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 SEMITIC

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SEMITIC

Christ, although for the present it is better to main- tain a somewhat sceptical attitude as regards this hypothesis. At all events, the Minseans, at an early- period, probably avoiding the desert by a journey along the eastern coast, emigrated from North-east- em Arabia. To the south and south-east of the Mi- naeans were the Katabans and the Hadramotites, who were cognate in language and who stood in active commercial relations with Ma'in, under whose po- litical protectorate they seem to have lived. The spirit of enterprise of this kingdom is shown by the foundation of a commercial (!olony in the north-west- ern part of the peninsula in the neighbourhood of the Gulf of Akabah, viz., Ma'in-Mussran (Mizraimitic, Egypt Ma'in). The downfall of the Ma'in kingdom was, according to the usual assumption, connected with the rise of the Sabaean kingdom. The Saba;ans had likewise emigrated from the North, and in con- stant struggles had gradually spread their dominion over almost all Southern Arabia. Their capital was Ma'rib. Their numerous monuments and inscrip- tions extend from about 700 b. c. until almost the time of Mohammed. At the height of its power, Saba received a heavy blow by the loss of the monopoly of the carrying trade between India and the northern regions, when the Ptolemies entered into direct trade relations with India. Still the Sabaean Kingdom maintained itself, with varying fortune, until about A. D. 300. After its fall the once powerful Yeman was constantly under foreign domination, at last un- der Persian. Ultimately, Southern Arabia was drawn into the circle of Islam. Its characteristic language was replaced by the Northern Arabic, and in only a few localities of the southern coast are remnants of it to be found: the so-called Mahri in Mahraland and the Socotri on the Island of Socotra.

Northern Arabia had in the meanwhile followed its own path. To the east of Mussran to far into the Syrian desert we hear of the activity of the Aribi (at first in the ninth century b. c), from whom the entire peninsula finally received its name. Assurbanibal, especially, boasts of important victories over them in his struggles with them for the mastery of Edom, Moab, and the Hauran (c. GoO). Some of the tribes possessed the germs of political organization, as is shown in their government by kings and even queens. While these ancient Aribi for the most part constituted nomadic tribes, certain of their descend- ants became settled and achieved a high culture. Thus, about n. c. 200 we h(nir of the realm of the Nabata'ans in the former territory of tlu! Edomites. From their clilT-town of Pctra they gradually sjjread their dominion over North-western Arabia, Moab, the Hauran, and temporarily even over Damascus. Their prosperity was chiefly due to their carrying trade be- tween Southern Arabia and Mediterranean lands. The language of their inscriptions and coins is Ara- maic, but the names inscribed upon them are Arabic. In A. D. 106 the Nabata>an Kingdom became a Ro- man province. Its annexation caused the prosperity of the above-mentioned Palmyra, whose aristocracy and dynasty were likewise descended from the Aribi. Subsequent to these many other small Arabian prin- cipalities developed on the boundary between civilized lands and the desert; but they were for the most j)art of short duration. Of greatest importance were two which stood respectively under the protection of the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Kingdom as buffer states of those great powers against the sons of the desert: the realm of the Ghassanites in the Hauran, and that of the Lahmites, the centre of which was Hira, to the south of Babylon.

In the second half of the sixth century a. d., when Southern Arabia had outlived its political existence, Northern Arabia had not yet found a way to political union, and the entire peninsula threatened to become a battle-ground of Persian and Byzantine interests. In

one district alone, the centre of which was Mecca, did pure Arabism maintain an independent position. In this city, a. d. 570, Mohammed was born, the man who was destined to put into motion the last and most permanent of the movements which issued from Arabia. And so in the seventh century another evo- lution of Semitism took place, which in the victorious power of its attack and in its mighty expansion sur- passed all that had gone before; the offshoots of which pressed forward to the Atlantic Ocean and into Europe itself.

(b) Ahyssinians. — At an early epoch South Ara- bian tribes emigrated to the opposite African coast, where Sabaean trade colonies had probably existed for a long time. As early as the first century a. d. we find in the north of the Abyssinian mountain-lands the Semitic realm of Aksum. The conquerors brought with them South Arabian letters and language, which in their new home gradually attained an individual character. From this language, the Ge'ez, wrongly called Ethiopian, two daughter-languages are de- scended, Tigre and Tigrina. The confusion of this kingdom with Ethiopia probably owes its origin to the fact that the Semite emigrants adopted this name from the Graeco-Egyptian sailors, at a time when the Kingdom of Meroe was still in some repute. And so they called their kingdom Yt6yop6ya. From Aksum as a base they gradually extended their dominion over all Abyssinia, the northern population of which to- day shows a purer Semitic type, while the southern is strongly mixed with Hamitic elements. At an early date the south must have been settled by Semites, who spoke a language related to Ge'ez, which was afterwards to a great extent influenced by the lan- guages of the native population, particularly by the Agau dialects. A descendant of this language is the Amharic, the present language of intercourse in Abys- sinia itself and far beyond its boundaries.

See the articles on the separate titles treated above; also Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de V Orient classique (189.3); Meyer, Gesch. des Altertums, I (1909), extending to the sixteenth century b. c; Barton, Sketch of Semitic Origins (New York, 1902).

F. SCHTJHLEIN.

Semitic Epigraphy is a new science, dating only from Iho past fifty years. At the beginning of the eighteenth cciitury European scholars sought in vain to deciplier two Pulmyran inscriptions which had been discovered at Rome. At the end of the century Swin- ton in England and the Abbe Barthelemy in France succeeded in reconstructing the alphabet with the assistance of thirteen new bilingual texts copied at Palmyra by Wood. Thenceforth it was evident of what assistance inscriptions would be to the philologi- cal and historical knowledge of the ancient Orient. They are, moreover, of great utility in Biblical criticism. The true founder of this science was W. Gesenius, who collected and commentated all the Phoenician inscrip- tions then known in his remarkable work"ScripturaD linguaeque Phoenicia) monumenta" (Leipzig, 1837). Since then attention has been devoted to the research of epigraphical monuments and the most eminent Orientalists are successfully applying themselves to deciphering and explaining them. In 1867 the Acade- mic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of Paris under- took the publication of a "Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum", in which the monuments should be collected, translated, and reproduced in facsimile by the most perfect processes. The publication, made with all desirable care, is regularly continued, despite the ' enormous expenses it involves. To afford an idea of Semitic epigraphy we shall follow the plan adopted in this work, which does not treat of the numerous in- scriptions in cuneiform characters, these falling within the province of the Assyriologist. We shall begin with the branches which belong to the group of North Semitic languages. I. Phcenician Inscriptions. — These are numerous