonienne (ib., 1876) ; 1)elitzseb, .tssyrische ( lied in. 1889) : id.. A ssyrischcs Handicort crbuch (Leipzig, 1896) ; id., Entstc hung des iiltesten ,~nhrift.cy.strins (ib., 1892); Haupt, Akkadische acid sumerische fir ilscIrift te,rtc (ib., 1881-82) ; id., Die sumerischen Pantiliengescte (ib., 1S79) ; id., Die akka dische Spruelic (Berlin, 1S83) ; Guyard, Bulletin critique de la religion assyro-bubyloniriCC (Paris, 1882) ; Zinunern, Babylonische Busspsalmen (Leipzig, 1885) ; Lehmann, Slat ash-sh u m-ukin (ib., 1892) ; Hommel, Sumerische Lescstiirke (Al un jell, 1894) ; Weissbach, Die sumeriselic Frage (Leipzig, Radau, Early His tory of Babylonia ( Oxford, 1900) ; Hil pre61t, Old Babylonian Inscriptions (Philadelphia, ISJS) ; Do Sarzee and Ileuzy, Deeouvcrtes en Cha1d6e ( Paris, 1890, et seq.) ; Rogers, History of Babylonia (New York, 1902) ; Barton, .1 Sketch of Semitic Origins (ib., 1902).