310 



SEMITES 



Syria, and the countries of the Euphrates and 

 Tigris. Into those lands, according to one theory 

 which is supported by Lennniiant anil others, 

 there had preceded 'them an immigration of 

 Cushites of the Hamitic race, who, proceeding 

 from central Asia, occupied not onlv the lands 

 that afterwards became Semitic, but also the Nile 

 valley. Their Hamitic language am! civilisation 

 the Semites are said to have adopted. In language 

 the Semites do show some affinity with the Ili-i i-r- 

 aml the inhabitants of the Nile valley. :m<l ( lenesis 

 x. does, for political and geographical or other 

 reasons, distribute the sons of Ham and Sliem in a 

 peculiar manner. But the increasingly prevalent 

 theory is that not less than 4000 years B.C. the 

 Semites migrated as nomadic triltes, proliably from 

 Arabia, into Mesopotamia. There they found a 

 Turanian population dwelling in cities built of 

 brick, under the regular government of priest-kings, 

 skilled in the use of metals, using the cuneiform 

 mode of writing, and comparatively far advanced 

 in literature ana culture. The hold of the Semites 

 upon Shuinir, the lower, more fertile, anil more 

 thickly inhabited part of the Euphrates valley, was 

 not at first so strong as upon Accad, the upper 

 part. In 3800 B.C. the Semitic adventurer 

 Sharrnkin usurped the kingdom of Accad. In 

 Elam also the Turanian population was early over- 

 powered by the intruding Semites, who came to 

 form the upper strata, of society. In 2280 B.C. the 

 Semite Khudur-Nankliundi of Elam invaded and 

 conquered Shnmirand Accad, founding the Ehimitc 

 line of princes ; and about 2200 B.C. one of his suc- 

 cessors, Khndur-Logamar (Chederlaomer), carried 

 his conquests as far as Palestine (see Genesis xiv. ). 

 These painful and oppressive impulses, and proliably 

 others like them, seem to have occasioned emigra- 

 tions of many Semites. Some proceeded towards the 

 north-west, reached the Mediterranean Sea, founded 

 Sidon, Tyre, and other cities, and l>ecanie known 

 afterwards as Canaanites or Phoenicians. Later 

 from Ur went others in the same direction, 

 settled behind the Phoenicians, and were after- 

 wards known as Israel. Others went northwards 

 and built cities which developed into the empire 

 of Assyria. While the Semites were in Meso- 

 potamia they used the Turanian language in their 



ublic documents until they attained the ascendant 



power; 

 their own language they continued to use the 



pu 

 in 



|w>litical 



and when afterwards they useil 



Turanian cuneiform mode of writing. The Turanian 

 religion also WHS adopted by the Semites, and 

 mixed with what religion their own primeval 

 trilial religion or totc'iiiism had developed into. 

 This amalgamation was consummated by Sharrukin 

 II. of Accad about 2000 B.C. 



The Semites as a race have a fine physical 

 organisation, are mentally quirk, clever, but not 

 inclined to change, and not persistent in progress. 

 They have been distinguished bv a brilliant 

 imagination and love of the beautiful ; but have 

 not shone in philosophy nor in science. Their 

 literature has neither epic nor dramatic poetry 

 worth notice. Almost their only arts are the sculp- 

 ture of Assyria, the exquisite glass and pottery, 

 ami the textile fabrics and embroidery of tfie 

 I'liirnicinns. Impatient of restraint, the Semites 

 have not by political aptitude welded together them 

 selves or others into large, compact, and enduring 

 common wealth*. They have made their mark 

 on the world in the Plurnician commerce, which 

 visited even the Atlantic shores of Spain and 

 France and drew tin from Britain ; in the Phoeni- 

 cian colonies, which, dotting all the coasts and 

 many islands of the Mediterranean Sea as far as 

 I ' I'liz, and the coast of Asia as far as India, dis- 

 pensed manufactures, improved primitive naviga- 

 tion, stimulated industry, trade, and ingenuity, 



and radiated the light of material civilisation ; in 

 the Carthaginian empire within Europe and Africa- 

 in the exploits of Hannibal ; in the dissemination 

 of alphabetic writing, whereof the Pho-nician form 

 was the mother of the European and of most 

 Asiatic alphalicis. while the alphabet of the great 

 Salwcan kingdom, or of the great and still more 

 ancient Min:ean kingdom in Arabia, is apparently 

 the oldest of all alphabet* hitherto discovered ; in 

 the l!ab\ Ionian and Assyrian empires ; in the 

 Hebrew Bible ami the Jewish religion ; in the 

 New Testament and the Christian religion ; in the 

 Koran and the Mohammedan religion ; in the 

 Mohammedan conquests and empire ; and in the 

 preservation of culture thereby during the dark 

 and middle ages. 



SEMITIC LANGUAGES, the languages spoken by 

 the Semitic nations. One characteristic feature 

 of them is triconsonantal roots from which by pre- 

 fixed or affixed letters, but mostly by internal 

 vowel changes, the other words are formed. Thus 

 in Arabic katabft = 'he wrote," kAtib = 'a scribe,' 

 kilAb = 'a book,' maktiib = ' an epistle.' Another 

 characteristic feature is that, though personal pro- 

 nouns are affixed to nouns, verbs, and prepositions, 

 there is an almost total absence of compound 

 nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Thus, while in 

 Arabic betti = 'my house,' qaialahu = 'he killed 

 Aim,' minhA = ' from her,' there are no such com- 

 pound words as pro-motion, dread-ful, grati-fy. 

 Other characteristic features are a verb with two 

 tenses, and the simple structure of sentences, which 

 are mainly formed by juxtaposition of clauses 

 helped by and. Semitic languages have a much 

 closer family likeness than the Indo-European, and 

 show a large proportion of common words. The 

 most highly developed, and on the whole the most 

 characteristic, probably also the oldest of the group, 

 is Arabic, winch, with its ancient Sabwan and 

 Minnean dialects of southern, western, and north- 

 ern Arabia, and with Ethiopic, forms the southern 

 division of Semitic languages, marked by the use 

 of ' broken plurals,' in which the consonants of the 

 singular are preserved, while the vowels are as much 

 altered as possible. Thus from the Arabic kildb, 

 'a l>o<>k,' comes the plural kflttib. Another mark 

 is the universal use of a before the third radical 

 letter of the active preterites ; thus Arabic has qat- 

 tala, dqtala, for which Hebrew has qilti'l and /n't/til. 

 Another mark is the distinction between the Arabic 

 s&d and d&d, which are united in the Hebrew 

 letter tsAde. HEIIKKW, though a characteristic- 

 ally Semitic speech, shows many marks of linguistic 

 decadence; ancient Hebrew is a more modern type 

 of language than modern Arabic. I'IM MCIAN 



differs lit tie in gram marand dictionary fr Hebrew. 



In the African territory of Carthage i his language 

 was spoken 400 years after the Christian era ; a cen- 

 tury liefore that era in Phoenicia itself it yielded 

 to Aramican or to Greek. ( tin only examples of it 

 are a few corrupt sentences in tne PaeniUui of 

 Plauttis, and inscriptions, most of which date 

 from the 4th century B.C. or later, few belonging 

 to the preceding three centuries. MOABITIC, as 

 the Moabite Stone of the 9th century B.C. shows, 

 was Hebrew. ARAMAEAN had its home in Aram 

 of Damascus and Aram of Mesopotamia. It was 

 the language of Assyria from early times, as we 

 may see in 2 Kings xviii., and of Babylonia, even 

 while Assyrian was used there for official purposes. 

 It was the official language of the provinces of the 

 Persian empire west from the Euphrates. Its west- 

 em branch was the language of Palmyra and of the 

 northern part of the Arabian kingdom of the Naba- 

 theans, and is seen in the biblical Ixioks of Ezra 

 and Daniel, where it has been erroneously named 

 Chaldee. Later developments of this branch are 

 the officially recognised Targums by Onkelos on ' 



