A history of Babylon from the foundation of the monarchy to the Persian conquest . Sumu-abums contemporary. THE WESTERN SEMITES 137 we may assume that Assyria received her Semiticpopulation at about this period as another offshootof the Amorite migration. This assumption does not rest entirely on evidencesupplied by the royal names, but finds indirect con-firmation in recent archaeological research. The ex-cavations on the site of Ashur, the earliest Assyriancapital, tend to show that the first settlements in thatcountry, of which we have recovered traces, were madeby a people closely akin to
A history of Babylon from the foundation of the monarchy to the Persian conquest . Sumu-abums contemporary. THE WESTERN SEMITES 137 we may assume that Assyria received her Semiticpopulation at about this period as another offshootof the Amorite migration. This assumption does not rest entirely on evidencesupplied by the royal names, but finds indirect con-firmation in recent archaeological research. The ex-cavations on the site of Ashur, the earliest Assyriancapital, tend to show that the first settlements in thatcountry, of which we have recovered traces, were madeby a people closely akin to the Sumerians of SouthernBabylonia.^ It was in thecourse of work upon a tem-ple dedicated to Ishtar, thenational goddess of Assyria,that remains were found ofvery early periods of occupa-tion. Below the foundationof the later building a stillolder temple was found, alsodedicated to that this building hasan interest of its own, for itproved to be the earliest tem-ple yet discovered in Assyria, ^„^„^ r J J ^ HEAD OP AN ARCHAIC LIMESTONE FIGUBE FROM The primitive character of thesculpture is apparent, and the in-laying of the eyes with shell ischaracteristic of early work inBabylonia. The figure is possiblythat of a female. [After Mitt, der Deutsch. Orient-Gcsellschaft, No. 54, p. 9.] dating, as it probably does, from the close of the third millennium Still deeper excavation, below the level of this primitive Assyrian shrine, revealed a stratum in which were several examples of rude sculpture, apparently representing, not Semites, but the early non-Semitic inhabitants of Southern Babylonia. ^ Since the year 1903 the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft has been conduct-ing excavations at Shergiit, the site of Ashur, the old capital of Assyria onthe middle Tigris. Monographs on some of the temples of the city and itssystem of fortification have already been published, and during the summer of1913 the excavations were drawing to a close. The greater par
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