The assumption therefore of a purely non-Semitic culture for southern Babylonia is untenable.

Secondly, even in the oldest inscriptions found, there occur Semitic words and Semitic constructions which prove that the inscriptions were composed by Semites.

As long, therefore, as no traces of purely non-Semitic inscription are found, we cannot go beyond the Semites in seeking for the origin of the culture in this region.

In view of this, the theory first advanced by Prof.Joseph Halevy of Paris, and now supported by the most eminent of German Assyriologists, Prof.Friedrich Delitzsch, which claims that the cuneiform writing is Semitic in origin, needs to be most carefully considered.

There is much that speaks in favor of this theory, much that may more easily be accounted for by it, than by the opposite one, which was originally proposed by the distinguished Nestor of cuneiform studies, Jules Oppert, and which is with some modifications still held by the majority of scholars.[14] The question is one which cannot be answered by an appeal to philology alone.