In view of the important _rôle_ played by this early race in the history and development of civilization in Western Asia, it is of interest to recall the fact that not many years ago the very existence of the Sumerians was disputed by a large body of those who occupied themselves with the study of the history and languages of Babylonia. What was known as "the Sumerian controversy" engaged the attention of writers on these subjects, and divided them into two opposing schools. At that time not many actual remains of the Sumerians themselves had been recovered, and the arguments in favour of the existence of an early non-Semitic race in Babylonia were in the main drawn from a number of Sumerian texts and compositions which had been found in the palace of the Assyrian king, Ashur-banipal, at Nineveh. A considerable number of the tablets recovered from the royal library were inscribed with a series of compositions, written, it is true, in the cuneiform script, but not in the Semitic language of the Assyrians and Babylonians. To many of these compositions Assyrian translations had been added by the scribes who drew them up, and upon other tablets were found lists of the words employed in the compositions, together with their Assyrian equivalents. The late Sir Henry Rawlinson rightly concluded that these strange texts were written in the language of some race who had inhabited Babylonia before the Semites, while he explained the lists of words as early dictionaries compiled by the Assyrian scribes to help them in their studies of this ancient tongue. The early race he christened "the Akkadians," and although we now know that this name would more correctly describe the early Semitic immigrants who occupied Northern Babylonia, in all other respects his inference was justified. He correctly assigned the non-Semitic compositions that had been recovered to the early non-Semitic population of Babylonia, who are now known by the name of the Sumerians.