Largely for this reason, the ancestors of Proto-Semitic speakers were originally believed by some to have first arrived in the Middle East from North Africa, possibly as part of the operation of the Saharan pump, around the late Neolithic. The earliest known Akkadian inscription was found on a bowl at Ur, addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiang-nunna of Ur by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. Semitic languages § Semitic-speaking peoples, "Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Semitic languages identified an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East", "Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Semitic languages identifies an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East", "The Philistines and Other "Sea Peoples" in Text and Archaeology", The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca. Incursions of nomadic Semitic Arameans and Suteans begin around this time, followed by Chaldeans in the late 10th century BC. Blench even wonders whether the highly divergent Gurage languages indicate an origin in Ethiopia (with the rest of Ethiopic Semitic a later back migration). In addition, the Syriac language and Syriac script emerged in Achaemenid Assyria during the 5th century BC, and this dialect of Eastern Aramaic was to have a major influence on the spread of Christianity and Gnosticism throughout the Near East from the 1st century AD onwards. Proceeds are donated to charity. Phoenician became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world and beyond, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. The Old Assyrian Empire, Babylonian Empire and in particular the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1050 BC), facilitated the use of Akkadian as a lingua franca in many regions outside its homeland. During this period (c. 27th to 26th century BC), another East Semitic-speaking people, the Eblaites, appear in the historical record from northern Syria. Central Semitic combines the Northwest Semitic languages and Arabic. In addition, the Syriac language and Syriac script emerged in Achaemenid Assyria during the 5th century BC, and this dialect of Eastern Aramaic was to have a major influence on the spread of Christianity and Gnosticism throughout the Near East from the 1st century AD onwards. Leaving No Stones Unturned: Essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in Honor of Donald P. Hansen, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported, Shillings, Gods, and Runes: A Semitic Superpower in Ancient Northern Europe, ‘Shahnama’: The Making of the Medieval Persian Book of Kings, A Brief Historical Overview of Ancient Persia, China’s Rendition of the Trojan War in the Abduction of Helen Tapestry, ‘Helen’: A Twist on the Trojan War from Euripides, The ‘New Right’: The Transformation of American Conservatism since the 1970s. The earliest known Akkadian inscription was found on a bowl at Ur, addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiang-nunna of Ur by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The Western Aramaic of the Arameans themselves is now almost extinct, with only a few thousand speakers extant in and around Ma'loula in western Syria. However, this did not impact on the spoken tongues of the Semitic peoples, who continued to be largely Aramaic speaking. Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples or Proto-Semitic people were Western Asian people who lived throughout the ancient Near East, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa from the third millennium BC until the end of antiquity. Ehret, C. (3 December 2004). Central Semitic combines the Northwest Semitic languages and Arabic. Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples were West Asian people who lived throughout the Ancient Near East, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian peninsula, and the Horn of Africa from the third millennium BCE until the end of antiquity. During the Middle Assyrian Empire (1366–1020 BC) and in particular the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) much of the Near East, Asia Minor, Caucasus, Eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, Ancient Iran and North Africa fell under Assyrian domination. In contrast, some recent genetic studies found that analysis of the DNA of Semitic-speaking peoples suggests that they have some common ancestry. Akkadian personal names began appearing in written record in Mesopotamia from the late 29th century BC.[7]. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Although the term Semite connotes ideas of Jewish or Hebrew people, Arabs are also Semitic people. Blench even wonders whether the highly divergent Gurage languages indicate an origin in Ethiopia (with the rest of Ethiopic Semitic a later back migration). Northern Mesopotamia had long before already coalesced into Assyria. The terminology is now largely obsolete outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics. After Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Empire his successors introduced Greek as the official language. When written records began in the late fourth millennium BC, the Semitic-speaking Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians) were entering Mesopotamia from the deserts to the west, and were probably already present in places such as Ebla in Syria. South Semitic peoples include the speakers of Modern South Arabian languages and Ethiopian Semitic languages. These were the lands of the Edomites, Moabites, Hebrews (Israelites/Judaeans/Samaritans), Ammonites and Amalekites, all of whom spoke closely related west Semitic Canaanite languages. The dominant position of Aramaic as the language of empire ended with the Greek Macedonian Empire (332–312 BC) and its succeeding Seleucid Empire (311–150 BC). The dominant position of Aramaic as the language of empire ended with the Greek Macedonian Empire (332–312 BC) and its succeeding Seleucid Empire (311–150 BC). Amorite, member of an ancient Semitic-speaking people who dominated the history of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine from about 2000 to about 1600 bc. The Akkadians, Assyrians and Eblaites were the first Semitic-speaking people to use writing, using the cuneiform script originally developed by the Sumerians c. 3500 BC, with the first writings in Akkadian dating from c. 2800 BC. “The Afroasiatic Language Phylum: African in Origin, or Asian?”. The article seems to describe Meluhha as a Semitic-speaking colony of Babylonia but the linked article (stub) on Meluhha says that Meluhha most likely was identical to the Indus Valley Civilization. The ancient Erythraeans who are the ancestors of Proto-Semites were a branch of the Afro-Asiatics and looked like the black Ethiopians of … To the south was the land of Dilmun, a trading state associated with the land of the dead and the place of creation. Fattovich, Rodolfo, “Akkälä Guzay” in Uhlig, Siegbert, ed. Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email. Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples were Western Asian people who lived throughout the ancient Near East, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa from the third millennium BC until the end of antiquity. Identification of the hypothetical proto-Semitic region of origin is therefore dependent on the larger geographic distributions of the other language families within Afroasiatic, whose origins are also hotly debated. Amorites: An ancient Semitic-speaking people from ancient Syria who also occupied large parts of Mesopotamia in the 21st Century BCE. After the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (between 615 and 599 BC) and the succeeding short lived Neo-Babylonian Empire (615–539 BC) the Semitic speaking peoples lost control of the Near East to the Persian Achaemenid Empire (539–332 BC). The term came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, Hebrews, some Ethiopians, and Aramaean tribes. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). The name Iran, in the ancient form Eryana, means the land of Aryans. The region of origin of the reconstructed Proto-Semitic language, ancestral to historical and modern Semitic languages in the Middle East, is still uncertain and much debated. During the eighth century BC, the Assyrian emperor Tiglath-Pileser III introduced Aramaic as the lingua franca of their empire and this language was to remain dominant among Near Eastern Semites until the early Middle Ages, and is still in use as the mother tongue of the modern Assyrians and Mandeans to the present day. Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples were Western Asian people who lived throughout the ancient Near East, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa from the third millennium BC until the end of antiquity. The earliest written evidence of them are found in the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia) c. the 30th century BC, an area encompassing Sumer, the Akkadian Empire and other civilizations of Assyria and Babylonia along the Tigris and Euphrates (modern Iraq, northeast Syria and southeast Turkey), followed by historical written evidence from the Levant, Canaan, Sinai Peninsula, southern and eastern Anatolia and the Arabian Peninsula. The first evidence of Semitic speaking people appears in the way of people’s names in ancient records and goes back nearly as far as the Sumerian language in southern Iraq. Both the Akkadian of the Assyrian and Babylonian Mesopotamians, and the Canaanite languages of the Israelites, Judeans, Samaritans, Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites and Phoenicians decreased steadily in the face of the adoption of Aramaic from the 8th century BC onwards, and by the early 1st millennium AD they had largely disappeared, although distinct forms of Hebrew remained in continuous literary and religious use among Jews and Samaritans, isolated use of Akkadian remained in Assyria and Babylonia between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD, Phoenician names are still attested until the 3rd century AD. A number of other South Semitic states existed in the far south of the peninsula, such as Sheba/Saba (in modern Yemen), Magan and Ubar (both in modern Oman), although the histories of these states is sketchy (mainly coming from Mesopotamian and Egyptian records), as there was no written script in the region at this time. Nevertheless, a number of Eastern Aramaic dialects survive as the spoken tongues of the Assyrians of northern Iraq, south east Turkey, north east Syria and north west Iran, and of the Mandeans of Iraq and Iran, with somewhere between 575,000 and 1,000,000 fluent speakers in total. However, some of the names appearing on the Sumerian King List as prehistoric rulers of Kish have been held to indicate a Semitic presence even before this, as early as the 30th or 29th century BC. Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap “Ex Oriente Lux” 39: 181–199. The Akkadians, Assyrians and Eblaites were the first Semitic-speaking people to use writing, using the cuneiform script originally developed by the Sumerians c. 3500 BC, with the first writings in Akkadian dating from c. 2800 BC. Proto-Canaanite texts from northern Canaan and the Levant (modern Lebanon and Syria) around 1500 BC yield the first undisputed attestations of a written West Semitic language (although earlier testimonies are found in Mesopotamian annals concerning Amorite, and possibly preserved in Middle Bronze Age alphabets, such as the Proto-Sinaitic script from the late 19th century BC), followed by the much more extensive Ugaritic tablets of northern Syria from the late 14th century BC in the city-state of Ugarit in north west Syria. It should not be confused with the obsolete ethnic or racial term Semitic people. Stein, Peter (2005). To the west were the tent-dwelling Martu, ancient Semitic-speaking peoples living as pastoral nomads tending herds of sheep and goats. Old Italic, Anatolian, Armenian, Georgian and Paleohispanic scripts are also descendant of Phoenician script. During this period, the case system, once vigorous in Ugaritic, seems to have started decaying in Northwest Semitic. Ammonite speakers of Ammon; Amorites – 20th century BC; Arabs; Ancient North Arabian-speaking bedouins; Arameans – 16th to 8th … Subsequent interaction with other Afroasiatic-speaking populations, Cushitic speakers who had settled in the area some centuries prior, gave rise to the present-day Ethiopian Semitic languages. Introduction. amzn_assoc_asins = "0691048118,1846942551,1575060558,090347221X"; Originally published by Wikipedia, 04.03.2016, under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. The Greek alphabet (and by extension, its descendants such as the Latin, Cyrillic and Coptic alphabets), was a direct successor of Phoenician, though certain letter values were changed to represent vowels. These idioms, along with the Ge'ez script, were later imported to Ethiopia and Eritrea by migrating South Semites from South Arabia during the 8th and 7th centuries BC. However, the Persians had spent centuries under Assyrian domination and influence, and despite being Indo-European speakers, they retained the Imperial Aramaic of the Assyrian empire as the lingua franca of their own empire, and many of the Semitic nations of the region (such as Assyria, Babylonia, Israel, Judah, Aramea, Canaan and Phoenicia) continued to exist as geo-political entities, albeit as occupied satrapies of the Achaemenid Empire. Approaching Chaos: Could an Ancient Archetype Save C21st Civilization? Identification of the hypothetical proto-Semitic region of origin is therefore dependent on the larger geographic distributions of the other language families within Afroasiatic, whose origins are also hotly debated. They founded the state of Ebla, whose Eblaite language was closely related to the Akkadian of Mesopotamia. The Philistines are conjectured to have been one of the Sea Peoples,[14][15] who seem to have arrived in southern Canaan sometime in the 12th century BC. Other theories include origins in the Arabian Peninsula or North Africa. Proto-Canaanite texts from around 1500 BC yield the first undisputed attestations of a West Semitic language (although earlier testimonies are possibly preserved in Middle Bronze Age alphabets), followed by the much more extensive Ugaritic tablets of northern Syria from around 1300 BC. These were the lands of the Edomites, Moabites, Hebrews (Israelites/Judaeans/Samaritans), Ammonites and Amalekites, all of whom spoke closely related west Semitic Canaanite languages. Between the 13th and 11th centuries BC, a number of small Canaanite-speaking states arose in southern Canaan, an area approximately corresponding to modern Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian territories and Sinai Peninsula. The King of Assyria Arik-den-ili (reigned c. 1307–1296 BC), consolidated Assyrian power in the Levant, he defeated and conquered ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of the so-called Ahlamu group. Babylon became the centre of a short lived but influential Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC, and subsequent to this southern Mesopotamia came to be known as Babylonia, with Babylon superseding the far more ancient city of Nippur as the primary religious center of southern Mesopotamia. [1][2][3] The earliest records of Semitic languages are from 30th century BC Mesopotamia. Subsequent interaction with other Afroasiatic-speaking populations, Cushitic speakers who had settled in the area some centuries prior, gave rise to the present-day Ethiopian Semitic languages. amzn_assoc_linkid = "b365e6d6427122e06045a5f27c5d5d2a"; [4][5] Diakonoff sees Semitic originating between the Nile Delta and Canaan as the northernmost branch of Afroasiatic. Between the 30th and 20th centuries BC, Semitic languages covered a broad area covering much of the Ancient Near East, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, Arabia and the Sinai Peninsula. This page is based on the Wikipedia article. The Greek alphabet (and by extension, its descendants such as the Latin, Cyrillic and Coptic alphabets), was a direct successor of Phoenician, though certain letter values were changed to represent vowels. The following is a list of some modern and ancient Semitic-speaking peoples and nations: Central Semitic. Nevertheless, a number of Eastern Aramaic dialects survive as the spoken tongues of the Assyrians of northern Iraq, south east Turkey, north east Syria and north west Iran, and of the Mandeans of Iraq and Iran, with somewhere between 575,000 and 1,000,000 fluent speakers in total. [7] By the mid-third millennium BC,[10] many states and cities in Mesopotamia had come to be ruled or dominated by Akkadian-speaking Semites, including Assyria, Eshnunna, the Akkadian Empire, Kish, Isin, Ur, Uruk, Adab, Nippur, Ekallatum, Nuzi, Akshak, Eridu and Larsa. These idioms, along with the Ge’ez script, were later imported to Ethiopia and Eritrea by migrating South Semites from South Arabia during the 8th and 7th centuries BC. When written records began in the late fourth millennium BC, the Semitic-speaking Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians) were entering Mesopotamia from the deserts to the west, and were probably already present in places such as Ebla in Syria. The Amorites were an ancient Semitic-speaking people from ancient Syria who also occupied large parts of southern Mesopotamia from the 21st century BC to the end of the 17th century BC. After this, Arabic gradually replaced Aramaic as a part of a steady process of Arabization and Islamification, accompanied by the influx of a large number of Muslim Arabs from the Arabian peninsula, although the Syriac language, script and literature continued to exert influence upon Arabic into the Middle Ages. A number of pre-Arab and non-Arab Semitic-speaking states are mentioned as existing in what was much later to become known as the Arabian Peninsula in Akkadian and Assyrian records as colonies of these Mesopotamian powers, such as Meluhha and Dilmun (in modern Bahrain). After this, Arabic gradually replaced Aramaic as a part of a steady process of Arabization and Islamification, accompanied by the influx of a large number of Muslim Arabs from the Arabian peninsula, although the Syriac language, script and literature continued to exert influence upon Arabic into the Middle Ages. Largely for this reason, the ancestors of Proto-Semitic speakers were originally believed by some to have first arrived in the Middle East from North Africa, possibly as part of the operation of the Saharan pump, around the late Neolithic. Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples were Western Asian people who lived throughout the ancient Near East, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa from the third millennium BC until the end of antiquity. In the 19th century BC a similar wave of Canaanite-speaking Semites entered Egypt and by the early 17th century BC these Canaanites (known as Hyksos by the Egyptians) had conquered the country, forming the Fifteenth Dynasty, introducing military technology new to Egypt, such as the war chariot. The term Semites as an expression is applied to a group of peoples closely related in language, whose habitat is Africa extending into Asia. Semitic-speaking region and civilization in the Ancient Near East during the late 2nd millennium BC. Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples were West Asian people who lived throughout the Ancient Near East, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian peninsula, and the Horn of Africa from the third millennium BCE until the end of antiquity. The following is a list of ancient Semitic peoples. See "Terms of Service" link for more information. A Canaanite group known as the Phoenicians came to dominate the coasts of Syria, Lebanon and south west Turkey from the 13th century BC, founding city states such as Tyre, Sidon, Byblos Simyra, Arwad, Berytus (Beirut), Antioch and Aradus, eventually spreading their influence throughout the Mediterranean, including building colonies in Malta, Sicily, the Iberian Peninsula and the coasts of North Africa, founding the major city state of Carthage (in modern Tunisia) in the 9th century BC. Tauris. Ancient Semitic-Speaking Peoples Introduction. The related, but more sparsely attested, Eblaite disappeared with the city, and Amorite is attested only from proper names in Mesopotamian records. Bronze Age. and Coins from Phoenician cities still use Phoenician letters for short Phoenician city designations and names and Ulpian of Tyre and Jerome mention the use of the Phoenician language, the Punic dialect of Phoenician remained in use in the Carthaginian ruled parts of the Mediterranean at least until the 4th century AD. Aramaic, in the form of Syriac, was the lingua franca of Assuristan (Persian-ruled Assyria and Babylonia), and the Neo-Assyrian states of Adiabene, Assur, Osroene, Beth Nuhadra, Beth Garmai and Hatra, extant between the 2nd century BC and 3rd century AD, and was to become the vehicle for the spread of Syriac Christianity throughout the entire Near East. amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "brewminate-20"; Wikipedia The Amorites (Sumerian MAR.TU) were an ancient Semitic-speaking people [1] from Syria who also occupied large parts of southern Mesopotamia from the 21st century BC to the end of the 17th century BC, where they established several prominent city-states in existing locations, notably Babylon, which was raised from a small town to an independent state and a major city. “The Origins of Afroasiatic”. “The Ancient South Arabian Minuscule Inscriptions on Wood: A New Genre of Pre-Islamic Epigraphy”. The Akkadian language of Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia had become the dominant literary language of the Fertile Crescent, using the cuneiform script that was adapted from the Sumerians. Proto-Canaanite texts from northern Canaan and the Levant (modern Lebanon and Syria) around 1500 BC yield the first undisputed attestations of a written West Semitic language (although earlier testimonies are found in Mesopotamian annals concerning Amorite, and possibly preserved in Middle Bronze Age alphabets, such as the Proto-Sinaitic script from the late 19th century BC), followed by the much more extensive Ugaritic tablets of northern Syria from the late 14th century BC in the city-state of Ugarit in north west Syria. Northern Mesopotamia had long before already coalesced into Assyria. Aramaic was also the language of the Aramean state of Palmyra and the short lived Palmyrene Empire. Other early Afroasiatic-speaking populations dwelt nearby in the Maghreb, the ancient Libyans (Putrians) of the northern Sahara and the coasts of Northwest Africa, (Semitic Carthage aside), as well as to the southeast in the Land of Punt and in northern Sudan, which was previously inhabited by the A-Group, C-Group and Kerma Cultures. (Ugaritic was not discovered or deciphered until the 1920s). Some of these ancient peoples (such as the Jews , Assyrians , Mandaeans , Samaritans and Mhallami ) continue to exist in the region as indigenous peoples in Israel, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey. [16][failed verification] An Indo-European Anatolian origin is also supported by Philistine pottery, which appears to have been exactly the same as Mycenaen Greek pottery.[17]. Killebrew, Ann E. (2013), “The Philistines and Other “Sea Peoples” in Text and Archaeology”. For Contemporary Semitic-speaking peoples, see, For the obsolete racial and ethnic concept, see. [12] The technologically advanced Sumerians, Akkadians and Assyrians of Mesopotamia mention the West Semitic-speaking peoples in disparaging terms: “The MAR.TU who know no grain… The MAR.TU who know no house nor town, the boors of the mountains… The MAR.TU who digs up truffles… who does not bend his knees (to cultivate the land), who eats raw meat, who has no house during his lifetime, who is not buried after death.”[13] However, after initially being prevented from doing so by powerful Assyrian kings of the Old Assyrian Empire intervening from northern Mesopotamia, these Amorites would eventually overrun southern Mesopotamia, and found the state of Babylon in 1894 BC, where they became Akkadianized, adopted Mesopotamian culture and language, and blended into the indigenous population. Records of Semitic ancient semitic-speaking peoples peoples, see, for the history of ancient Semitic peoples or Semitic cultures was Lebanese! 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