ons. According to him,
the writing under which a Turanian idiom is said to lurk, is no more than a
variation upon the Assyrian fashion of noting words, than an early form of
writing which owed its preservation to the quasi-sacred character imparted
by its extreme antiquity. We have no intention of discussing his thesis in
these pages; we must refer those who are interested in the problem to M.
HALEVY'S dissertation in the _Journal Asiatique_ for June 1874:
_Observations critiques sur les pretendus Touraniens de la Babylonie_. M.
Stanislas Guyard shares the ideas of M. Halevy, to whom his accurate
knowledge and fine critical powers afford no little support.

[39] MASPERO, _Histoire ancienne_, p. 134. Upon the etymology of
_Turanians_ see MAX MUeLLER'S _Science of Language_, 2nd edition, p. 300,
_et seq._ Upon the constituent characteristics of the Turanian group of
races and languages other pages of the same work may be consulted.... The
distinction between Turan and Iran is to be found in the literature of
ancient Persia, but its importance became greater in the Middle Ages, as
may be seen by reference to the great epic of Firdusi, the _Shah-Nameh_.
The kings of Iran and Turan are there represented as implacable enemies. It
was from the Persian tradition that Professor Mueller borrowed the term
which is now generally used to denote those northern races of Asia that are
neither Aryans nor Semites.

[40] This family is sometimes called _Ural-Altaic_, a term formed in
similar fashion to that of _Indo-Germanic_, which has now been deposed by
the term Aryan. It is made up of the names of two mountain chains which
seem to mark out the space over which its tribes were spread. Like the word
_Indo-Germanic_, it made pretensions to exactitude which were only
partially justified.

[41] This is the opinion of M. OPPERT. He was led to the conclusion that
their writing was invented in a more northern climate than that of Chaldaea,
by a close study of its characters. There is one sign representing a bear,
an animal which does not exist in Chaldaea, while the lions which were to be
found there in such numbers had to be denoted by paraphrase, they were
called _great dogs_. The palm tree had no sign of its own. See in the
_Journal Asiatique_ for 1875, p. 466, a note to an answer to M. Halevy
entitled _Summerien ou rien_.

[42] MASPERO, _Histoire ancienne_, p. 135.

[43] These much disputed terms, Sumer and Accad, are, according to MM