One of the most curious statements made in these hymns is that the race of men created by the deity was black-headed. The same race of men is mentioned elsewhere in the ancient literature of the Accadians. Thus in a hymn to the goddess Gula, the goddess is described as “the mother who bore the men of the black heads,” and in another hymn the sun-god is declared to “direct the men of the black heads.” Sargon of Agané is further described as ruling over “all the men of the black heads,” and in imitation of this mode of expression Sennacherib in later days speaks of having overcome “all the black-headed race.” The black-headed race of Sennacherib, however, was the Turanian population of Elam and the adjoining districts on the east of Babylonia, whereas it is plain that the Accadian hymns mean by the black-headed race the Accadian people itself. It was over them that Sargon of Agané, the Semite, boasts of having extended his sway, though according to an old geographical list it was Sumer or Shinar rather than Accad, which was inhabited by the people of “the black-face.” But after all there is no contradiction between the statements of Sennacherib and of the hymns. The Accadians belonged to the same race as the Turanian inhabitants of Elam, and spoke a similar language to theirs. Now we shall find in the account of the exploits of Dibbara, which will be translated in a subsequent chapter, that the black race, which is identified with the Accadians, is contrasted with the people of Syria, while in the bilingual tablets, the black race is similarly contrasted with the white race. Hence it is clear that the white race was the same as the Syrians, and since the Syrians were Semites, the white race must have been synonymous in the language of the Accadians with Semitic. As a matter of fact, the Semites belong to the white-skinned division of mankind, and were accordingly painted yellow by the Egyptians. The Accadian population, on the other hand, belonged to the dark-skinned division, though it is not necessary to suppose them to have been as black as the negro or the “blameless Ethiopian.” In the bilingual tablets, the black race is rendered in Assyrian by the word _Adamatu_ or “red-skins.” A popular etymology connected this word _Adamatu_ with the word _Adamu_ or _admu_, “man,” partly on account of the similarity of sound, partly because in the age of Accadian supremacy and literature, the men _par excellence_, the special human beings made by the Creator, were the dark-skinned race of Accad. The Accadian Adam or “man” was dark; it was only when the culture of the Accadians had been handed on to their Semitic successors that he became fair.