When the new language was discovered it was variously designated as Scythian, or even Akkadian (that is, by the very name now given to the Semitic language spoken in Babylonia and Assyria). It was only after knowledge of the new language had grown that it was given the correct name of Sumerian.

Are Sumerians Semites?

77 The mortals were indeed the Sumerians, a non-Semitic racial type that conquered southern Babylonia, and the deities were Semitic, taken over by the newly arrived Sumerians from the indigenous Semites.

Is Arabic a Semitic language?

Arabic language, Southern-Central Semitic language spoken in a large area including North Africa, most of the Arabian Peninsula, and other parts of the Middle East. (See Afro-Asiatic languages.) Arabic is the language of the Qurʾān (or Koran, the sacred book of Islam) and the religious language of all Muslims.