inlaid in the very original elements of the Shemite language,
and the principle of expression so refined and, if
we may so speak, metaphysical, as to bear the appearance
of a premeditated plan.
S ection 11.-4-0/ the Syro-Arabian Nations, and of
their Dialects and of their Extent.
As the affinity of this language is the principal bond of
association between .all the nations belonging to the groupe,
so the diversities of their dialects afford the most obvious
ground for subdividing them and classifying them in several
departments. This remark, however, would-lead us far from
the truth if we were to follow it without observation’' of
one remarkable exception.
Most writers Dn the so termed Semitic languages^have
distributed them into three separate branches.* 1. The
Northern or Aramaean branch, divided into the western
Aramaean or Syrian, and the eastern Aramaean or Chaldean
language. 2. The Canaanitish or Hebrew, to Which
the Phoenician and Punic belonged?;-this is the idiom of
the Sacred Scriptures and of the Phoenician inscriptions,
therefore of all the very ancient remains of the Syro-
Arabian language. 3. The Arabian, including the old
Arabic of the Koran and of Cufic inscriptions, and likewise
the modern dialects of Yemen, the Hedjas and the Arabian
desert, and the Moggrebyn or western Arabic, epoken
in northern Africa.f Some late writers are of opinion,
that a fourth branch has been discovered, and that this
cannot be associated with either of the three classes mentioned
by Gesenius. It is the Ekhhili of M. Fresnel which,
according to that writer, “ is still preserved among the
noble race, who inhabit the mountains of Hhazik, Mirb&t,
and Zhafar, on the north coast of Arabia;/’ The Ekhhili is,
in the opinion of M. Fresnel, a distinct department of the
Syro-Arabian language. It approximates, as he says, to
* GeseninSj Geschichte der Hebraischen Sprache.
t Gesenius reckons the GIi£z or Ethiopic to be an offset of this branch.
the Syrian and Hebraic branches, rather than to the Arabian,
and is, perhaps, the immediate parent of the Ghyz or
Ethiopic, and likewise the idiom of all the inscriptions
found of late years in different parts of Arabia, supposed
to have been written by the ancient Himyarites, the Ho-
merites of Byzantine writers. I shall proceed to notice
each branch in the order laid down.
S e c t io n I II.—Of the Aramaean or Northern Department
of the Syro-Arabiah Family of Nations.
Of the whole region immemorially allotted to the family
equations above described, the northern,part, by which
I. mean all tlie couutries reaching , from Palestine in the
south, to Armenia and Lesser Asia towards the north, and
from t^C Mediterranean to the Tborders of Media and Persia,
was distinguished by the ancieht Hebrew writers* as it has
been by Syrian authors of later ages, as.the land of Aram,
or ..of the Aramaean or Syrian people* t/Lhe Syrians themselves,
divided this region into two parts and gave, the names
of Babylonia, Assyria, and Chaldaea to the eastern, and
those pf Syria and Mesopotamia toithe more western portions.*
The same division separates .the Aramaean language
into, two branches, the Syrian or West-Aramaean and the
East-Aramaean or the Chaldee. In th§,most ancient times it
seems that the Euphrates was the boundary between these two
subdivisions of the Aramaean language and people. Moses
evidently makes Chaldaea reach from tlr, supposed to be
Edessa or Orfah, in the north, as far to the southward as
Shinar or Babylon. Both Ur and Charran are included, in
the ‘ Mosaic geography, within. the land of the Chaldees.
Under the,Seleucidae it is probable, as Gesenius has remarked,
that the dialect of Syria, properly so termed, obtained, as the
seat of government and of power wasr in that country, a
wider extent and was spread, through Mesopotamia, for in
later times we find Syrian academies at Nisibis and at Edessa,
and in that region there were many Syrian bishopricks du-
Adelung, Mithridates, Th. 1.