The Akkadian Chaldee language (to be distinguished from the later Semitic Syro-Chaldee) has, like the Egyptian Khemi, no immediate affinities with any other important form of speech. They are both of an older type and stock than the oldest known members of the Aryan and Semitic families. The Akkadian is called Turanian, as showing undoubted resemblances to the Turki and Mongol languages of the lands lying north and east of Persia, which were named by the Persians Turan, as distinguished from Iran. The place of the Khemi in philology is not so easily defined. It does not seem that any other language than that of Egypt was ever written in the Egyptian script. The case is somewhat different with the Chaldee characters. They were adopted in varying modes for writing Semitic and Aryan languages, as well as the native Akkadian. This resulted from the blending of populations by successive conquests. The Akkadian-Chaldees ruled in Mesopotamia till 1500 B.C., when they went down before the Semites from Northern Arabia. {10}A branch of these Semites had already for a considerable time occupied the eastern side of Mesopotamia and were in possession of the region round Nineveh, at the time when their Arabian kindred swept away the old dynasty that had had its chief seat in Babylonia. At or about 1300 B.C., the Ninevite Assyrians or Syro-Chaldæans united the whole of Mesopotamia by conquest, and completed the downfall of the Akkadian Chaldæans who were thenceforward reduced to servitude. Even the later uprisings in Babylonia were only the work of princes of Assyrian blood. The date mentioned is another standpoint in the history of writing. The Semite Assyrians were now the chief users of the cuneiform script. At Babylon they seem to have retained it in the same form into which it had developed in the hands of the Akkad people. At Nineveh, it had undergone a modification; the combinations of the symbols being considerably altered, so that one may speak of Babylonian characters and of Assyrian characters as being two scripts, although they look identical. _The Semitic Alphabet about 1700 B.C._