a. and sb. Also Sumirian, Shumerian. [ad. F. sumérien (Oppert, 1872, in Journal Asiatique, Ser. VII. I. 114), f. Sumer (see def.).]
A. adj. Pertaining to Sumer or Sumir, one of the districts of ancient Babylonia, or to its population; spec. belonging to the language of the people that created the non-Semitic element in the civilization of Babylonia.
The Sumerian language was formerly co-ordinated with Accadian as a related dialect, but the latter term is now applied by many to Semitic Babylonian.
1875. Sayce, in Encycl. Brit., III. 192/1. The language of the primitive Sumirian and Accadian population of Assyria and Babylonia belonged to the Turanian or Ural-Altaic family of speech.
1882–3. F. Brown, in Schaff’s Encycl. Relig. Knowl., III. 2174. The old Shumerian king Gudêa.
1887. Sayce, Lect. Relig. Anc. Babyl., App. I. 422. Most of the religious and other texts were composed in the Sumerian language.
1895. W. Boscawen, Bible & Monuments, iii. 105. In the hymns we find in the Sumirian version ‘female and male’ the order; while in the Semitic texts it is ‘male and female.’
1908. Budge, Babyl. & Assyr. Antiq. Brit. Mus. (ed. 2), 4. The beginning of Sumerian civilization may date from a period even as remote as B. C. 4000, or earlier.
B. sb. 1. A non-Semitic inhabitant of Sumer.
[1872. Sayce, Assyrian Gram., 179. The Cassi, I now find, were not identical with the Sumiri or people ‘of the dog’s language’.] Ibid. (1878), Babyl. Lit., 24. It is probable that it was the Accadians rather than the Sumerians to whom was due the invention of the picture writing.
1884. Birch, Kouyunjik Gallery Brit. Mus., 4. The entry of these people (afterwards known as Akkadians and Sumerians) into Babylonia.
2. The language spoken by the inhabitants of Sumer.
1887. Sayce, Lect. Relig. Anc. Babyl., App. I. 421. Semitic wives would not have spoken Sumerian with the same purity as their non-Semitic husbands.
1908. Budge, Babyl. & Assyr. Antiq. Brit. Mus. (ed. 2), 53. Grammatical examples in Sumerian, with Assyrian translations.
Hence Sumero-, used as the combining form of Sumerian in various formations, = Sumerian and…; so Sumerology, the study of the Sumerian language and antiquities.
1897. Expositor, Sept., 162. The firstfruits of his studies in Sumerology.
1906. Pinches, Relig. Babyl. & Assyria, ii. 10. The Sumero-Akkadians were non-Semites of a fairly pure race.
1913. S. Langdon, in Scientia (1914), XV. 223. There is no trace whatever of these primitive ideas in Sumero-Babylonian religion.
