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(preface.
The science of Philology does not consist primarily of enumerating and arranging
material, but rather of that more important exactness which weighs probabilities and seeks
truth amid puzzling uncertainties. Bewildering uncertainties are plentiful in the Sumerian
material which we now have at our disposal, dating from the earliest until the very
latest times of the Assyro-Babylonian empire. Many may claim, however, that the study
of this material has not yet sufficiently advanced to justify the publication of even an
attempt at a lexicon. I can only reply to such objectors in the words of the Turkish
proverb: vL^J.I -Jo s^Sju+X.)) j*** Jik.» 'the new moon can never become full unless it
progresses.' An attempt has been made in the present work, to which I dare not give a
more imposing title than Materials for a Sumerian Lexicon, to solve some of the many
problems which have vexed the Assyriological world since the first recognition of the exist-
ence in the Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions of an idiom which is clearly not Semitic.
I believe with all modesty that a solution has herein been reached as to the
general character of this curious melange of evidently non-Semitic and, equally evidently,
deliberately Semitized matter. The theory set forth in the present pages that the Sume-
rian of later days, especially of the hymns, is a more or less deliberate!}" constructed
hodge-podge of Semitic inventions superimposed on what could only have been a non-
Semitic agglutinative, almost polysynthetic language, should, I think, go a long way toward
setting at rest the argumentation of the constantly decreasing HALEVYan school of Jewish
Chauvinism. It is not to be hoped, however, that this will be the case, as theories die
hard, particularly theories which seem to reflect glory on the race of their advocates. In all
fairness it should be stated that the idea of the non-Semitic origin of the Sumerian idiom
does not in the slightest degree detract from the glories of the mental powers of the
early Semites. What other ancient people has been able to adopt an entirely and radi-
cally foreign idiom and so to alter it, that a school of distinguished modern scholars