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 760 SEMIRAMIS SEMITIC RACE AND LANGUAGES into the circles of Semipolatinsk, Karkara- linsk, Kokpekty, and Pavlodar. II. A fortified town, capital of the province, on the Irtish, 460 m. S. W. of Tomsk ; pop. in 1867, 14,135. It contains several government establishments, and carries on a considerable trade with Bo- khara, Tashkend, Kashgar, and the Kirghiz. SEMIRAMIS, a queen of Assyria, who, accord- ing to fabulous traditions handed down by clas- sical authors, reigned about 2000 B. C. As- syriologists suppose that she is the queen Sam- muramit, wife of Iva-lush, who lived about 800 B. C. Ctesias, according to Diodorus Siculus, describes her as the daughter of the fish god- dess Derceto of Ascalon, and as the wife first of Cannes, and then of Ninus, who died soon after his marriage with her, and left her the sole mistress of the Assyrian empire. She then caused the city of Babylon to be built, encircling it with a wall flanked by many towers and of great height, throwing bridges over the Euphrates, providing it with aque- ducts and canals, and erecting in it gorgeous palaces and temples. This done, she made an expedition into Media, Persia, and Armenia, subdued Egypt and the greater part of Ethio- pia, and would have conquered India also if her army had not been put to flight by the war elephants of King Stratobatis. Thencefor- ward she devoted herself entirely to the in- ternal improvement of her empire, and, accord- ing to Strabo, in course of time every great work in Asia was popularly attributed to her. Learning that her son Ninyas was plotting against her, she abdicated, left the empire to him, and disappeared as a dove. The real Sammuramit was a queen who had some im- portant works executed at Babylon, but was otherwise of little significance in the political history of the country. It is probable that the accounts of the Greeks are a blending of some of the mythological conceptions of the Baby- lonians with the facts and popular legends of the early history of the empire. See F. Lenor- mant, La Ugende de Semiramu (Paris, 1874). SEMITIC RACE AXD LANGC1GES. The Semitic race constitutes one of the most important and largest divisions of the Mediterranean or Cau- casian type of mankind. (See ETHNOLOGY.) The name Semitic (properly Shemitic), first applied by Eichhorn, is in a measure a misno- mer, inasmuch as modern ethnology and lin- guistic science designate by it a much larger family of peoples than are represented in Gen- esis as descendants of Shorn. 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, consti- tuting the South Semites, are now grouped to- gether as Semites proper, or Eusemites. Thus the Aramroans (Syrians and Chaldeans), He- brews, 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 Ethio- pians, but almost all the large group of peo- ples usually called Hamites in reference to the Biblical genealogies. The Hamitic Sem- ites, or Dysseraites, include, besides the primi- tive 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, adopt- ing the opinion of Bleek, the great student of the African languages, includes still another branch, which he calls the South African, and in which ho reckons the Hottentots and Bushmen, but of course only from a linguis- tic point of view. The wide meaning thus given to the term Semitic has been found ne- cessary on account of the almost inextricable interrelationship between the Harnites and the Semites proper. Whether in Mesopotamia, in Palestine, in north Africa, or even in Ara- bia, the Hamites not only appear as the neigh- bors of the Semites, but as having generally been ethnologically absorbed by them. The Bible indicates the close relationship existing between Hamites and Semites by represent- ing the Cushites as children of Ham, and the Canaanites as descendants of Cush, and re- peatedly applying the name Cush to peoples closely connected with Semites proper. (See CCSH.) The enormous gaps between the his- torical beginnings of the various divisions of the Hamito-Semitic family render futile ev- ery attempt to trace a line of migration con- necting 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 represen- tations 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 al- ways exhibited the same proportions as those of the rest of the Caucasian or Mediterranean race. This early type, 5n which the character- istics of the Hamites are supposed to prepon- derate, 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 distinguish- ing 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 be- tween white, yellow, and brown; well devel-