SEMIRAMIS 



5299 



SEMPLE 



on page 2217. The reader is referred to the 

 following articles in these volumes : 

 Everglades Jackson, Andrew 



Florida (History) Muskhogean 



SEMIRAMIS, semir'amis, a legendary 

 queen of Assyria, whom tradition has made 

 the founder of Babylon and the conqueror of 

 Persia and Egypt. The story goes that she was 

 the daughter of a fish goddess and a Syrian 

 youth, and that when her mother abandoned 

 her she was fed by doves. Rescued by the 

 leader of the king's shepherds, she grew to be 

 a beautiful woman, and finally became the wife 

 of King Ninus of Assyria. After her hus- 

 band's death she entered upon a spectacular 

 career of conquest, but in the forty-second 

 year of her reign she was deposed by her son 

 and disappeared. Herodotus mentions a queen 

 of Babylonia named Semiramis who lived in 

 the eighth century B. c., and the stories of the 

 legendary queen are probably a combination of 

 fact and fable. 



SEMITES, sem'ites, a group of peoples con- 

 stituting one of the three main divisions of the 

 white race, the others being the Hamitic and 

 the Aryan. The term Semitic comes from 

 Shem, the name of one of the sons of Noah, 

 and the classification mentioned above is based 

 on that given in the tenth chapter of Genesis. 

 Though the Bible classification is inaccurate, 

 the name Semitic has been retained for con- 

 venience. In the Semitic group are included 

 the Hebrews (Jews), Assyrians, Chaldeans, 

 Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Arabians, Ethiopi- 

 ans and various other peoples of similar phys- 

 ical and intellectual traits. It is an interesting 

 fact that the three great religions which ac- 

 knowledge one supreme deity Judaism, Chris- 

 tianity and Mohammedanism had their origin 

 with Semitic races. It was also from a Semitic 

 people the Phoenicians that our alphabet 

 came. 



The Semitic Languages are usually divided 

 into the northern and southern groups, the for- 

 mer including the ancient dialects of Assyria 

 and Babylonia, and the Hebrew, Phoenician 

 and Aramaic tongues. Of all of these, Hebrew 

 is practically the only one that has survived as 

 a spoken language. The Assyrian and Baby- 

 lonian languages have been preserved as liter- 

 ary monuments of the past by means of the 

 curious wedge-shaped writings known as cunei- 

 form inscriptions (which see). To the southern 

 division belong the Arabic and the Ethiopic 

 languages, the latter being the old church lan- 

 guage of Abyssinia, The greatest literary 



achievements of the Semites are the Bible and 

 the Mohammedan Koran. 



Related Subjects. The reader who is inter- 

 ested in this subject is referred to the following 

 articles in these volumes : 



Alphabet Hebrew Language and 



Christianity Literature 



Cuneiform Inscriptions Jews 



Mohammedanism 



SEMMES, semz, RAPHAEL (1809-1877), an 

 American naval officer who commanded the 

 Alabama, the most famous Confederate vessel 

 in the War of Secession. He was born in 

 Charles County, Maryland. When Alabama 

 seceded he entered the service of the South, 

 was assigned to the command of the Sumter, 

 the first war vessel of the Confederate navy, 

 and began cruising in the West Indies for the 

 purpose of capturing Northern merchant ves- 

 sels. After the completion of the Alabama, 

 which was built in England and secretly sent to 

 sea in 1862, Semmes was made its captain, 

 and in all he captured sixty-seven merchant and 

 whaling ships. After this destructive career, 

 the Alabama was sunk in the English Channel 

 in a fight with the United States Kearsarge, 

 under Captain Winslow, on June 19, 1864. 

 Semmes was later placed in charge of the James 

 River squadron, and after the war was im- 

 prisoned. Having been liberated through the 

 general amnesty order, he devoted himself to 

 the practice of law and for a time was professor 

 of moral philosophy in a seminary at Alex- 

 andria, La. His writings include Service Afloat 

 and Ashore, Cruise of the Alabama and Cam- 

 paign of General Scott in the Valley of Mexico. 

 See ALABAMA, THE. 



SEMPLE, sem'p'l, ROBERT (1766-1816), a 

 Canadian traveler and governor under the 

 Hudson's Bay Company, who played a brief but 

 prominent role in the development of the 

 Northwest. Semple was born at Boston, Mass., 

 but early in life became a wanderer in mercan- 

 tile pursuits, and between 1803 and 1815 he 

 appeared in turn in South Africa, London, Por- 

 tugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey, again Portugal and 

 Spain, and finally in Venezuela. In 1815, 

 through the influence of the Earl of Selkirk, 

 he was appointed governor of Rupert's Land 

 for the Hudson's Bay Company. 



At the time of Semple's arrival in the North- 

 west there was considerable bitterness between 

 the employees of the old Northwest Company 

 and the Selkirk settlers in the Red River Val- 

 ley. The Nor' Westers, knowing that Lord 

 Selkirk was a shareholder in the Hudson's Bay 



