energetically defended this hypothesis
in the majority of his works: it is set forth at some length
in his work on _La Langue primitive de la Chaldee_. Hommel,
on the other hand, maintains and strives to demonstrate
scientifically the relationship of the non-Semitic tongue
with Turkish.

The traveller Olivier noticed this, and writes as follows: "The land
there is rather less fertile [than in Egypt], because it does not
receive the alluvial deposits of the rivers with the same regularity as
that of the Delta. It is necessary to irrigate it in order to render it
productive, and to protect it sedulously from the inundations which are
too destructive in their action and too irregular."

The first races to colonize this country of rivers, or at any rate
the first of which we can find traces, seem to have belonged to three
different types. The most important were the Semites, who spoke a
dialect akin to Aramaic, Hebrew, and Phoenician. It was for a long
time supposed that they came down from the north, and traces of their
occupation have been pointed out in Armenia in the vicinity of Ararat,
or halfway down the course of the Tigris, at the foot of the Gordysean
mountains. It has recently been suggested that we ought rather to seek
for their place of origin in Southern Arabia, and this view is gaining
ground among the learned. Side by side with these Semites, the monuments
give evidence of a race of ill-defined character, which some have
sought, without much success, to connect with the tribes of the Urall or
Altai; these people are for the present provisionally called Sumerians.*
They came, it would appear, from some northern country; they brought
with them from their original home a curious system of writing, which,
modified, transformed, and 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.
Semite or Sumerian, it is still doubtful which preceded the other at the
mouths of the Euphrates. The Sumerians, who were for a time all-powerful
in the centuries before the dawn of history, had already mingled closely
with the Semites when we first hear of them. Their language gave way to
the Semitic, and tended gradually to become a language of ceremony and
ritual, which was at last learnt less for everyday use, than for the
drawing up of certain royal inscriptions, or for the interp