the peninsula of Asia Minor; to the east, the Tigris river; to the south the Indian Ocean and the Desert of Sahara; to the west, the Mediterranean. With a slight shifting this is the present distribution. The Arabic has spread to the south far into the interior of Africa, and Egypt speaks Arabic through the influence of Mohammedanism. Wherever the Koran is read, Arabic is spoken. The Bible is read, on the contrary, in the vernacular and it is only the Jews who everywhere read the Old Testament in the Hebrew still. The name "Semitic" was first used by Eichhorn and is derived from Shem. It is really a misnomer, because in the descendants of Sham are included races that speak Aryan langauges. Shem is mythical, but the name has an ethnological sense which does not coincide with its linguistic value. On the other hand the Phœnicians and Canaanites, according to the Old Testament, are descendants of Ham, and yet speak a Semitic tongue.
The first branch of the Semitic languages comprises the living Arabic, which is a descendant of the classical Arabic, and the Ethiopian which is a descendant of the Himyaritic. The second branch is the Aramæan. Aramaic was the popular language in Palestine at the time of Christ. This branch embraces also the Syriac and Chaldee. The Samaritan is really a mongrel of Hebrew and Chaldee. The third branch is the Hebrew. In Ezra and Daniel are passages in Chaldee and there are some Chaldee words in Genesis. In the Old Testament are also a few words, as in the Book of Kings, which have been traced back to the Sanscrit. With these exceptions, the Old Testament in written in Hebrew.
The principal literary sources for our knowledge of these languages may be here cited. The Mo Allakat (i. e. the collection), the oldest collection of Arabic songs of all kinds, lyric and religious, dates a century before Mohammed. After this the Koran with its commentaries forms the chief source of our knowledge of this branch of the Semitic languages. In the Aramaic branch the sources are the Chaldee portions of Ezra
