adopted an alien dialect, language, if not a certain, is at least a
very strong, evidence of ethnic character. Counter-evidence may no doubt
rebut the _prima facie_ presumption; but in the case of the Phoenicians
no counter-evidence is producible. They belong to exactly that
geographic zone in which Semitism has always had its chief seat; they
cannot be shown to have been ever so circumstanced as to have had any
inducement to change their speech; and their physical character and
mental characteristics would, by themselves, be almost sufficient ground
for assigning them to the type whereto their language points.

The place which the Phoenicians occupy within the Semitic group is a
question considerably more difficult to determine. By local position
they should belong to the western, or Aramaic branch, rather than to
the eastern, or Assyro-Babylonian, or to the southern, or Arab. But
the linguistic evidence scarcely lends itself to such a view, while
the historic leads decidedly to an opposite conclusion. There is a far
closer analogy between the Palestinian group of languages--Phoenician,
Hebrew, Moabite, and the Assyro-Babylonian, than between either of these
and the Aramaic. The Aramaic is scanty both in variety of grammatical
forms and in vocabulary; the Phoenician and Assyro-Babylonian are
comparatively copious.[36] The Aramaic has the character of a degraded
language; the Assyro-Babylonian and the Phoenician are modelled on
a primitive type.[37] In some respects Phoenician is even closer to
Assyro-Babylonian than Hebrew is--e.g. in preferring _at_ to _ah_ for
the feminine singular termination.[38]

The testimony of history to the origin of the Phoenicians is the
following. Herodotus tells us that both the Phoenicians themselves, and
the Persians best acquainted with history and antiquities, agreed in
stating that the original settlements of the Phoenician people were upon