Semitic Sentence Examples

The Semitic race is represented by upwards of 5,000,000 Jews.

We are justified in supposing that the cult of the moon-god was brought into Babylonia by the Semitic nomads from Arabia.

Probably the custom was of African origin, and came from eastern Africa along with the Semitic race.

Semitic tribes wandered northwards from their home in Arabia to seek sustenance in its more fertile fields, to plunder, or to escape the pressure of tribes in the rear.

Apart from the great interest of his philosophical work, Lazarus was pre-eminent among the Jews of the so-called Semitic domination in Germany.

In the course of centuries, however, they were absorbed into the Babylonian population; the kings adopted Semitic names and married into the royal family of Assyria.

Indian Vedic henotheism (otherwise called kathenotheism); 3 Semitic monolatry, so important as the probable starting-point of religious development in Israel; the Greek use of " Zeus " almost as we say " God " - even the attempt to arrange deities in a monarchical pantheon, all show the tendency, though it so seldom attains a real victory.

The exact position of Anzan is still disputed, but it probably included originally the site of Susa and was distinguished from it only when Susa became the seat of a Semitic government.

From this time onward for many centuries it continued under Semitic suzerainty, its high-priests, also called "Chief Envoys of Elam, Sippara and Susa," bearing sometimes Semitic, sometimes native "Anzanite" names.

Susa once more became a capital, and on the establishment of the Persian empire remained one of the three seats of government, its language, the Neo-Susian, ranking with the Persian of Persepolis and the Semitic of Babylon as an official tongue.

Nakhkhunte, according to Scheil, was the Sun-goddess, and Lagamar, whose name enters into that of Chedorlaomer, was borrowed from Semitic Babylonia.

Lastly, the rite of circumcision, which the Hebrews practised in common with their Semitic neighbours as well as the Egyptians, belonged to ages long anterior to the time of Moses.

Palestinian states on the other, and that they could scarcely have escaped the all-pervading Babylonian influences of 2000-1400 B.C. It is now becoming clearer every day, especially since the discovery of the laws of Khammurabi, that, if we are to think sanely about Hebrew history before as well as after the exile, we can only think of Israel as part of the great complex of Semitic and especially Canaanite humanity that lived its life in western Asia between 2060 and 600 B.C.; and that while the Hebrew race maintained by the aid of prophetism its own individual and exalted place, it was not less susceptible then, than it has been since, to the moulding influences of great adjacent civilizations and ideas.

Barton's Semitic Origins is extremely able, but his doctrine of the derivation of male from original female deities is pushed to an extreme.

In time, notwithstanding a certain inherent individualism and impatience of control, veritable despotisms arose in the Semitic world, although such organizations were invariably liable to sudden collapse as the old forms of life broke down with changing conditions.'

The story of the baetylus, or stone swallowed by Saturn under the belief that it was his son, the Cretan Zeus, seems to cover the same idea and has been derived from the same Semitic word.

The old system of writing now dies out, and it is not till some three centuries later that the new alphabetic forms are introduced from a Semitic source.

The form q`tal illustrates one main peculiarity of Aramaic, as opposed to the other Semitic languages, viz.

Miles made his adventurous journey through Oman, while Theodore Bent threw searchlights backwards into ancient Semitic history by his investigations in the Bahrein Islands in 1888 and in Hadramut in 1894 - 181n northern Asia it is impossible to follow in detail the results of the organized Russian surveys.

The races speaking the languages akin to the ancient Assyrian, which are now mainly represented by Arabic, have been called Semitic, and occupy the countries south-west of Aryans.

Some connexion between Babylonia and China is generally admitted, and all Indian alphabets seem traceable to a Semitic original borrowed in the course of commerce from the Persian Gulf.

Two of the greatest religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, are Semitic in origin, as well as Judaism.

One hypothesis supposes that the shores of the Mediterranean were originally inhabited by a homogeneous race neither Aryan nor Semitic.

In the very early rock inscriptions of Thera (700-600 B.C.), written from right to left, it appears in a form resembling the ordinary Greek X; this form apparently arose from writing the Semitic symbol upside down.

Within historic times a great number of different nationalities have fought and settled within its borders, the majority belonging to the Semitic stock.

She assumes various local forms in the old Semitic world, and this has led to consequent fusion and identification with the deities of other nations.

The Semitic name of the symbol is shin; the Greek name sigma may mean merely the hissing letter and may be a genuine Greek derivative from the verb o-4co, hiss.

Some, however, see in it a corruption of the Semitic name samekh, the letter which corresponds in alphabetic position and in shape to the Greek (x).

In the Semitic churches of the East (the Syrian, Arabian and Ethiopian), and in that of Armenia, the apocalyptic literature was preserved much longer than in the Greek Church.

To the above we have a good parallel in the Book of Daniel; for the variations of its two chief Greek Versions - that of the Septuagint and of Theodotion - go back to variations in the Semitic.

Old Semitic philosophy was a science not of ontology in the modern sense of the term, but of practical life.

Their monotheism remains Semitic - even in their conception of the cosmogonic and illuminating function of Wisdom they regard God as standing outside the world of physical nature and man, and do not grasp or accept the idea of the identity of the human and the divine; there is thus a sharp distinction between their general theistic position and that of Greek philosophy.

Of the Semitic races the Arabs - over whom, however, the Turkish rule is little more than nominal - number scme 7 millions, and in addition to about 300,000 Jews there is a large number of Syrians.

His Literary Remains, edited by Lady Strangford, were published in 1874, consisting of nineteen papers on such subjects as "The Talmud," "Islam," "Semitic Culture," "Egypt, Ancient and Modern," "Semitic Languages," "The Targums," "The Samaritan Pentateuch," and "Arabic Poetry."

A discussion of the interesting question relating to the non Semitic so-called Sumero-Akkadian language and race will be found in the article Sumer.

Among the numerous conjectures which have been made as to the etymology of the term Africa ('Acppucii) may be quoted that which derives it from the Semitic radical.

Reiske (1716-1774); and, though for many years the most famous teacher of Semitic languages in Europe, he had little of the higher philological faculty, and neither his grammatical nor his critical work has left a permanent mark, with the exception perhaps of his text-critical studies on the Peshitta.

Again, the Slavonic Enoch goes back undoubtedly in parts to a Semitic original, though most of it was written by a Greek Jew in Egypt.

The origin of the obelisk may be sought in sacred upright stones set up in honour of gods and dead, like the menhirs, and the Semitic Massebahs and bethels.

In Palestine and western Syria, the home of pre-Christian Aramaic dialects, the vernacular Semitic speech had under Roman dominion been replaced by Greek for official and literary purposes.

The old Syriac version, which is to be found in a number of MSS., was probably made from an early Aramaic version, if not from the original itself (which must surely have been Semitic).

The latter are found exceptionally upon Semitic Bedouin with an upper covering of bands wound round the body (Miller, 140).

But the ordinary Semitic head covering was a cloth which sometimes appears with two ends tied in front, the third falling behind.

For the former class the generic name is Xgtwv, a word of Semitic origin, which denotes the Eastern origin of the garment; for the latter we find in Homer and early poetry irbrXos, in later times ij tnnov.

Eastward rose the mountains of Elam, southward were the sea-marshes and the Kalda or Chaldaeans and other Aramaic tribes, while on the west the civilization of Babylonia encroached beyond the banks of the Euphrates, upon the territory of the Semitic nomads (or Suti).

In the early inscriptions of Lagash the whole district is known as Gu-Edinna, the Sumerian equivalent of the Semitic Kisad Edini.

The coast-land was similarly known as Gu-abba (Semitic Kisad tamtim), the " bank of the sea."

In Semitic times Urra was pronounced Uri and confounded with uru, " ciiy "; as a geographical term, however, it was replaced by Akkadu (Akkad), the Semitic form of Agadewritten Akkattim in the Elamite inscriptions - the name of the elder Sargon's capital, which must have stood close to Sippara, if indeed it was not a quarter of Sippara itself.

The cuneiform system of writing Semitic. w as still in process of growth when it was borrowed influence p g and adapted by the new comers, and the Semitic Babylonian language was profoundly influenced by the older language of the country, borrowing its words and even its grammatical usages.

Sumerian in its turn borrowed from Semitic Babylonian, and traces of Semitic influence in some of the earliest Sumerian texts indicate that the Semite was already on the Babylonian border.

His native home was probably Arabia; hence Eridu (" the good city ") and Ur (" the city ") would have been built in Semitic territory, and their population may have included Semitic elements from the first.

Here in Akkad the first Semitic empire was founded, Semitic conquerors or settlers spread from Sippara to Susa, Khana to the east of the Tigris was occupied by " West Semitic " tribes, and " out of " Babylonia " went forth the Assyrian."

The god remained nominally at its head; but even this position was lost to him when Babylonia was unified under Semitic princes, and the earthly king became an incarnate god.

The next empire founded in western Asia was Semitic. Semitic princes had already.

Another Semitic ruler of Kis of the same period was Alusarsid (or Urumus) who " subdued Elam and Barahse."

But the fame of these early establishers of Semitic supremacy was far eclipsed by that of Sargon of Akkad and his son, Naram-Sin.

This dynasty of Ur was Semitic, not Sumerian, notwithstanding the name of Dungi.

The divine attributes with which the Semitic kings of Babylonia had been invested disappeared at the same time; the title of " god " is never given to a Kassite sovereign.

Women as well as men learned to read and write, and in Semitic times this involved a knowledge of the extinct Sumerian as well as of a most complicated and extensive syllabary.

A considerable amount of Semitic Babylonian literature was translated from Sumerian originals, and the language of religion and law long continued to be the old agglutinative language of Chaldaea.

All that can be said is that both archaeological and epigraphic evidence indicates that no very long interval separated the empire of the Semitic kings of Agade from that of the kings of Sumer and Akkad, whose rule was inaugurated by the founding of the Dynasty of Ur.1 To use caution in accepting the chronological notices of the later kings is very far removed from suggesting emendations of their figures.

So, for -example, the word for " name " may be written by a sign MU, or it may be written out by two signs shu-mu, the one sign MU representing the " Sumerian " word for " name," which, however, in the case of a Babylonian or Assyrian text must be read as shumu - the Semitic equivalent of the Sumerian MU.

Similarly the word for " clothing " may be written SIG-BA, which represents again the " Sumerian " word, whereas, the BabylonianAssyrian equivalent being lubushtu it is so to be read in Semitic texts, and may therefore be also phonetically written lu-bu-ush-tu.

This script, together with the general Sumerian culture, was taken over by the Babylonians upon their settlement in the Euphrates valley and adapted to their language, which belonged to the Semitic group. In this transfer the Sumerian words - largely monosyllabic - were reproduced, but read as Semitic, and 1 Cf.

If the former, then their names are surely to be read as Sumerian, while, if they were Semites, the signs with which the names are written are probably to be read according to their Semitic equivalents, though we may also expect to encounter Semites bearing genuine Sumerian names.

The establishment of the Hatti at Carchemish not only made them a commercial people and probably sapped their highland vigour, but also brought them into closer proximity to the rising North Semitic power of Assyria, whose advent had been regarded with apprehension by Hattusil II.

In the other islands numerous Semitic traces are found, and in all of them are the rock-signs.

From these facts it would seem that the Numidians, travelling from the neighbourhood of Carthage and intermixing with the dominant Semitic race, landed in the Canary Islands, and that it is they who have written the inscriptions at Hierro and Grand Canary.

We have no clue to the ethnic character and relations of the Pisidians, except that we learn from Strabo that they were distinct from the neighbouring Solymi, who were probably a Semitic race, but we find mention at an early period in these mountain districts of various other tribes, as the Cabali, Milyans, &c., of all which, as well as the neighbouring Isaurians and Lycaonians, the origin is wholly unknown, and the absence of monuments of their languages must remain so.

To archaeology also his services were of equal importance, for, besides copying numerous inscriptions in the district between Hail and Tema, he succeeded in gaining possession of the since famous Tema stone, which ranks with the Moabite stone among the most valuable of Semitic inscriptions.

Although this cannot be said to be proved, the studies, linguistic and archaeological, of Semitic scholars have shown it to be probable.

Many attempts have been made to trace the West Semitic Yahu back to Babylonia.

Thus Delitzsch formerly derived the name from an Akkadian god, I or Ia; or from the Semitic nominative ending, Yau; 7 but this deity has since disappeared from the pantheon of Assyriologists.

The earliest Semitic records give its form as y or more frequently k or The form is found in the earliest inscriptions of Crete, Attica, Naxos and some other of the Ionic islands.

They formerly traded with Arabia and Malaysia, and many Arabs settled amongst them, so that they betray a strong strain of Semitic blood in their features.

They appear to be connected with Semitic sun-worship, and are assigned by Bent to the same period as the temple at Baalbek, though some antiquarians would place them much earlier; the representation of a castle in a single stone seems to bear some relation to the idea worked out in the monolith churches of Lalibela described byRaffray.

In both Greek and Latin, however, although the upright and cross stroke are frequently not exactly at right angles and the upright often projects beyond the cross stroke, the forms approach more nearly to the modern than to the Semitic shape.

He has been viewed as a chieftain of the Amorites, as the head of a great Semitic migration from Mesopotamia; or, since Ur and Haran were seats of Moon-worship, he has been identified with a moon-god.

Phonetic values known, Assyrian was found to be a Semitic language cognate to Hebrew.

With the Semitic conquest it lost its independence, its rulers becoming patesis, dependent rulers, under Sargon and his successors; but it still remained Sumerian and continued to be a city of much importance, and, above all, a centre of artistic development.

Some of the earlier works of Ur-Nina, En-anna-turn, Entemena and others, before the Semitic conquest, are also extremely interesting, especially the famous stele of the vultures and a great silver vase ornamented with what may be called the coat of arms of Lagash, a lion-headed eagle with wings outspread, grasping a lion in each talon.

In 1905 about 300,000 1 The name is Semitic, but its meaning is uncertain.

Philologists do not know of any related word in Semitic languages.

Primitive Semitic customs recognize that when persons are laid under a ban or taboo (herem) restrictions are imposed on contact with them, and that the breach of these involves supernatural dangers.

The Swahili (q.v.) are a mixed Bantu and Semitic race inhabiting the seaboard.

The Lurs are thought to be aboriginal Persians with a mixture of Semitic blood.

The language of the inscriptions is South Semitic, forming a link between the North Arabic and the Ethiopic, but is much nearer the former than the latter.

We find also the common Semitic Il (El) and a Dhu Samai answering to the northern Baal Shamayim.

In conformity with old Semitic usage, pilgrimages were made at definite seasons to certain deities, and the Sabaean pilgrim month, Dhu Hijjatan, is the northern Dhu'l-Hijja.

The names for altar (midhbaji) and sacrifice (dhibh) are common Semitic words, and the altar of incense has among other names that of miktar, as in Hebrew.

More probably, however, this is but an accidental coincidence; both adam and adamu may come from the same Semitic root meaning "to make."

According to the Hebrew consonants it might simply be read "the king" (melek), an appellation for the supreme deity of a Semitic state or tribe.

Human sacrifice was common in Semitic heathenism, and at least the idea of such sacrifices was 1 In 2 Chron.

But in the English Bible the presbyters of the New Testament are called " elders," not " priests "; the latter name is reserved for ministers of pre-Christian religions, the Semitic a '?"

But the best established hierarchy is not so powerful as a caste, and the monarchs had one strong hold on the clergy by retaining the patronage of great ecclesiastical places, and another in the fact that the Semitic provinces on the Tigris, where the capital lay, were mainly inhabited by men of other faith.'

The fundamental type of the Arabic sanctuary can be traced through all the Semitic lands, and so appears to be older than the Semitic dispersion; even the technical terms are mainly the same, so that we may justly assume that the more developed ritual and priesthoods of the settled Semites sprang from a state of things not very remote from what we find among the heathen Arabs.

But neither in civil nor in religious life was this ideal unity expressed in fixed institutions, the old individualism of the Semitic nomad still held its ground.

According to Semitic ideas the declaration of law is quite a distinct function from the enforcing of it, and the royal executive came into no collision with the purely declaratory functions of the priests.

The idea of priestly asceticism expressed in the celibacy of the clergy belongs also to certain types of heathen and especially Semitic priesthood, to those above all in which the priestly service is held to have a magical or theurgic quality.

The book was written in Greek, though not improbably the middle portion, the Testament of Hezekiah, was originally composed in Semitic. The Greek in its original form, which we may denote by G, is lost.

The latter has been supposed to be a Hyksos or Semitic deity and to have some connexion with Sheth; but Cheyne and Muller reject this view.

If so, the word may be derived from the Semitic ambar (ambergris) to which Eastern nations attribute miraculous properties.

At first, and indeed down to the middle of the 17th century, Jewish traditions and methods in the study of Hebrew dominated Christian scholars; but in the 17th and 18th centuries the study of other Semitic languages opened up that comparative linguistic study which was systematized and brought nearer to perfection in the 19th century (which also witnessed the opening up of the new study of Assyrian) by scholars such as Gesenius, Ewald, Olshausen, Renan, Noldeke, 'Stade and Driver.

For reasons suggested partly by the study of Semitic inscriptions, partly by comparison of passages occurring twice within the Old Testament, and partly by a comparison of the Hebrew text with the Septuagint, it is clear that the authors of the Old Testament (or at least most of them) themselves made some use of these vowel consonants, but that in a great number of cases the vowel consonants that stand in our present text were inserted by transcribers and editors of the texts.

More important still is the application of Semitic study to elucidate the Gospels.

The study of the Semitic elements in early Christianity is less advanced than the study of the Greek elements, so that it is doubtless from the Semitic side that further progress in the criticism of the New Testament may be expected.

Seers there had been of old as in other primitive nations; of the two Hebrew words literally corresponding to our seer, roeh and hozeh, the second is found also in Arabic, and seems to belong to the primitive Semitic vocabulary.

De Sacy had successively acquired all the Semitic languages, and as a civil servant he found time to make himself a great name as an orientalist.

His Son, Johann Ernst Immanuel (1725-1778), studied Semitic languages at Jena, and also natural science and mathematics.

More familiar to the Anglo-Saxon race is the connexion between the soul and the breath; this identification is found both in Aryan and Semitic languages; in Latin we have spiritus, in Greek pneuma, in Hebrew ruach; and the idea is found extending downwards to the lowest planes of culture in Australia, America and Asia.

His Humid brethren went so far as to expel him for a time from the society - the chief ground of offence being apparently his ruthless criticism of the "Arameans," a party of the academicians who maintained that the Florentine or Tuscan tongue was derived from the Hebrew, the Chaldee, or some other branch of the Semitic. He was readmitted in 1566, when his friend Salviati was "consul" of the academy.

Kessler, the latest historian of Manichaeism, opines that Mani's own declaration on this point is not to be relied upon, and has tried to prove that it was rather of Semitic or Chaldaic origin.

On comparing it with the Semitic religions of nature we perceive that it was free from their sensuous cultus, substituting instead a spiritual worship as well as a strict morality.

The various researches which have been made regarding Parsism, the ancient Semitic religions, Gnosticism, &c., are of the greatest importance for the investigation of Manichaeism.

It is a survival of tree-worship and comparable to the Semitic ashera.

His resemblance to Adonis has led to the theory that the names of the two are identical, and that Attis is only the Semitic companion of Syrian Aphrodite grafted on to the Phrygian Great Mother worship (Haakh, Stuttgarter-Philolog.- Vers., 18J7, 176 ff.).

In the British Isles, especially Ireland, there is (in addition to the Celtic-speaking elements) a considerable population which claims Celtic nationality though it uses no language but English; and further all Teutonic communities contain to a greater or less degree certain immigrant (especially Semitic) elements which have adopted the languages of their neighbours.

The Phoenicians were an early offshoot from the Semitic stock, and belonged to the Canaanite branch of it.

It was the custom among the Phoenicians, as among other Semitic nations, to use the names of the gods in forming proper names and thus to express devotion or invoke favour; thus Hanni-ba`al, 'Abd-melqarth, IIanni- `ashtart, Eshmun-`azar.

In modern usage the name Hebrew is applied to that branch of the northern part of the Semitic family of languages which was used by the Israelites during most of the time of their national existence in Palestine, and in which nearly all their sacred writings are composed.

As to its characteristics and relation to other languages of the same stock, see Semitic Languages.

Arabic, or, in other words, it does not come so near to that primitive Semitic speech which may be pre-supposed as the common parent of all the Semitic languages.

Owing to the imperfection of the Hebrew alphabet, which, like that of most Semitic languages, has no means of expressing vowel-sounds, it is only partly possible to trace the development of the language.

In dealing with the individual eschatology we must carefully distinguish the popular ideas regarding death and the hereafter which Israel shared with the other Semitic peoples, from the intuitions, inferences, aspirations evoked in the pious by the divine revelation itself.

Berard, Les Phe'niciens et l'Odyssee (1902-1903), who regards the Odyssey as "the integration in a Greek voo-Tos (home-coming) of a Semitic periplus," in the form of a poem written 900-850 B.C. by an Ionic poet at the court of one of the Neleid kings of Miletus.

In a great number of Babylonian inscriptions an idiom has long been recognized which is clearly not ordinary Semitic in character.

This non-Semitic system, which is found, in many instances, on alternate lines with a regular Semitic translation, in other cases in opposite columns to a Semitic rendering, and again without any Semitic equivalent at all, has been held by one school, founded and still vigorously defended by the distinguished French Assyriologist, Joseph Halevy, to be nothing more than a priestly system of cryptography based, of course, on the then current Semitic speech.

Certainly no cryptography based exclusively on Semitic could exhibit this sort of interchange.

Sumerian has only postpositions instead of prepositions, which occur exclusively in Semitic. In this point also Sumerian is in accord with all other agglutinative idioms. Note Sumerian e-da, " in the house " (e, " house," +da, " in," by dissimilation), and compare Turkish ev, " house," de, " in," and evde, " in the house."

For example, an indeterminative vowel, a, e, i or u, may be prefixed to any root to form an abstract; thus, from me, " speak," we get e-me, " speech"; from ra, " to go," we get a-ra, " the act of going," &c. In connexion with the very complicated Sumerian verbal system 2 it will be sufficient to note here the practice of infixing the verbal object which is, of course, absolutely alien to Semitic. This phenomenon appears also in Basque and in many North American languages.

Semitic, on the other hand, has grammatical gender as one of its basic principles.

It is not necessary to imagine, however, that these devices originated with the Semitic priesthood.

In view of the many evidences of the linguistic character of Sumerian as opposed to the one fact that the language had engrafted upon it a great number of evident Semitisms, the opinion of the present writer is that the Sumerian, as we have it, is fundamentally an agglutinative, almost polysynthetic, language, upon which a more or less deliberately constructed pot-pourri of Semitic inventions was superimposed in the course of many centuries of accretion under Semitic influences.

For language and epigraphy see NABATAEANS, SEMITIC LANGUAGES; for topography, &C., PALESTINE; and for the later history, JEWS.

Semitic features were pointed out in the supposed Hyksos names, and Petrie was convinced of their date by his excavations of1905-1906in the eastern Delta.

That is to say, it has been at two separate periods the battle-field of Aryan and Semitic man.

And it is from this presence of the highest forms of Aryan and of Semitic man that the history of Sicily draws its highest interest.

The island is again disputed between Europe and Asia, transplanted to Africa between Greek and Semitic dwellers on her own soil.

The second Semitic conquest of Sicily began in 827 at Mazzara on the old border of Greek and Phoenician.

In 877 began the only successful Semitic siege of Syracuse.

The whole island was a Semitic, that is a Mahommedan, possession.

The rest of Palermo was soon granted; the Semitic capital became the abiding head of Sicily.

In Cyprus, on the frontier between the Greek and Semitic worlds, a struggle for ascendancy went on.

These names are certainly of Semitic origin and perhaps derive from the Assyrian with the meaning frontier-land (see MIzRAIM).

In common with the Semitic languages, the Berber languages of North Africa, and the Cushite languages of North-East Africa, Egyptian of all periods possesses grammatical gender,- expressing masculine and feminine.

The characteristic triliteral roots of all the Semitic languages seemed to separate them widely from others; but certain traits have caused the Egyptian, Berber and Cushite groups to be classed together as three subfamilies of a Hamitic group, remotely related to the Semitic. The biliteral character of Coptic, and the biliteralism which was believed to exist in Egyptian, led philologists to suspect that Egyptian might be a surviving witness to that far-off stage of the Semitic languages when triliteral roots had not yet been formed from presumed original biliterals; Sethes investigations, however, prove that the Coptic biliterals are themselves derived from Old Egyptian triliterals, and that the triliteral roots enormously preponderated in Egyptian of the earliest known form; that view is, therefore, no longer tenable.

Their connection with Semitic and Egyptian, therefore, remains at present an obscure though probable hypothesis.

On the other hand, Egyptian is certainly related to Semitic. Even before the triliterality of Old Egyptian was recognized, Erman showed that the so-called pseudoparticiple had been really in meaning and in form a precise analogue of the Semitic perfect, though its original employment was almost obsolete in the time of the earliest known texts.

Triliteralism is considered the most essential and most peculiar feature of Semitic. But there are, besides, many other resemblances in structure between the Semitic languages and Egyptian, so that, although the two vocabularies present few points of clear contact, there is reason to believe-that Egyptian was originally a characteristic member of the Semitic family of languages.

The latter acquired the Semitic language imperfectly from their conquerors; they expressed the verbal conjugations by periphrases, mispronounced the consonants, and so changed greatly, the appearance of the vocabulary, which also would certainly contain a large proportion of native nonSemitic roots.

Such verbal resemblances as exist between Coptic and Semitic are largely due to late exchanges with Semitic neighbors.

It will serve to contrast with Coptic grammar on the one hand and Semitic grammar on the other.

The pseudo-participle seems, by its inflexion, to have been the perfect of the original Semitic conjugation.

The simplest form being that of the 3rd person, it is best arranged like the corresponding tense in Semitic grammars, beginning with that person.

There is no trace of the Semitic imperfect in Egyptian.

In his reign were executed the fine paintings in the tomb of Khnemhotp at Beni Hasan, which include a remarkable scene of Semitic Bedouins bringing eye-paint to Egypt from the eastern deserts.

Rawlinson considers they were a dark race not belonging to the Semitic family.

That the Greek was in turn derived from a Semitic original was denied by Hilgenfeld, Volkmar and others.

On the whole, there was everywhere a common foundation of culture and thought, with local, tribal and national developments; and it is useful to observe the striking similarity of religious phraseology throughout the Semitic sources, and its similarity with the ideas in the Egyptian texts.

The type is very closely related to the oldest European (Etruscan) forms, and, in a less degree, to the " South Semitic " (old Minaean and Sabaean); and since it at once begins (c. 700) to develop along separate paths (Canaanite and Aramaean), it may be inferred that the common ancestor was not of long derivation.

Some of the personal names are foreign and find analogues in Asia Minor; but even as the Philistines appear in biblical history as a " Semitic " people, so inscriptions from north Syria (c. 800-700) are in Canaanite and early Aramaean dialects, and are in entire agreement with " Semitic thought and ideas.

This has been the origin of the long succession of Semitic waves - Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Hebrew, Nabataean, Moslem - that have flowed over Mesopotamia and Palestine; there is every reason to suppose that they will be followed by others, and that the Arab will remain master at the end, as he was in the beginning.

See further, Semitic Languages and Numismatics.

Some of them are as light-skinned as Europeans, tall, robust, thin-lipped, straight-nosed, with straight black hair; others are shorter and darker in complexion, with round heads, long noses, thick lips, and scraggy limbs, indicating perhaps the commingling of more than one Semitic people.

Although the Berber tongue shows a certain affinity with Semitic in the construction both of its words and sentences Berber is quite distinct from the Semitic languages; and a remarkable fact is that in spite of the enormous space over which the dialects are spread and the thousands of years that some of the Berber peoples have been isolated from the rest, these dialects show but slight differences from the long-extinct Hamitic speech from which all are derived.

The only Semitic language is Arabic, found at Aden, where also the Hamitic Somali was returned.

It is supposed that sea-going merchants, mostly Dravidians, and not Aryans, availing themselves of the monsoons, traded in the 7th century B.C. from the south-west ports of India to Babylon, and that there they became acquainted with a Semitic alphabet, which they brought back with them, and from which all the alphabets now used in India, Burma, Siam and Ceylon have been gradually evolved.

What, then, did the Semitic 1 Buhl, Gesch.

The Semitic name of the city, if it was not Sela`, must remain unknown.'

Therefore the ancient Abyssinian language, Geez, and its living dialects, Amharic and Tigrina, are Semitic, although modified by the influence of the old Hamitic Agau or Agao.

Mild attempts, to be sure, to group the chief deities associated with the most important religious and political centres into a regular pantheon were made - notably in Nippur and later in Ur - but such attempts lacked the enduring quality which attaches to Khammurabi's avowed policy to raise Marduk - the patron deity of the future capital, Babylon - to the head of the entire Babylonian pantheon, as 1 Even in the case of the "Semitic" name of the famous Sargon I., whose full name is generally read Sharru-kenu-sha-ali, and interpreted as "the legitimate king of the city," the question has recently been raised whether we ought not to read "` Sharru-kenushar-ri" and interpret as "the legitimate king rules" - an illustration of the vacillation still prevailing in this difficult domain of research.

Early in the 3rd millennium B.C. the city was conquered and occupied by the Semitic rulers of Akkad, or Agade, and numerous votive objects of Alu-usharsid (Urumush or Rimush), Sargon and Naram-Sin testify to the veneration in which they also held this sanctuary.

En-lil was in fact adopted as the Bel or great lord of the Semitic pantheon.

To this Akkadian occupation succeeded an occupation by the first Semitic dynasty of Ur, and the constructions of Ur-Gur or Ur-Engur, the great builder of Babylonian temples, are superimposed immediately upon the constructions of Naram-Sin.

A fragment of one such version belongs to the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon, 2 and part of a still earlier Semitic version of another portion of the Gilgamesh Epic has also been recovered.

For other Semitic legends of this early period, see Cuneiform Texts in the British Museum, pt.

Sumerian, in fact, predominated, not only on the historical monuments, but also throughout the religious literature, a fact which militates against assigning the newly discovered Semitic legend to the period of these early Sumerian texts.

In a short time they had taken from the Aryans all the principal old Semitic lands - Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Assyria and Babylonia.

It would have been a great advantage for the solidity of the Arabian empire if it had confined itself within the limits of those old Semitic lands, with perhaps the addition of Egypt.

His inscriptions are written in cuneiform, in Assyrian, whilst those of his successors are in cuneiform, in their own language, which is neither Aryan nor Semitic. The kings of Biainas extended their kingdom eastward and westward, and defeated the Assyrians and Hittites.

It seems perhaps most probable that they belonged to the same race as the Cappadocians, who held the adjoining province of Pontus, and were undoubtedly a Semitic race.

For not only were its founder and his disciples Asiatics, and the original authoritative writings Semitic, but Asiatic tribes and nations coming into Europe have been readily converted.

In the early period the Hebrew religion was of the ordinary Semitic type.

The Semitic peoples were essentially theocratic in their religion; they used the forms of the sensuous imagination in setting forth the realities of the unseen world.

Again and again individuals and groups turn back to the Semitic cycle of hopes and ideas, while the reconciliation of the two systems, Jewish and Graeco-Roman, becomes the task of exegetes and theologians.

The symbol for 13 in Thera is nearer than any previously known to the Semitic letter (9) though, as not infrequently happens in the transference of a symbol from one people to another, its position is inverted - a fate which in this alphabet has befallen also A (Semitic L, Thera 1), and possibly o (Semitic N, Thera M).

He shows that " twelve of the letter-names are words with meanings [in the northern dialects of Semitic], all of them indicating simple objects, six of the twelve being parts of the body.

Four letter-names are triliterals, and resemble in their form Semitic words."

While the Phoenician alphabet was thus fertile in developing daughter alphabets in the West, the progress of writing was no less great in the East, first among the Semitic peoples, and through them among other peoples still more remote.

The carrying of the alphabet to the Greeks by the Phoenicians at an early period affords no clue to the period when Semitic ingenuity constructed an alphabet out of a heterogeneous multitude of signs.

Next in date amongst Semitic records of the Phoenician type to the bowl of Baal-Lebanon and the Moabite stone comes the Hebrew inscription found in the tunnel at the Pool of Siloam in 1881, which possibly dates back to the reign of Hezekiah (700 B.C.).

The Aramaic became in time by far the most important of the northern Semitic alphabets.

There still remains a branch of the Semitic languages which, except for one or two of the languages belonging to it, was practically South unknown till recent years.

This is the South Semitic.

Semitic. Till the 19th century the earliest form known of this alphabet was the Ethiopian or Geez, in which Christian documents have been preserved from the early centuries of our era, and which is still used by the Abyssinians for liturgical purposes.

Cooke's Textbook of North-Semitic Inscriptions (Oxford, 1903) contain the most convenient collections of Northern Semitic inscriptions for the student's purposes.

The relative age of the Minaean and Sabaean monuments is a matter of dispute amongst Semitic scholars.

The Sabaean, like other Semitic, inscriptions are generally written from right to left, but a few are 1 30vrrp04nSop; the Ethiopic is written from left to right, and makes a marked advance upon the ordinary Semitic manner of writing by indicating the vowels.

The discovery of earlier inscriptions than were hitherto known has, however, caused this view to be discarded, and the problem is to decide from which form of the Semitic alphabet it is derived.

The alphabet, according to Taylor, shows no resemblance to any northern Semitic script, while its stiff, straight lines and its forms seem like the Sabaean.

But he rejects Taylor's derivation of this alphabet from the Sabaean script, and contends that it is borrowed from the North Semitic. To the pedantry of the Hindu he attributes its main characteristics, viz.

The Semitic alphabet is excellently treated by Lidzbarski in the Jewish Encyclopaedia (1901); his Nordsemitische Epigraphik (1898) has excellent facsimiles and tables of the alphabets, and there are many contributions to the history of the alphabet in the same writer's Ephemeris fur semitische Epigraphik (Giessen, since 1900).

Its earliest form is a rough ellipse transfixed by an upright line, cp. In various Semitic alphabets this has been altered out of recognition, apparently from the writing of the symbol in cursive handwriting without lifting the pen.

The pronunciation of the Semitic Koph (Qof) was that of a velar guttural produced against the back part of the soft palate with great energy (hence called an "emphatic" sound).

All or nearly all of these were at one time totem animals among one or another of the Semitic tribes, and were not eaten because primitive men will not eat animals between which and themselves and their gods they believe a peculiar tie of kinship to exist.

In the Semitic East it is an old belief that a successful fast in the wilderness of forty days and nights gives power over the Djinns.

At the time of Khammurabi's successful struggle with the Elamite conquerors it was ruled by an Elamite king named Eriaku, the Arioch of the Bible, called Rim-Sin by his Semitic subjects.

But the Greek text appears to be itself a translation from some Semitic source.

But he is there as the companion and friend of man, which is Aryan and not Semitic. So alien indeed is this from the Semitic mind that in the Aramaic and Hebrew versions the dog does not appear.

Even in K, the more Semitic of the two Greek versions, the dog has evidently been found an offence.

But there is at present no clear proof of Phoenician or other Semitic activity in Cyprus until the last years of the 8th century.

This had the obvious advantage of lifting two great families into prominence, the Semitic and the IndoGermanic. The Semitic peoples were closely bound together by common types of thought and civilization, and produced three of the leading religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

In the chains of Zagros we find, in Babylonian and Assyrian times, no trace of Iranians; but partly Semitic peoplesthe Gutaeans, Lulubaeans, &c.partly tribes that we can refer to no known ethnological group, e.g.

The province of the Iranian language is bounded on the west by the Semitic, on the north and north-east by the Ural-altaic or Turanian, and on the south-east by the kindred language of India.

The structure of New Persian has hardly altered at all since the Shahuama; but the original purism of Firdousi, who made every effort to keep the language Iree from Semitic admixture, could not long be maintained.

Arabic literature and speech exercised so powerful an influence on New Persian, especially on the written language, that it could not withsfand the admission of an immense number of Semitic words.

But he did not let his other duties interfere with his Semitic studies.

In all that the older Stoics taught there breathes that enthusiasm for righteousness in which has been traced the earnestness of the Semitic spirit; but nothing presents more forcibly the pitch of their moral idealism than the doctrine of the Wise Man.

It has been well said that the old heroes of the republic were unconscious Stoics, fitted by their narrowness, their stern simplicity and devotion to duty for the almost Semitic earnestness of the new doctrine.

The early date of our book - the 2nd century B.C. - and its place of composition speak for a Semitic original, and the evidence bearing on this subject is conclusive.

There are, besides, a good many turns of expression and sayings peculiar to this Gospel which have a Semitic cast, or which suggest a point of view that would be natural to Palestinian Christians, e.g.

Similar forms are also found in early Aramaic, but another form 1 or L, which is found in the Phoenician of Cyprus in the 9th or 10th century B.C. has had more effect upon the later development of the Semitic forms. The length of the two back strokes and the manner in which they join the upright are the only variations in Greek.

The racial distinction between the Chaldaeans and the Babylonians proper seems to have existed until a much later date, although it is almost certain that the former were originally a Semitic people.

As already indicated, the Chaldaeans were most probably a Semitic people.

It is much more likely that the name "Chaldaean" is connected with the Semitic stem kasadu (conquer), in which case Kaldi-Kaki, with the well-known interchange of 1 and š, would mean "conquerors."

When, therefore, the Hebrew records have carried back to the most ancient admissible date the existence of the Hebrew language, this date must have been long preceded by that of the extinct parent language of the whole Semitic family; while this again was no doubt the descendant of languages slowly shaping themselves through ages into this peculiar type.

Judging, then, by the extirpation and adoption of languages within the range of history, it is obvious that to classify mankind into races, Aryan, Semitic, Turanian, Polynesian, Kaffir, &c., on the mere evidence of language, is intrinsically unsound.

But the official language and that of all the upper classes is of Semitic origin, derived from the ancient Himyaritic, which is the most archaic member of the Semitic linguistic family.

All are written in a peculiar syllabic script which, un like all other Semitic forms, runs from left to right, and is derived from that of the Sabaeans and Minaeans, still extant in the very old rock-inscriptions of south Arabia.

On a seething mass of African heathendom, already in early times affected by primitive Semitic ideas, was.

Although her myth and cult were essentially Semitic, she soon became Hellenized and was admitted to a place among the deities of Olympus.

Among the Semitic peoples (with the notable exception of the Hebrews) a supreme female deity was worshipped under different names - the Assyrian Ishtar, the Phoenician Ashtoreth (Astarte), the Syrian Atargatis (Derketo), the Babylonian Belit (Mylitta), the Arabian Ilat (Al-ilat).

But, although her connexion with the moon has practically disappeared, in all other aspects a development from the Semitic divinity is clearly manifest.

The most distinctively oriental title of the Greek Aphrodite is Urania, the Semitic " queen of the heavens."

There can be no doubt that the author of Daniel thought that Belshazzar (q.v.), who has now been identified beyond all question with Belg ar-uzur, the son of Nabonidus, the last Semitic king of Babylon, was the son of Nebuchadrezzar, and that Belshazzar attained the rank of king.'

The fact that in no other scriptural passage is mention made of any Median ruler between the last Semitic king of Babylon and Cyrus, and the absolute silence of the authoritative ancient authors regarding such a king, make it apparent that the late author of Daniel is again in error in this particular.

The other great historical cultus, which during the last twelve centuries did for the Semitic peoples what Christianity accomplished among the European Aryans, has won to itself one-fifth of the population of Bengal.

That the Book of Enoch was written in Semitic is now accepted on all hands, but scholars are divided as to whether the Semitic language in question was Hebrew or Aramaic. Only one valuable contribution on this question has been made, and that by Halevy in the Journal Asiatique, AvrilMai 186 7, pp. 35 2 -395.

Greek, Latin and Ethiopic. - The Semitic original was translated into Greek.

By this means we are able to detect dittographies in the Greek and variants in the original Semitic. The original was written to a large extent in verse.

This derivation is impossible in Semitic. This context is found elsewhere in the Sibyllines iii.

Sacred wells are familiar features of Semitic sanctuaries, and Islam, retaining the well, made a quasi-biblical story for it, and endowed its tepid waters with miraculous curative virtues.

This old Semitic usage has its close parallel in the vow of the Nazarite.

On the island of Ceylon there still exists, or existed till recently, a system which combines some of the characteristics of the later Greek (or Semitic) and the modern European notation; and it is conjectured that this was the original Hindu system.

These circular hearths persisted into the Canaanite period, but were ultimately superseded by the Semitic developments.

As such it became the centre of that strife between Europe and Africa, between Aryan and Semitic man, in its later stages between Christendom and Islam, which forms the great interest of Sicilian history.

As the Semitic head of Sicily, it stands opposed to Syracuse, the Greek head.

Under the Carthaginian it was the head of the Semitic part of Sicily; when, under the Saracen all Sicily came under Semitic rule, it was the chief seat of that rule.

In more recent years, however, new lines of inquiry have been opened up. First of all by the great Semitic scholar Lagarde.

The absence of any special name for it in the Semitic, Chinese and Sanskrit languages is also adduced as an indication of its comparatively recent culture.

Kraus in Classical Review, February 1908, that Aphaea, the cult-name of Artemis at Aegina, is of Semitic origin and means "beautiful."

Ka-dimirra, the Semitic Bab-ili, probably denoted at first E-Saggila, "the house of the lofty head," the temple dedicated to Bel-Merodach, along with its immediate surroundings.

Muss-Arnolt, The Urim and Thummim (reprinted from the American Journal of Semitic Languages, July 1900).

In the long history of mankind it is impossible to deny that stories may conceivably have spread from a single centre, and been handed on from races like the Indo-European and the Semitic to races as far removed from them in every way as the Zulus, the Australians, the Eskimo, the natives of the South Sea Islands.

In cruelty the Aztecs surpassed perhaps all peoples of the Old World, except certain Semitic stocks, and their gods, of course, surpassed almost all other gods in bloodthirstiness.

The first group of deities belongs to a period and a district in which Semitic influences had undoubtedly begun to work " (Petrie).

This may be attributed to Semitic influence, or we may suppose that the process of anthropomorphizing theriomorphic gods was naturally developing itself; for Mexico has shown us and Greece can show us abundant examples of these mixed figures, in which the anthropomorphic god retains traces of his theriomorphic past.

Throughout the rest of the Sudan is found Semitic culture introduced by the Arabized Libyan.

The culture prevailing in the Horn of Africa is, naturally, mainly Hamito Semitic; here are found both cylindrical and bee-hive huts, the sword (which has been adopted by the Masai to the south), the lyre (which has found its way to some of the Nilotic tribes) and the head-rest.

It was a system of Greek thought, expressed in a Semitic tongue, and modified by Oriental influences, called into existence amongst the Moslem people by the patronage of their more liberal princes, and kept alive by the intrepidity and zeal of a small band of thinkers, who stood suspected and disliked in the eyes of their nation.

In the course of that exile the traces of Semitic or Mahommedan influence gradually faded away, and the last of the line of Saracenic thinkers was a truer exponent of the one philosophy which they all professed to teach than the first.

The term " Bilad-es-Sudan " (" country of the blacks ") is not altogether applicable to the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, the northern portion being occupied by Hamitic and Semitic tribes, chiefly nomads, and classed as Arabs.

We now understand how the Phoenicians, whose ancestors arrived in the second Semitic migration, came to call their land " Canaan."

The Semitic cult of sacred standing stones is thus proved to be of great antiquity; Sellin's discoveries at Taannek and those of Bliss at Tell-es-Safy fully confirm this.

Mixed with these proto-Armenians, there was an important Semitic element of Assyrian and Hebrew origin.

After the Arab and Seljuk invasions, there was a large emigration of Aryan and Semitic Armenians to Constantinople and Cilicia; and all that remained of the aristocracy was swept away by the Mongols and Tatars.

Thus the Aramaic languages may be geographically defined as the Semitic dialects originally current in Mesopotamia and the regions extending south-west from the Euphrates to Palestine.

The Arabs only forbade plastic art in the 9th century, nor were their essentially Semitic scruples ever shared by the Persians.

The Hebrew and probably the Phoenician name for 0 was Ain (Ayin), and in the Semitic alphabet, which does not indicate vowels, the symbol stood for a "voiced glottal stop" and also for a "voiced velar spirant" (Zimmern).

At one time it was held that the constellation names and myths were of Greek origin; this view has now been disproved, and an examination of the Hellenic myths associated with the stars and star-groups in the light of the records revealed by the decipherment of Euphratean cuneiforms leads to the conclusion that in many, if not all, cases the Greek myth has a Euphratean parallel, and so renders it probable that the Greek constellation system and the cognate legends are primarily of Semitic or even pre-Semitic origin.

In the daytime he continued his researches in Semitic philology.

In 1847 he obtained the Prix Volney - one of the principal distinctions awarded by the Academy of Inscriptions - for the manuscript of his "General History of Semitic Languages."

This section is free from such notable Hebraisms as we have just dealt with, and no convincing grounds have been advanced to prove that it is a translation from a Semitic original.

Geoffrey Driver, who was Professor of Semitic Philology at Oxford, argued for an essentially Egyptian origin for the North Semitic alphabet.

These Semitic tribes had been gradually encroaching into the northern delta area taking control of much of the land in the north of Egypt.

Geoffrey Driver, who was Professor of Semitic philology at Oxford, argued for an essentially Egyptian origin for the North Semitic alphabet.

When the ancient Semitic world banned usury, it knew its destructive power, and attributed the ban to God.

He was a deeply religious man, but his exemption of Jewish origins from the canons of historical inquiry which he elsewhere applied was probably due to the conditions of his age, which preceded the dawn of Semitic investigation and regarded the Old Testament and the Hebrew religion as sui generis.

Later allusions show that on Semitic lips Javan meant western traders in general.

The Nabataean inscriptions (see Semitic Languages) are collected in the Corpus Inscr.

Of this there is other evidence; a Leiden papyrus names Etum as the wife of the Semitic fire-god Reshpu.

Like the other languages of the non-Semitic tribes of Elam that of the Kassites was agglutinative; a vocabulary of it has been handed down in a cuneiform tablet, as well as a list of Kassite names with their Semitic equivalents.

Apart from Susa, the most important part of the country was Anzan (Anshan, contracted Assan), where the native population maintained itself unaffected by Semitic intrusion.

Hubert and Mauss point out that Robertson Smith is far from having established either the historical or the logical connexion between the common meal and the other types of sacrifice; the simplest Semitic forms known to us are the most recently recorded; further their simplicity may mean no more than documentary insufficiency, and in any case does not imply any priority; the piaculum is found side by side with the communion at all times.

It is from such a fusion as this that the ancestors of the Jews were descended, and both the history and the genius of this people can be properly understood only by taking into account the physical features of their land and the characteristics of the Semitic races in general (see Palestine, Semitic Languages).

Aramaic gives to the noun instead an ending a, 1 On the place of Aramaic among the Semitic languages, and of Syriac among the various dialects, see Semitic Languages.

The main grammatical distinction between Syriac and all the west Aramaic dialects is that in Syriac the 3rd person of the imperfect (singular and plural) of the verb begins with n, but in west Aramaic, as in the other Semitic languages, it begins with y.

The bulk of the population, so far as race goes, is of the Semitic family, and at bottom Aramaean with a large admixture of immigrant Arabian blood, which is constantly being reinforced, and a comparatively small strain of Hebrew blood.

Among this Semitic folk is to be observed a great variety of immigrant stocks, settled in isolated patches, which have done much to contaminate the masses about them.

Gardiner and Cowley of the earliest Semitic script in the hieroglyphic signs found in Sinai.33 Since the war a new British school of archaeology in Jerusalem has been founded under the direction of Prof. Garstang, who has begun for the Palestine Exploration Fund excavations at Ascalon, which have resulted in the discovery of interesting late buildings 34 and this year (1921) in that of a statue of Herod the Great.

The Semitic world affords many examples of the belief that a man's religion was part of his political connexion and that the change of nationality involved 1 Cp. Rev. xi.

The usual signs denoting Akkadu in the Semitic narrative inscriptions were read in the non-Semitic idiom uri-ki or ur-ki, " land of the city," which simply meant that Akkadu was the land of the city par excellence, i.e.

It is 1 Thus some of the additions to Daniel and the Prayer of Manasses are most probably derived from a Semitic original written in Palestine, yet in compliance with the prevailing opinion they are classed under Hellenistic Jewish literature.

Rival kings, Pungunilaand Immerum,are mentioned in the contract tablets as reigning at the same time as Sumu-la-ilu (or Samu-la-ilu); and under Sin-muballidh, the great-grandson of Sumu-la-ilu, the Elamites laid the whole of the country under tribute, and made Eri-Aku or Arioch, called Rim-Sin by his Semitic subjects, king of Larsa.

The Babylonian syllabary which thus arose, and which, as the culture passed on to the north - known as Assyria - became the Babylonian Assyrian syllabary, 3 was enlarged and modified in the course of time, the Semitic equivalents for many of the signs being distorted or abbreviated to form the basis of new "phonetic" values that were thus of " Semitic " origin; but, on the whole, the " non-Semitic " character of the signs used as syllables in the phonetic method of writing Semitic words was preserved; and, furthermore, down to the latest days of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires the mixed method of writing continued, though there were periods when " purism " was the fashion, and there was a more marked tendency to spell out the words laboriously in preference to using signs with a phonetic complement as an aid in suggesting the reading desired in any given instance.

The conservatism which is a feature of proper names everywhere, in consequence of which the archaic traits of a language are frequently preserved in them, just as they are preserved in terms used in the ritual and in poetic diction, is sufficient to account for the interesting fact that the Semitic settlers of the Euphrates valley in handing down their names from one generation to another retained the custom of writing them in " Sumerian " fashion, or, as we might also put it, in "ideographic" form.

Moreover, the idiom is particularly Semitic. Thus we have xv.

In verses 9, 19 the manifest corruptions may be explicable from a Semitic background.

Friedrich Delitzsch brought into notice three tablets, of the age of the first dynasty of Babylon, in which he read the names of Yaa'-ve-ilu, Ya-ve-ilu, and Ya-u- um -ilu (" Yahweh is God "), and which he regarded as conclusive proof that Yahweh was known in Babylonia before 2000 B.C.; he was a god of the Semitic invaders in the second wave of migration, who were, according to Winckler and Delitzsch, of North Semitic stock (Canaanites, in the linguistic sense).'

According to Semitic idiom "sons of the prophets" most naturally means "members of a prophetic corporation," 3 which may imply that under the headship of Elisha and the favour of the dynasty of Jehu, which owed much to Elisha and his party, the prophetic societies took a more regular form than before.

The conclusions at which Bent arrived as to the Semitic origin of the ruins in Mashonaland have not been accepted by archaeologists, but the value of his pioneer work is undeniable (see Zimbabwe).

Perhaps there is most authority in favour of deriving it from the Syriac Tpn, which in the emphatic state becomes rc;pn, so that we have a Semitic correspondence to both the Greek forms Eaanvoi and Eaaaiot.

When the Semitic settlers of the age of Sargon, whom it is now common with some justice to call Akkadians (see Sumer), had become thoroughly merged in the population, there appeared a new immigrant element, the Amurru, whose advance as far as Babylonia is to be traced in the troubled history of the postGudean period, out of the confusion of which there ultimately emerged the Khammurabi dynasty.

The language of the Mitanni state, however, was neither Aryan nor Semitic, and may very well be that of the mysterious "Hittite" hieroglyphic inscriptions (see Hittites).

This cryptography, according to some of the Halevyans, was read aloud in Semitic, but, according to other expositors, the system was read as an " ideophonic," secret, and purely artificial language.

These invaders, according to this latter view, adopted the religion and culture of the conquered Sumerians; and, consequently, the Sumerian idiom at a comparatively early date began to be used exclusively in the Semitic temples as the written vehicles of religious thought in much the same way as was the medieval Latin of the Roman Church.

This etymological study of Sumerian is attended with incalculable difficulties, because nearly all the Sumerian texts which we possess are written in an idiom which is quite evidently under the influence of Semitic. With the exception of some very ancient texts, the Sumerian literature, consisting largely of religious material such as hymns and incantations, shows a number of Semitic loanwords and grammatical Semitisms, and in many cases, although not always, is quite patently a translation of Semitic ideas by Semitic priests into the formal religious Sumerian language.

In these instances, however, we can explain the difficulty away by applying that great fundamental principle followed by the Semitic priests and scribes who played with and on the Sumerian idiom, and in the course of many centuries turned what was originally an agglutinative language into what has almost justified Halevy and his followers in calling Sumerian a cryptography.

This Egyptian paraphrase of Semitic is just like the Irish paraphrase of English, It is hearing he is.

In general it is the simple homely virtues that are enjoined on men in Proverbs - there is no mention of courage, fortitude, intellectual truthfulness, and no recognition of beauty as an element of life; the ethical type is Semitic, not Hellenic, and the sages emphasize only those qualities that seemed to them to be most effective in the struggle of life; their insistence on the practical, not the heroic, side of character is perhaps in part the consequence of the position of the Jewish people at that time, as also the silence respecting international ethics belongs to the thought of the times.

The Greek names of the letters, their forms, and the order of the symbols show that the Greek alphabet as we know it must have been imported by or from a Semitic people, and there is no evidence to contradict ancient tradition that this people was the Phoenicians.

It is quite evident, for example, from the Semitic character of the Chaldaean king-names, that the language of these Chaldaeans differed in no way from the ordinary Semitic Babylonian idiom which was practically identical with that of Assyria.

This view, however, has not met with general acceptance, on the ground that, in Semitic mythology, the moon is always a male divinity; and that the full moon and crescent, found as attributes of Astarte, are due to a misinterpretation of the sun's disk and cow's horns of Isis, the result of the dependence of Syrian religious art upon Egypt.

When the Semitic tribes settled in the cities of Babylonia, their tribal custom passed over into city law.

In the Sumerian texts of Babylonia it was called Numma, "the Highlands," of which Elamtu or Elamu, "Elam," was the Semitic translation.

In politics these races have been less successful in modern times, but the Semitic states of Babylonia and Assyria were once the principal centres for the development and distribution of civilization.

Some authorities hold that Egyptian civilization came from Babylonia, and that the so-called Hamitic languages are older and less specialized members of the Semitic family.