l the Semitic languages seemed to
separate them widely from others; but certain traits have caused the
Egyptian, Berber and Cushite groups to be classed together as three
subfamilies of a Hamitic group, remotely related to the Semitic. The
biliteral character of Coptic, and the biliteralism which was believed
to exist in Egyptian, led philologists to suspect that Egyptian might be
a surviving witness to that far-off stage of the Semitic languages when
triliteral roots had not yet been formed from presumed original
biliterals; Sethe's investigations, however, prove that the Coptic
biliterals are themselves derived from Old Egyptian triliterals, and
that the triliteral roots enormously preponderated in Egyptian of the
earliest known form; that view is, therefore, no longer tenable. Many
remarkable resemblances have been observed in the grammatical structure
of the Berber and Cushite groups with Semitic (cf. H. Zimmern,
_Vergleichende Grammatik d. semitischen Sprachen_, Berlin, 1898,
especially pronouns and verbs); but the relationship must be very
distant, and there are no ancient documents that can take back the
history of any one of those languages more than a few centuries. Their
connexion with Semitic and Egyptian, therefore, remains at present an
obscure though probable hypothesis. On the other hand, Egyptian is
certainly related to Semitic. Even before the triliterality of Old
Egyptian was recognized, Erman showed that the so-called
pseudo-participle had been really in meaning and in form a precise
analogue of the Semitic perfect, though its original employment was
almost obsolete in the time of the earliest known texts. Triliteralism
is considered the most essential and most peculiar feature of Semitic.
But there are, besides, many other resemblances in structure between the
Semitic languages and Egyptian, so that, although the two vocabularies
present few points of clear contact, there is reason to believe that
Egyptian was originally a characteristic member of the Semitic family of
languages. See Erman, "Das Verhaltnis d. agyptischen zu d. semitischen
Sprachen" (_Zeitschrift d. deutschen morgenl. Gesellschaft_, 1892);
Zimmern, _Vergl. Gram._, 1898; Erman, "Flexion d. agyptischen Verbums"
(_Sitzungsberichte d. Berl. Akad._, 1900). The Egyptians proper are not,
and so far as we can tell never were, Semitic in physical feature. As a
possible explanation of the facts, Erman supposes that a horde of
conquering Semites,