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Most scholars, including Renan, insist on ascribing to the Arabians, in common with all other Shemitic races, a worship of one God as Supreme, though the Arabian Allah, like the Baal of Canaan and Phoenicia, was supposed to be attended by numerous inferior deities.
We are thus left only the one very distinguishing mark, the physical appearance of this remarkable race, partaking even more of the phlegmatic nature of the Shemitic father than the nervous boisterous temperament of the Hamitic mother, as a certain clue to their Shem-Hamitic origin.
The type-case is usually long, for the purpose of allowing all the type-pieces to be spread out. The type runs up and down in a column, and you read from right to left as in Hebrew or other Shemitic languages. The characters are as old in form as the days of Confucius. The "Chung Sai Yat Po" has a very large circulation and finds its way to the islands of the Pacific Ocean and into China.
In the ancient names of what are designated as the Shemitic races, children were called after the god alone, and sometimes in connection with an attribute. Especially were these names applied to royalty or to persons of distinction; for instance, names were given signifying, God the good, God the just or the merciful, God the strong, The Warrior God, etc.
But Egypt certainly was a more powerful monarchy than any existing on the earth in the time of Abraham. It was probably inhabited by a mixed race, Shemitic as well as Hamite; though the latter had the supremacy. The distinction of castes indicates a mixed population, so that the ancients doubted whether Egypt belonged to Asia or Africa.
The Phœnicians belonged to the same Shemitic stock from which Abraham came. They built no temples. They did not advance a material civilization. They loaded Abram and Joseph with presents, and accepted the latter as a minister and governor. We read of no great repulsion of races, and see a great similarity in pursuits.
The true belief in one God, who made Himself known by voice or vision to His true worshippers, seems early to have been confined to a few of the Shemitic families, while the others "invented" gods of their own. We find that the region about Babylon itself was called Kár-dunishi which easily recalls Kar or Gán-Eden.
In this whimsical and ingenious derivation there is a change of the س into ص, but which is sufficiently frequent in the Shemitic languages. The grand fallacy of the above etymology is, that it assumes the Sahara to be a perfectly flat country, or country of plains, which is not the fact.
It did not escape the observation of our adventurers that the slaves of the Arab sheik and his followers were mostly pure negroes from the south; while those of the black chieftain, as proclaimed by the colour of their skin, showed a Shemitic or Japhetic origin. The philosophic Colin could perceive in this a silent evidence of the retribution of races.
This misunderstanding arises from ignorance as to the meaning of sacrifices in the ancient world. Sacrifice is one of the earliest and most widely spread of all human institutions. Behind the laws regulating sacrifice in the Old Testament there lies the long history of Shemitic ritual and religion. These sacrificial rites were not then introduced for the first time.
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