Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/41

 THE WEDGES. 2 i divided than that of the Aryan and Semitic families ; but, nevertheless, it has a real value for the historian. 1 According to the doctrine which now seems most widely ac- cepted, it was from the crowded ranks of the immense army which peopled the north that the tribes who first attempted a civilized life in the plains of Shinar and the fertile slopes between the mountains and the left bank of the Tigris, were thrown off. It is thought that these tribes already possessed a national constitution, a religion, and a system of legislation, the art of writing and the most essential industries, when they first took possession of the lands in question. 2 A tradition still current among the eastern Turks puts the cradle of the race in the valleys of the Altai, north of the plateau of Pamir. 3 Whether the emigrants into Chaldaea brought the  o rudiments of their civilization with them, or whether their inven- tive faculties were only stirred to action after their settlement in that fertile land, is of slight importance. In any case we may say that they were the first to put the soil into cultivation, and to found industrious and stationary communities along the banks of its two great rivers. Once settled in Chalclaea, they called them- selves, according to M. Oppert, the people of SUMER, a title which is continually associated with that of " the people of ACCAD " in the inscriptions. 4 4. The Wedges. THE writing of Chaldaea, like that of Egypt, was, in the begin- ning, no more than the abridged and conventionalized representa- tion of familiar objects. The principle was identical with that of 1 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-Geriiianic, it made pretentions to exactitude which were only partially justified. 2 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 Chaldrea, by a close study of its characters. There is one sign representing a bear, an animal which does not exist in Chaldrea, 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 Asiatiqne for 1875, p. 466, a note to an answer to M. Hale'vy entitled Summcrien on rien. 3 MASPERO, Histoirc aticienne, p. 135. 4 These much disputed terms, Sinner and Accad, are, according to MM. Hale'vy and Guyard, nothing but the geographical titles of two districts of Lower Chaldosa.