Illustrated history of ancient literature, oriental and classical

by John D. Quackenbos

THE SEMITES.

The Semitic Languages, in like manner, may all be traced to a common source. To this group belong the Syriac, the Hebrew, the Arabic, the Ethiopic, the ancient Phœnician, and the Carthaginian; while the cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia and Assyria are the written characters of a Semitic tongue common to those countries. (See Chart, p. 85.)

Philology has not followed the Semites to a home as limited as that of the Aryans; though tradition points to Armenia as their early domicile, ethnological science to Arabia or Africa. It declares, however, the Semitic and the Aryan to be distinct forms of speech, perhaps branches of a common stem, but neither derivable from the other.