Now this advance to syllabism had been effected, long before the Babylonians appear on the scene, by the older inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the Akkadians, or, more correctly, the Akkado-Sumerians, the Akkadians being settled on the highlands, and the Sumerians on the plains, of that region. The racial affinities of either are not determined, some ethnologists holding that they are of Finno-Turkic origin, others that they belong to the Tatar-Mongolic branch. Neither is it known at what period they immigrated into Chaldea, since at the dawn of history they are already merged in the Semitic conquering race. Some thousands of years B.C. Chaldea had been invaded by the people afterwards known as Babylonians, whose primitive home, in common with that of other Semites, as the Hebrews, Phœnicians, &c., is conjectured to have been in South Arabia. The Babylonians, mixing their blood with that of the subject peoples, settled as agriculturists on the rich alluvial lowlands, while an offshoot from them, the Assyrians, occupied the mountainous and wooded country to the north of the great rivers, keeping their Semitic purity of descent. These "Romans of the East," as they have been called, were soldiers and merchants, strong in the conviction that "trade follows the flag," and hence embarking in many an aggressive enterprise to beat the Phœnician and other rivals in commerce. But, resting on the sword alone, the Assyrian empire perished by the sword. As for the Akkadians (using this term to include the pre-Semite inhabitants), they had passed the barbaric stage when they invaded Chaldea. They knew the use of metals: they were skilful architects, and; what was of importance in the marshy districts where dams and canals were indispensable, good engineers; their laws mark an advanced social organisation; their writing, as has been seen, had become syllabic; and their literature, besides recording the details of their daily life, supplies the key to a religion which profoundly influenced the Babylonians, and, through them, the Hebrews, ultimately affecting the whole of Christendom. That religion was a blend of higher and lower ideas. At base it was Shamanistic. Natural phenomena--sun, moon, stars, the earth, and so forth--were worshipped, but, as in all religions, that which touches man more closely in his affairs and relations has the firmer hold, and hence there was an active belief in magic, with its allied apparatus of charms, spells, and incantations. Side by side with formulæ embodying superstitions common to barbaric folk all the world over, we find penitential psalms, appeals to the great gods, and spiritual utterances, some of which are on a plane with Hebrew sacred poetry. All this body of literature, secular and sacred, made up the vast store of books in the libraries whose interpretation is one of the brilliant successes of modern scholarship, and whose contents bring home to us the priceless value of the art of writing to mankind.