THE EARLY INHABITANTS.--The oldest inhabitants of this region of whom we have any knowledge were the _Sumerians,_ whose territory included both _Sumer_ ("Shinar"), or southern Babylonia, and _Akkad,_ or northern Babylonia. On the east were the _Elamites,_ with _Susa_ for their capital; to the north of these were the warlike _Kassites._ The Sumerians, who preceded the Semites in the occupancy of Babylonia, were of an unknown stock. They were the founders of Babylonian culture. Even by them the soil was skillfully cultivated with the help of dikes and canals. They were the inventors of the cuneiform writing. The cuneiform characters were originally pictures; but these were resolved into wedge-shaped characters of uniform appearance, the significance of which was determined by their position and local relation to one another. It is not known how long the Sumerian period lasted, nor even when it closed; the chronology of the earliest Semitic period is also very uncertain. The south-Babylonian kings _Urukagina,_ of _Shirpurla_ (Lagash), and _Enshagkushana,_ of a district which included _Nippur,_ are dated by most Assyriologists as early as 4000 B.C., or even earlier. Whether they were Sumerians, or Semites, is not certain; their inscriptions do not settle the question. It was probably not far from this time, however, that the one race supplanted the other. A Semitic people--coming either directly from the ancestral home, Arabia, or from a previous settlement in Mesopotamia, north-west of Babylonia--invaded the land and conquered the Sumerians. They planted themselves first in northern Babylonia, and then gradually extended their power over the districts on the south. The conquerors adopted the civilization of the conquered. The earliest Semitic kings all used the Sumerian dialect in their inscriptions. It was only by slow degrees that the native language was superseded by that of the new rulers. Later,--before the time of _Hammurabi_; see below,--these Semites carried their settlements northward, and became the founders of Assyria.