Pharaonic-styled mural painting in Tal Saka archaeological site 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. See "Terms of Service" link for more information. After Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Empire his successors introduced Greek as the official language. Mesopotamia, the western coast of the Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa have all been proposed as possible sites for the prehistoric origins of Semitic-speaking peoples, but no location has been definitively established. Origins. Approximate distribution of Semitic language around 1 A.D. 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). South Semitic peoples include the speakers of Modern South Arabian languages and Ethiopian Semitic languages. Amorite, member of an ancient Semitic-speaking people who dominated the history of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine from about 2000 to about 1600 bc. [20] Later still, written evidence of Old South Arabian and Ge'ez (both related to but in reality separate languages from Arabic) offer the first written attestations of South Semitic languages in the 8th century BC in Sheba, Ubar and Magan (modern Oman and Yemen). 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. [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. Akkadian continued to flourish, splitting into Babylonian and Assyrian dialects. 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. During this period (c. 27th to 26th century BC), another East Semitic-speaking people, the Eblaites, appear in the historical record from northern Syria. After the fall of the first Babylonian Empire, the far south of Mesopotamia broke away for about 300 years, becoming the independent Akkadian-speaking Sealand Dynasty. The proto-Semitic language was likely spoken in the 4th millennium BC, and the oldest attested forms of Semitic date to the mid-3rd millennium BC (the Early Bronze Age). 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. [6], In one interpretation,[citation needed] Proto-Semitic itself is assumed to have reached the Arabian Peninsula[citation needed] by approximately the 4th millennium BC, from which Semitic daughter languages continued to spread outwards. Amorites: An ancient Semitic-speaking people from ancient Syria who also occupied large parts of Mesopotamia in the 21st Century BCE. 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. 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 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). [4][5] Diakonoff sees Semitic originating between the Nile Delta and Canaan as the northernmost branch of Afroasiatic. 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. An offshoot of theirs called the Natufians were brown, but migrated from the Levant back to Africa and became black again, also becoming the Proto Afro-Asiatics. In honor of Harold Crane Fleming. I suggest removing the mentioning of Meluhha here. 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 Semitic languages, previously also named Syro-Arabian languages, are a branch of the Afroasiatic... Canaan 2000 bc), the Amorites were equated with the West, though their true place of origin was most likely In the satrapy of Assyria (Athura) the Syriac language emerged during the 5th century BC. To the west were the tent-dwelling Martu, ancient Semitic-speaking peoples living as pastoral nomads tending herds of sheep and goats. 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. amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; They founded the state of Ebla, whose Eblaite language was closely related to the Akkadian of Mesopotamia. The earliest positively proven historical attestation of any Semitic people comes from 30th century BC Mesopotamia, with the East Semitic-speaking peoples of the Kish civilization,[8][9] entering the region originally dominated by the people of Sumer (who spoke a language isolate). 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. 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. For the 2nd millennium, somewhat more data are available, thanks to the Egyptian Hieroglyphics derived Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. A 2009 Bayesian analysis identified an origin for Semitic languages in the Levant around 3750 BC with a later single introduction of Ge’ez from what is now South Arabia into the Horn of Africa around 800 BC, with a slightly earlier introduction into parts of North Africa and southern Spain with the founding of Phoenician colonies such as ancient Carthage in the ninth century BC and Cádiz in the tenth century BC. Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples refers to numerous groups of ancient peoples who both inhabited, and in some cases still inhabit, the Near East and parts of Anatolia and spoke the Semitic languages. History of IranMesopotamiaCradle of civilizationMiddle EastLevant Speakers of East Semitic include the people of the Akkadian Empire, Assyria and Babylonia. amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; 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. Oriente Lux '' 39: 181–199 killebrew, Ann E. ( 2013 ), “ Guzay... Philistines and other content is completely copyright-protected be largely Aramaic speaking Palmyrene Empire the obsolete ethnic or term... Scripts are also descendant of Phoenician script the West, though their true place of origin was most likely Semitic! 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