(B) THz NORTHERN SEMITES.—Of far more importance to the Bible student than the Arabians and Abyssinians is the Northern branch of’ the Semitic family. Fortunately, it is also not very difficult to indicate the several divisions of the Northern Semites, and their local distribution. Taking them up in the order of their primary settlements from east to west, we have first to do with those dwelling by the lower waters of the Euphrates and Tigris.
(a) Babylonians and Assyrians.—In that region which Gn 2 describes as the cradle of the human race, lived a people whose history, traced not simply in their language, but also in their archi- tectural remains, and even in their literary monu- ments, goes back to a period far beyond any other known to men. We call this people summarily Babylonian, from the name of the great historical capital. But Babylon or Babel did not come into prominence till about B.C. 2250. We have to regard the whole surrounding country as having been, for centuries and even millenniums before that era, divided up among a number of city-States, having a longer or shorter history of narrower or wider dominion. These communities we have also to consider essentially Semitic. The hypothesis of a so-called ‘Sumerian’ civilization and ‘Sumer- ian’ language, preceding the rise of the Semites, is in its current form the result of hasty and superficial theorizing, and the present writer is convinced that it will have to be essentially modi- fied. As neighbours to the Semites, and more or less mingling with them from time to time, were a foreign people, probably more than one people, who contributed some important elements to their mythology and civic life, with corresponding terms to their language. Who they were and whence
* That they were separated from the Minewans and Sabeans at a very remote period is proved by the fact that their lan- guage, though more akin to the Sabean than is the Arabic, is yet quite distinct from the former, whose written characters it borrowed, while it is also much less closely related to the Saban than is the Minzan dialect.
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they came cannot as yet be said. Possibly they were of a race akin to the Elamites across the Tigris, or to the Kassites of the highlands to the north of Elam. The name ‘Sumerian’ as applied to them is, in any case, a misnomer ; and the supposed Sumerian language is possibly only the Semitic Babylonian, or ‘Assyrian,’ written according to a system developed alongside of the popular syllabic from the original ideographie, and preserving the essential features of the latter. There are, it is true, many phenomena of this peculiar idiom which such an hypothesis does not explain. On the other hand, no one has yet suc- ceeded in constructing a reasonable or consistent grammar of the supposed language, though good material is abundant. Until this is done, the Semitic has a right of possession, precarious though it may be. Many invasions of Babylonian terri- tory were made by non-Semitic peoples from the most ancient times, especially Elamites and Kass- ites, but the language, the religion, both State and popular, and the civilization as a whole, remained al- ways essentially Semitic down to the time of Cyrus and the Persians. Distinctive of the Babylonians, although adopted by other people, was their mode of writing in wedge-like characters, which, how- ever, is far from representing the original ideo- graphs. Distinctive of them especially were their culture, their inventive genius, their intellectual enterprise and love of knowledge. They were thus not only prominent among the Semites, but were also the most influential of all the peoples of antiquity, except the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. Indeed, when we consider their early development among the races of men, and the indirect influence of their genuine ideas, we may regard them fairly enough as the primary intel- lectual movers of the world.
The Assyrians were of the same race as the Babylonians, and in all probability an offshoot from them. The name is derived from the city of Asshur, which was founded at an unknown early date on the west of the Tigris just above its confluence with the Lower Zab, which formed the normal southern boundary of the kingdom of Assyria. The Assyrians used the Bab. lan- guage in its purity. Indeed we usually call this language ‘ Assyrian,’ because it was principally from the monuments of Assyria, and not from those of Babylonia, that our knowledge of it was first obtained, towards the middle of the 19th century. Unlike Babylonia, which contained many large cities, Assyria proper had but few, the principal being Nineveh and the surrounding fortresses. The Assyrians had virtually the same institutions as the Babylonians, with -many of the same deities, and the same modes of worship. They were inferior to them in intellectual enter- prise and culture, but superior in the military art, and in capacity for organization. They would appear, moreover, to have suffered less from the irruptions of outsiders, and therefore to have pre- served, on the whole, a more purely Semitic racial type. It should be remarked, however, that the biblical lists make out the Assyrians and a portion of the Babylonians to have been of Cushite descent (Gn 10*??), perhaps in view of the mixture of races that had gone on in Babylonia (but cf. also p. 814). According to the same account (v.44), Assyria was settled from Babylonia. See, further, artt. ASSYRIA and BABYLONIA in vol. i.