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The Aramaic has the character of a degraded language; the Assyro-Babylonian and the Phoenician are modelled on a primitive type. In some respects Phoenician is even closer to Assyro-Babylonian than Hebrew is e.g. in preferring at to ah for the feminine singular termination. The testimony of history to the origin of the Phoenicians is the following.

The place which the Phoenicians occupy within the Semitic group is a question considerably more difficult to determine. By local position they should belong to the western, or Aramaic branch, rather than to the eastern, or Assyro-Babylonian, or to the southern, or Arab. But the linguistic evidence scarcely lends itself to such a view, while the historic leads decidedly to an opposite conclusion.

Down to the latest period of Assyro-Babylonian history, Nergal remains identified with Kutu, being known at all times as the god of Kutu. His worship, therefore, was not confined to those who happened to reside at Cuthah; and closely as he is identified with the place, the character of the god is a general and not a special one.

His name was an Assyro-Babylonian one, so that he was probably descended from one of the Babylonian families settled in Samaria, and it signifies 'The Moon God gives life. His native place was Horonaim in Moab, and Sanballat was by nation a descendant of Lot.

The old Sumerian language, which cannot, in the opinion of the best scholars, be shown to have affinity with any language of the ancient world, came to be confined to matters of religion and magic, and was superseded by the Assyro-Babylonian, which was Semitic.

There is a far closer analogy between the Palestinian group of languages Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite, and the Assyro-Babylonian, than between either of these and the Aramaic. The Aramaic is scanty both in variety of grammatical forms and in vocabulary; the Phoenician and Assyro-Babylonian are comparatively copious.

There are gods, as Amiaud recognized, who cannot be brought under his scheme, so far at least as present testimony is concerned; and others can only by an arbitrary assumption be forced into accord with the theory. Moreover, we should expect to find traces of this family idea in the later phases of the Assyro-Babylonian pantheon. Such, however, is not the case.