194 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



Amorites, Jebusites, and other people identified with 

 Canaan in the Old Testament. The Cheta, at one 

 time known only as the sons of Heth in the Old 

 Testament, may be said in our time to have ex- 

 perienced a sudden resurrection, and now bulk so 

 largely in the minds of archaeologists that their 

 importance is in danger of being exaggerated. 



A significant note is added : * Afterwards were 

 the families of the Canaanites scattered abroad.' How 

 could this be ? Their line of migration and settle- 

 ment led directly to the great sea, and was hemmed 

 in by that of the Japhetites on the north and of the 

 Cushites on the south ; but they made the sea their 

 highway, and soon there was no coast from end to 

 end of the Mediterranean, and far along the European 

 and African shores of the Atlantic, that was not 

 familiar with the Phoenician Canaanite. But it may 

 be said these Phoenicians were a Semitic people. 

 They certainly spoke a Semitic language allied to 

 the Hebrew, but what right have we to attribute 

 Semitic languages solely to the descendants of the 

 Biblical Shem ? Even if these languages originated 

 with them they may have spread to other peoples, as 

 we know they replaced the old Turanian speech of 

 Babylonia, just as the Arabic has extinguished other 

 languages in Egypt itself. In whatever way the 

 Phoenicians acquired a Semitic tongue, in physical 

 character they were not Semitic, but closely allied to 

 the Hittites, the Philistines, and the people of Mitzor, 

 or Egypt. The Egyptian sculptures prove this, and 



