Sumerians Sentence Examples

Whether we should deduce from its common occurrence in Babylonia the existence of an Elamite population there in early times, later displaced by the Sumerians, we do not know.

An argument for discontinuity of race is found in the fact that whereas the Sumerians are never represented as using the bow, their predecessors certainly made flint arrowheads.

This double method of writing words arises from the circumstance that the cuneiform syllabary is of non-Semitic origin, the system being derived from the non-Semitic settlers of the Euphrates valley, commonly termed Sumerians (or Sumero-Akkadians), to whom, as the earlier settlers, the origin of the cuneiform script is due.

A doubt also still exists in regard to a number of names of the older period because of the uncertainty whether their bearers were Sumerians or Semites.

It is believed that the ultimate origin of the constellation figures and names is to be found in the corresponding systems in vogue among the primitive civilizations of the Euphrates valley - the Sumerians, Accadians and Babylonians; that these were carried westward into ancient Greece by the Phoenicians, and to the lands of Asia Minor by the Hittites, and that Hellenic culture in its turn introduced them into Arabia, Persia and India.

The Sumerians and Accadians, the non-Semitic inhabitants of the Euphrates valley prior to the Babylonians, described the stars collectively as a " heavenly flock "; the sun was the " old sheep "; the seven planets were the " old-sheep stars "; the whole of the stars had certain " shepherds, " and Sibzianna (which, according to Sayce and Bosanquet, is the modern Arcturus, the brightest star in the northern sky) was the " star of the shepherds of the heavenly herds."

These invaders, according to this latter view, adopted the religion and culture of the conquered Sumerians; and, consequently, the Sumerian idiom at a comparatively early date began to be used exclusively in the Semitic temples as the written vehicles of religious thought in much the same way as was the medieval Latin of the Roman Church.

The Sumerians cast the heads of their lions in copper, not always with successful results, and filled them with bitumen and clay (like the image in " Bel and the Dragon," which was " clay within and brass without ") to give them solidity.

Peter Jensen has conjectured with slight probability that the Chaldaeans were Semitized Sumerians, i.e.