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Updated: May 28, 2025
Since the withdrawal of the strong hands of the Hatti from the north and the Egyptians from the south, the disorganized half-vacant land had been attracting to itself successive hordes of half-nomadic Semites from the eastern and southern steppes. By 1000 B.C. these had settled down as a number of Aramaean societies each under its princeling. All were great traders.
It would even seem that the word had originally been brought from Babylonia itself in the days when Babylonian writing and culture first penetrated to the West. In the Sumerian or pre-Semitic language of Chaldæa eri signified a "city," and eri in the pronunciation of the Semites became uru.
From all this it seems fair to conclude that the religion of the oldest forefathers of Israel had its root originally in one and the same soil with the religion of the other Semites. Out of an earlier nature-religion there developed among the Semites the conception of Baal, the lord of nature, and of Molech with his inhuman worship.
The utmost endeavour of the Semites is to join words together so as to form a sentence; to join sentences is an effort altogether beyond them. The common traits of character among Semitic nations have been summed up by one writer under five heads: 1. Pliability combined with iron fixity of purpose; 2. Depth and force; 3. A yearning for dreamy ease; 4. Capacity for the hardest work; and 5.
On the head is a crested helmet like that of the Greeks, on the feet the Hittite boot with upturned end; the body is clad in a tunic which reaches to the knee, and a small round target is used in battle. For many centuries the Semites and the people of the north contended for the possession of the Syrian plains.
But a new "Hep Hep" was wanted, and so "Semites" was hauled from the world of books, disfigured, and fastened upon the Jewish gabardine in noble emulation of the barbarism of the Middle Ages.
It is possible. that both theories as to the routes of these primeval conquerors are true, and that two waves of Semites entered the Nile valley towards the close of the Neolithic period, one by way of the Upper Nile or Wadi Hammamat, the other by way of Heliopolis.
Among the Semites of Western Asia the king, in a time of national danger, sometimes gave his own son to die as a sacrifice for the people.
For the Semites and the Aryans, see especially Prof. Cf. also A. Post, Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit, Oldenburg 1875. It would be impossible to enter here into a discussion of the origin of the marriage restrictions. Let me only remark that a division into groups, similar to Morgan's Hawaian, exists among birds; the young broods live together separately from their parents.
The Semitic peoples outside of Babylonia founded no lasting empires, and showed no great aptitude for art or for literary style; but, in point of religion, they communicated to the world impulses of immeasurable force, which will act powerfully on the world as long as the Prophet is named or Christ preached. It is possible to define to a certain extent the typical religion of the Semites.
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