A difficult but interesting problem presents itself for solution at the outset of our inquiry into the history of this people as revealed by their lately recovered inscriptions,--the problem of their race and origin. Found at Susa in Elam, and inscribed by princes bearing purely Elamite names, we should expect these votive and memorial texts to be written entirely in the Elamite language. But such is not the case, for many of them are written in good Semitic Babylonian. While some are entirely composed in the tongue which we term Elamite or Anzanite, others, so far as their language and style is concerned, might have been written by any early Semitic king ruling in Babylonia. Why did early princes of Susa make this use of the Babylonian tongue? At first sight it might seem possible to trace a parallel in the use of the Babylonian language by kings and officials in Egypt and Syria during the fifteenth century B.C., as revealed in the letters from Tell el-Amarna. But a moment’s thought will show that the cases are not similar. The Egyptian or Syrian scribe employed Babylonian as a medium for his official foreign correspondence because Babylonian at that period was the _lingua franca_ of the East. But the object of the early Elamite rulers was totally different. Their inscribed bricks and memorial stelæ were not intended for the eyes of foreigners, but for those of their own descendants. Built into the structure of a temple, or buried beneath the edifice, one of their principal objects was to preserve the name and deeds of the writer from oblivion. Like similar documents found on the sites of Assyrian and Babylonian cities, they sometimes include curses upon any impious man, who, on finding the inscription after the temple shall have fallen into ruins, should in any way injure the inscription or deface the writer’s name. It will be obvious that the writers of these inscriptions intended that they should be intelligible to those who might come across them in the future. If, therefore, they employed the Babylonian as well as the Elamite language, it is clear that they expected that their future readers might be either Babylonian or Elamite; and this belief can only be explained on the supposition that their own subjects were of mixed race. It is therefore certain that at this early period of Elamite history Semitic Babylonians and Elamites dwelt side by side in Susa and retained their separate languages. The problem therefore resolves itself into the inquiry: which of these two peoples occupied the country first? Were the Semites at first in sole possession, which was afterwards disputed by the incursion of Elamite tribes from the north and east? Or were the Elamites the original inhabitants of the land, into which the Semites subsequently pressed from Babylonia?