Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

grew slowly and their retrogression is bound to be equally slow. Sumerian culture was unusually virile. Its influence is felt in Asia Minor today. The Sumerians had their civilization when our bloomin’ ancestors were scrapping with cave bears and sabertooth tigers, so to speak. At least the Europeans hadn’t passed the farst milestones on the road to progress, whoever their animal neighbors were. Old Eridu was a seaport of consequence as early as 6500 B.C. From then to 2750 B.C. is a bit of time for any empire. What other empire stood as long as the Sumerian? The Akkadian dynasty established by Sargon stood two hundred years before it was overthrown by another Semitic people, the Babylonians, who borrowed their culture from Akkadian Sumer just as Rome later stole hers from Greece; the Elamitish Kassite dynas- ty supplanted the original Babylonian, the Assyrian and the Chaldean fol- lowed—well, you know the rapid succession of dynasty on dynasty in Asia Minor, one Semitic people overthrowing another, until the real conquerors hove in view of the Eastern horizon—the Medes and Persians—who were destined to last scarcely longer than their victims. “ ‘Compare each fleeting kingdom with the long dream reign of the ancient pre-Semitic Sumerians! We think the Minoan Age of Crete is a long time back, but the Sumerian empire of Erech was already beginning to decay be- fore the rising power of Sumerian Nippur, before the ancestors of the Cretans had emerged from the Neolithic Age. The Sumerians had something the succeeding Hamites, Semites and Aryans lacked. They were stable. They grew slowly and if left alone would have decayed as slowly as these fellows are decaying. Still and all, I note these chaps have made one advancement— notice their weapons? ““Old Sumer was in Bronze Age. The Assyrians were the first to use iron for anything besides ornaments. But these lads have learned to work iron ore, Y daresay.’ “*But the mystery of Sumer still remains,” Conrad broke in. ‘Who are they? Whence did they come? Some authorities maintain they were of Dravidian origin, akin to the Basques—’ “Tt won’t stick, me lad,’ said I. ‘Even allowing for possible admixture of Aryan or Turanian blood in the Dravidian descendants, you can see at a glance these people are not of the same race.’ ““But their language— Conrad began arguing, which is a fair way to pass the time while you’re waiting to be put in the cooking-pot, but doesn’t prove much except to strengthen your own original ideas. “Niluna came again about sunset with food, and this time she sat down by Conrad and watched him eat. Seeing her sitting thus, elbows on knees and chin on hands, devouring him with her large, lustrous dark eyes, I said to the professor in English, so she wouldn’t understand: ‘The girl’s badly smitten with you; play up to her. She’s our only chance.’ “THe blushed like a blooming school girl. ‘ve a fiancee back in the States,’ “Blast your fiancee,’ I said. ‘Is it she that’s going to keep the bally heads on our blightin’ shoulders? I tell you this girl’s silly over yeu. Ask her what they’re going to do with us,’ “He did so and Naluna said: ‘Your fate lies in the lap of EL-lil,’ 10 comichooks.con