Page:PhilipK.Hitti-SyriaAShortHistory.djvu/40

 THE ANCIENT SEMITES

term Semite is derived from the name of Noah's eldest son, Shem, from whom the Semites were formerly assumed to be descended. In modern usage, however, the term is exclusively linguistic; a Semite is one who speaks—or spoke—any of the Semitic family of languages: Akkadian (Assyro - Babylonian), Canaanite (Amoritic and Phoenician), Aramaic (Syriac), Hebrew, Arabic and Ethiopic. Within this family the members manifest striking points of similarity, and as a group differ from other linguistic groups, the Hamitic being the nearest of kin. In all Semitic languages the basic words—such as personal pronouns, nouns denoting blood kinship, numbers and chief members of the body—are strikingly similar.

This linguistic kinship among the Semitic-speaking peoples is their principal but not their only bond. Comparisons of their social institutions, religious beliefs, psychological traits and physical features reveal impressive points of resemblance. The inference is inescapable: their common ancestors must have formed a single people speaking a single language and occupying a single region, presumably the Arabian peninsula. Whenever its population outgrew its meagre resources, the restless, half-starved desert nomads used their greater mobility and endurance to overrun the fertile fields and prosperous towns to the north. The Israelites of the Old Testament were neither the first nor the last Semites to seize and settle upon the tilled lands of Syria.

Such Semitic migrations northward were, indeed, continuous, reaching marked peaks at intervals of about a thousand years. Around 3500 B.C. such a wave spread Rh