divided into a number of independent city states similar to those
which existed in pre-Dynastic Egypt. Ultimately these were grouped
into loose confederacies. The northern cities were embraced in the
territory known as Akkad, and the southern in the land of Sumer, or
Shumer. This division had a racial as well as a geographical
significance. The Akkadians were "late comers" who had achieved
political ascendency in the north when the area they occupied was
called Uri, or Kiuri, and Sumer was known as Kengi. They were a people
of Semitic speech with pronounced Semitic affinities. From the
earliest times the sculptors depicted them with abundant locks, long
full beards, and the prominent distinctive noses and full lips, which
we usually associate with the characteristic Jewish type, and also
attired in long, flounced robes, suspended from their left shoulders,
and reaching down to their ankles. In contrast, the Sumerians had
clean-shaven faces and scalps, and noses of Egyptian and Grecian
rather than Semitic type, while they wore short, pleated kilts, and
went about with the upper part of their bodies quite bare like the
Egyptian noblemen of the Old Kingdom period. They spoke a non-Semitic
language, and were the oldest inhabitants of Babylonia of whom we have
any knowledge. Sumerian civilization was rooted in the agricultural
mode of life, and appears to have been well developed before the
Semites became numerous and influential in the land. Cities had been
built chiefly of sun-dried and fire-baked bricks; distinctive pottery
was manufactured with much skill; the people were governed by
humanitarian laws, which formed the nucleus of the Hammurabi code, and
had in use a system of cuneiform writing which was still in process of
development from earlier pictorial characters. The distinctive feature
of their agricultural methods was the engineering skill which was
displayed in extending the cultivatable area by the construction of
irrigating canals and ditches. There are also indications that they