Canaanites, must have lived longer together with the speakers of the latter, or the Babylonians, than did the Arameans.
88 SEMITES
It is not yet certain whether the transit was made across the Isthmus or over the lower entrance of
with a strong and persistent Sem. element.
the Red Sea. Recent discoveries of remains of primitive Egyptians in Upper Egypt seem to point to the latter route. Possibly there was a very early movement of Semites along E. and 8. Arabia, from which came the African migration. This must have preceded the Saban development. Next, the tities representing the Northern Semites moved northwards, not yet attaining to fixed settlements, or at least not to life in cities. From these the Aramzans branched off as northern nomads. The ancestors of the Babylonians and Canaanites still held together for a time, while yet civic life and government were unknown. Next came the settlement of the Babylonians between the Lower Euphrates and Tigris, where they found an inferior alien population, which they subdued or absorbed. The Canaanites, parting from them, moved westward across the wilderness till they reached the highlands of Palestine and the sea. The Phen. tradition that the fathers of the family came from the shores of the Persian Gulf, may perhaps be an authentic reminiscence of this memorable movement. It was not till many ages later that the Hebraic clans made a similar and still more fateful migration to the Land of Pro- mise. A long residence of all the Arabian tribes upon the oases of the central desert preceded the departure of the 8. Arabians and their gradual occupation of the coast of the Red Sea and the Ocean. Still another interval elapsed before a migration took place over the sea to Abyssinia.
Some faint conception of the antiquity of the Sem. race may be gained from a consideration of its oldest literary monuments. We now have access to specimens of the language of the Baby- lonians as it was written between 5000 and 4000 B.c. It there presents an aspect differing not at all from that which it exhibits over three millenniums later. That is to say, it is a language showing signs of advanced phonetic degeneration, separated by a decisive stage of phonological and structural change from the Heb., still more from the Aram., and more again by an enormous interval from the South Sem. dialects. How many thousands of years we have thus to add to what we may call the historical period, as above indicated, cannot be said. Backward beyond that period we have still to take into account the ages that intervened between the Sem. migration into Africa and the separation of the South and the North.
For biblical study the history of the Southern Semites is of comparatively little significance. The interests of the OT centre in Palestine; and it was not till long after the Christian era that the life and thought of our race were affected by any decisive movement from the south. The Arabs played no part in the world’s history till the time of Islam. But it would be a mistake to exclude, on that account, Arabia entirely from our histori- cal survey. In the first place, S. Arabia was in the earliest known times a region of much greater importance than it was during the later period of Israel’s history. It would appear that wide stretches of grazing land were occupied by great tribal confederations, some of which at certain periods at least assumed the dignity of kingdoms. In very remote times also the mineral productions of gold and precious stones were more abundant and valuable than they are now. The Bab. in- scriptions bear testimony that in the fourth mil- lennium B.C. the liveliest intercourse was main- tained, and that by overland routes, between Babylonia and E. and W. Arabia,—and it would even appear that Arabs at one time obtained control of Babylonia. On the other hand, Gn 14 mentions
; SEMITES
what was apparently no exceptional instance of an expedition from Babylonia in the 23rd cent. B.C. to the peninsula of Sinai. In the next place, we learn from the recently discovered Minzan in- scriptions that this people had established a flourishing trade and even a kingdom of their own on the west coast of Arabia before the rise of the kindred kingdom of Sheba, that is to say, before the time of Solomon, and that with the aid of writing they had attained to a fairly high degree of civilization. Lastly, it must be remembered that many Hebrews resided for a whole genera- tion in Arabia, that thence its population was perpetually recruited, and that the biblical liter- ature makes great account of the wisdom, piety, and patriarchal simplicity of various tribes of the Arabian borderland.
Outwardly considered, the Bible story of the career of Israel is an episode in the history of the Northern Semitic communities. That history be- gins with the first Sem. settlements in Babylonia. Here agriculture was first practised with large and rich results. Thereupon followed trade by river, sea, and land in days when Zidon and Tyre were still untenanted rocks, and the fertilizing waters of the Nile still flowed to the sea through an un- cultivated waste. Cities one after another were built, cities famous in tradition and history, each the centre of a little kingdom, each with its own patron deity, its own temple and pene and its own priest-king, such as were Akkad, and Sippar, and Nippur, and Erech. In these days— perhaps as early as 6000 years B.c.—Ur of the Chaldees and the no less renowned Eridu were unknown, ancient as they are; for the waters of the Persian Gulf then rolled over their future sites.