First Sentence

"IT was at one time the fashion with many scholars to regard the civilization of the Babylonians as of a purely Semitic origin ; and more than one writer on the religion of that country has moulded his work on the fundamental thesis that the Semitic Babylonians and they alone were the originators of the complicated system of religious practise and belief which we know existed from a very early period upon the banks of the Euphrates."