Amorite language | Akkadian, Sumerian, Semitic (2024)

FAQs

Amorite language | Akkadian, Sumerian, Semitic? ›

Amorite

The Amorites were the indigenous people of central inland and northern Syria. They spoke a Semitic language related to modern Hebrew. During the Early Bronze Age (3200–2000 B.C.E.), they developed powerful states such as those centered on Ebla, Carchemish and Aleppo.

Babylonian and Assyrian are Semitic languages. The origin of Sumerian is unknown. It was different from the Semitic languages — Akkadian, Eblaite, Elmamite, Hebrew and Arabic — that followed and appeared not to have been related to Indo-European languages that emerged much later in India and Iran.

Phoenician was a Semitic language, more precisely belonging to the group of canaanite languages which includes Hebrew, Phoenician, Philistine, Moabite, etc. It was spoken in the area called "Canaan" in Phoenician, Hebrew and Aramaic, “Phoenicia” in Greek and Latin, “Put” in old Egyptian.

Akkadian, probably the oldest of the Semitic languages, produced a great ancient literature. Hebrew and Arabic have been, respectively, the languages of Judaism and Islam.

The Canaanites spoke a Semitic language and were long thought to derive from earlier populations that settled in the region thousands of years before.

The term Amorites is used in the Bible to refer to certain highland mountaineers who inhabited the land of Canaan, described in Genesis as descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham (Gen. 10:16).

This apparent cloud concerning race, however, is very thin and there is a substantial body of evidence in support of the position that the civilization of Sumer was the product of Black migrations from Africa's Nile Valley.

The Sumerians were literally surrounded by Semites, so it's natural to assume that the Sumerians themselves were also Semitic. living in a sea of Semitic people – who did not speak a Semitic language. History confirms the fact that Sumerians were not ethnically the same as their neighbors.

Unfortunately, there has never been any DNA taken from ancient Sumerian remains. It is assumed they were a West Asian people in origin and their descendants are the modern people of Iraq, which includes the Assyrians, some indigenous Iraqi Arabs, the Marsh Arabs and the Mandaeans. Is the Sumerian language deciphered?

Which is older Hebrew or Phoenician? ›

As such, Phoenician is attested slightly earlier than Hebrew, whose first inscriptions date to the 10th century B.C.E. Hebrew eventually achieved a long and extensive literary tradition (cf. the biblical books especially), while Phoe- nician is known only from inscriptions.

Phoenicia was an ancient Semitic civilization originating in the coastal strip of the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The Phoenicians were organized in city-states along the northern Levantine coast, including Tyre, Sidon and Byblos.

Given that people in Lebanon are primarily descended from ancient Canaanite and Phoenician people and not from the people of the Arabian peninsula, they would not be considered to be Arab people according to the technical definition using heritage as a key factor.

The Semitic language family consists of dozens of distinct languages and modern day dialects, but the major Semitic languages are Arabic, Amharic (spoken in Ethiopia), Tigrinya (spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea), Hebrew, Tigre (spoken in Sudan), Aramaic (spoken in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iraq and Iran) and Maltese.

The only earlier attested languages are Sumerian and Elamite (2800 BCE to 550 BCE), both language isolates, and Egyptian ( c. 3000 BCE), a sister branch within the Afroasiatic family, related to the Semitic languages but not part of them.

Language family

Hebrew is a Semitic language (a subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages, languages spoken across the Middle East), while Yiddish is a German dialect which integrates many languages, including German, Hebrew, Aramaic, and various Slavic and Romance languages.

Interestingly enough, even though they are descended from Ham through Canaan, Egyptian artists represent them with fair-skin, light hair and blue-eyes.

Semitic people or Semites is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East, including Arabs, Jews, Akkadians, and Phoenicians.

The Philistines originated as an immigrant group from the Aegean that settled in Canaan circa 1175 BC during the Late Bronze Age collapse. Over time, they gradually assimilated elements of the indigenous Levantine Semitic societies while preserving their own unique culture.

1200 BC on, the Amorites disappeared from the pages of history. From then on, the region that they had inhabited became known as Aram (Aramea) and Eber-Nari. Modern day Syrians are most likely genetic descendants of the Amorites as well as other Semitic races that have since ancient times blended into one another.