The recognition of the kinship of many of the languages of Asia and Europe was the starting-point of the science of Indo-European philology; and hardly was the first linguistic family-tree set up before there was inaugurated the search for the original home of the Indo-Europeans, a search which has been going on for nigh to a century, and whose chief accomplishment to date has been a voluminous literature. Needless to say, the site of the first home has not yet been fixed. In the course of time the quest had gradually shifted from Asia, where Bactria served as a convenient centre for the original community, over to Europe, where Germany and Scandinavia were the chief claimants for this honour, when the discovery of Tocharish, a centum-language, once more revived the hypothesis of the Asiatic origin of the Indo-Europeans. Far be it from an Assyriologist to take sides in this matter: but may he be permitted to remind the Indo-European scholars that the chancesof finding older historical information about the Indo-Europeans than that furnished by the inscriptions from the Egypto-Babylonian cultural area are very slight indeed? It is the purpose of this paper to point out the earliest known contacts of the Indo-Europeanswith that cultural area and then to speculate a little as to when and whence these tribes may have come into Asia Minor and on into the Semitic world.