into the valley the art of hieroglyphical writing, which later developed
into the well-known cuneiform system. They also had quite an extensive
literature, and had made considerable advance in the art of building.

The civilization of the Accadians was given a great impulse by the arrival
of a Semitic people. These foreigners were nomadic in habits, and
altogether much less cultured than the Accadians. Gradually, however, they
adopted the arts and literature of the people among whom they had settled;
yet they retained their own language, which in the course of time
superseded the less perfect Turanian speech of the original inhabitants;
consequently the mixed people, known later as Chaldaeans, that arose from
the blending of the two races, spoke a language essentially the same as
that used by their northern neighbors, the Semitic Assyrians.

SARGON (SHARRUKIN) I. (3800? B.C.).--We know scarcely anything about the
political affairs of the Accadians until after the arrival of the Semites.
Then, powerful kings, sometimes of Semitic and then again of Turanian, or
Accadian origin, appear ruling in the cities of Accad and Shumir, and the
political history of Chaldaea begins.

The first prominent monarch is called Sargon I. (Sharrukin), a Semitic
king of Agade, one of the great early cities. An inscription recently
deciphered makes this king to have reigned as early as 3800 B.C. He
appears to have been the first great organizer of the peoples of the
Chaldaean plains.

Yet not as a warrior, but as a patron and protector of letters, is
Sargon's name destined to a sure place in history. He classified and
translated into the Semitic, or Assyrian tongue the religious,
mythological, and astronomical literature of the Accadians, and deposited