The Semitic race constitutes one of the most important and largest divisions of the Mediterranean or Caucasian type of mankind. (See Ethnology.) The name Semitic (properly Shemitic), first applied by Eichhorn, is in a measure a misnomer, inasmuch as modern ethnology and linguistic science designate by it a much larger family of peoples than are represented in Genesis as descendants of Shem. The inhabitants of Syria and adjoining parts of Mesopotamia, and the coast lands of Palestine, forming the division of North Semites, and the population of Arabia and parts of N. E. Africa, constituting the South Semites, are now grouped together as Semites proper, or Eusemites. Thus the Aramaeans (Syrians and Chaldeans), Hebrews, and Phoenicians are North Semites; and the central Arabs or Ishmaelites, South Arabs or Joktanites, and the inhabitants of Ethiopia or Abyssinia, are South Semites.

Furthermore, the term Semitic is made to embrace not only the Phoenicians and Ethiopians, but almost all the large group of peoples usually called Hamites in reference to the Biblical genealogies. The Hamitic Semites, or Dyssemites, include, besides the primitive Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians, the following three branches: the Egyptian, comprising the ancient Egyptians and the Copts or modern Egyptians; the Libyan, formed by the Berbers and Tuariks (Amazirgh or Imo-sharh), the Kabyles, Shelloohs, and Guanches; and the Ethiopian, represented by the Bedjas, Bogos, Saho, Agow, Fellatahs or Foolahs, Galla, Danakil, and Somauli. Lepsius, adopting the opinion of Bleek, the great student of the African languages, includes still another branch, which he calls the South African, and in which he reckons the Hottentots and Bushmen, but of course only from a linguistic point of view. The wide meaning thus given to the term Semitic has been found necessary on account of the almost inextricable interrelationship between the Hamites and the Semites proper. Whether in Mesopotamia, in Palestine, in north Africa, or even in Arabia, the Hamites not only appear as the neighbors of the Semites, but as having generally been ethnologically absorbed by them.

The Bible indicates the close relationship existing between Hamites and Semites by representing the Cushites as children of Ham, and the Canaanites as descendants of Cush, and repeatedly applying the name Cush to peoples closely connected with Semites proper. (See Cush.) The enormous gap between the historical beginnings of the various divisions of the Hamito-Semitic family render futile every attempt to trace a line of migration connecting them all, or to place their common cradle in any one portion of the globe. To ascertain the original physical type of the race, anthropologists turn to the pictorial representations on Egyptian monuments, and examine the proportions of mummies. They were of medium height, the skin reddish yellow, head and face oval, hair dark and curly; the nose was set so as to continue almost in a straight line the massive forehead, and, though often gently turned at the extremity, was never thick and flat. The skeletons of mummies have always exhibited the same proportions as those of the rest of the Caucasian or Mediterranean race.

This early type, in which the characteristics of the Hamites are supposed to preponderate, becomes gradually modified from age to age, until the monuments and mummies of a more recent date show those forms and facial outlines which are to this day the distinguishing features of Semites proper, namely: a long face; a medium broad and high forehead; a protruding and strongly bent nose; deep set, vivid eyes, underneath black and heavy brows; undulating, curly hair and beard of brilliant black; the color of the skin of all shades between white, yellow, and brown; well developed muscles, and symmetrical extremities. It is generally assumed that there is a marked difference between the intellectual development of the Hamites and Semites proper. If the Egyptians, Assyrians and Babylonians, and Phoenicians are essentially Hamitic, the Semites must be considered inferior to them. The Hamites were rather an agricultural race. They early organized into states and empires, and centralized the executive power.

They erected colossal monuments and edifices, like the pyramids of Egypt and the palaces of Assyria. Their minds had essentially an objective tendency, and their materialism found utterance in the lascivious religious rites of the Babylonians, and in the strange views and worship of the people of the Nile. Their literature was principally historical, though recent Assyrian and Egyptian discoveries have also brought to light literary productions in other arts and sciences. The peoples designated as Semites proper were generally nomadic. They consisted of independent tribes, which united under some form of patriarchal government. They lived in tents, and had but little taste for architecture and other plastic arts. The Hebrews and Arabs, however, have displayed a peculiar versatility of mind, which allowed them to build up states in various forms, adapt the arts and sciences of other nations, develop extensive literatures, and produce the foremost religions of the world. Monotheism prevails in the religious conceptions of the Semites proper, and the lyric element in their poetry. To the Hamito-Semitic peoples the civilized world is indebted also for the art of writing.

The Greeks borrowed their alphabet from the Phoenicians, who imitated the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. (See Writing.) - Languages. No comparative grammar of the Semitic languages proper, or of the Hamitic group alone, much less of the entire Hamito-Semitic family, has been written, and hence it is not fully established in what their common linguistic property consists. There are many minor treatises on special branches of Semitic comparative philology, but no one has even attempted to sum up the general results so far reached, which are very meagre. The opinion that the Assyro-Babylonian language of the cuneiform inscriptions is the Sanskrit of the Semitic family, rests on a very insecure foundation of philological facts. It cannot be denied that the Canaanite group of peoples, Hebrews and Phoenicians, spoke languages much akin to Babylonian; Aramaic manifests a similar relationship by the prevalence of reflexive formations, the want of an article, the transcription of the genitive by a relative pronoun, and by the assimilation of the nasal in nun verbs.

But on the other hand it is much more consistent with the principles applied to the Indo-European family to allow the claim of priority to the Arabic language, and to consider the other Semitic tongues as shortened or shrunken forms of it, or as having proceeded from a primordial language of which Arabic is now the representative. The mutual connection of the Semitic idioms proper is very close, so much so that they seem to be dialects of a single tongue, and the differences between them are no greater than between the subdivisions of any branch of the Indo-European family. Ordinarily the type of Semitic speech is spoken of as being inflective like the Indo-European languages; but it does not necessarily follow that both families are of one origin, even if the system of inflection in Semitic were much more like the Aryan than it is. What is above all characteristic of the Semitic languages is the triliterality of the roots, which in Indo-European tongues are always monosyllabic. Then again, while Indo-European roots are vocalic in form, the Semitic are consonantal. In Semitic the vowel is subordinate, and changeable in inflection, while the consonant is not. The vowel determines only the manner or form of the idea or thing conceived; the idea itself can only be represented by consonants.

There is sometimes a semblance of a vocalic root, but there is none such in fact. There are many reasons for concluding that the roots originally numbered only two consonants, and that the triliters and plu-riliters are subsequent developments. According to E. Meier, the third radical consonant must be regarded as a reduplication of the originally monosyllabic root, and he has undertaken in his Hebräisches Wurzelwörterbuch to analyze the entire root matter of the Hebrew verbs, and to reduce the triliters to radicals of two consonants only. In the opinion of many Semitic scholars, however, his theory is an illusion. The fact that all the Semitic phonetical graphic systems, among which the Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Assyrian cuneiforms are not included, are composed of consonants only, is of great significance. Some of them have a larger number of letters than the Phoenician alphabet from which they are derived, but the nature of the sounds and the manner of uttering them remain the same, and the additional ones are only reduplicated forms of them.

Though the graphic systems are of the same origin, and are of a distinctive character constituting them a separate family among the methods of writing, yet they may be subdivided into two groups: one consisting of the primitive Hebrew and Samaritan, and called the Hebrew-Samaritan group; the other comprising Palmyrene, Pamphylian, the square Hebrew characters, Estranghelo and the other Syriac alphabets, the Sabaean or Mendai-tic, the Auranitic, the Nabathean and the Arabic, Cufic, and Neshky, and known as the Aramaean group. While the latter subdivision is a direct descendant from the early Aramaean style of writing, the former is a derivate from the archaic Hebrew of the inscriptions. The line of descent will be easily seen on comparing the following alphabets with those given in the article PhOenicia, vol. xiii., p. 456:

Names of characters.

Archaic Hebrew.

Palmyrene of

10 B. C.

Modern

Hebrew type.

English equivalents.

Aleph......

Semitic Race And Languages 1400332

Semitic Race And Languages 1400333

Semitic Race And Languages 1400334

a

Beth......

b

Gimel......

g

Daleth.....

d

He...........

h

Vav.........

V

Zayin.....

z

Cheth......

kh

Teth......

t

Yod......

y

Kaph......

k

Lames.....

1

Mem......

m

Nun......

n

Samech.....

s

Ain.........

Indefinite.

Pe...........

P

Tsade.....

ts

Qoph......

q

Resh......

r

Shin......

sh

Tav......

th

Besides the vowel modifications influencing the sense of the word itself, the Semitic tongues make a wide use of external formative elements, of prefixes and suffixes, and to a more limited extent also of infixes or inserted letters or syllables. There is a marked difference between the Semitic and the Indo-European verb. While equally distinguishing the singular, dual, and plural numbers, and the first, second, and third persons, and forming in a measure after the same fashion the various personal endings, namely, by adding pronominal elements to the verbal roots, yet the Semitic conception of the order of time is so utterly at variance with the Aryan conception of it as to produce an entirely different system of conjugation. There are in Semitic but two tenses, the one denoting generally completed action, and the other incomplete, but both are capable of expressing in certain circumstances present, past, and future time. Though subjunctive, imperative, and other less important modal forms appear in conjunction with the imperfect, yet the Semitic languages are almost wholly devoid of genuine modal expressions. In their stead the verb admits of a large number of conjugations, giving to it either a transitive, causal, intensive, iterative, conative, reflexive, or other similar meaning.

Every conjugation has special forms of verbal nouns and adjectives, infinitives, and participles. The system of conjugations is not equally developed in all the languages belonging to the Semitic family; but, as may be seen in Arabic, it is possible for a verb to have 15 conjugational forms. With the exception of Arabic, no Semitic language distinguishes case, and in Arabic no other than the nominative, genitive, and accusative is indicated. Otherwise nouns are either masculine or feminine, and admit of singular, plural, and dual number.