at of the
Chaldaeans, was in former times a matter of controversy. When nothing
was known of the original language of the people beyond the names of
certain kings, princes, and generals, believed to have belonged to the
race, it was difficult to arrive at any determinate conclusion on the
subject. The ingenuity of etymologists displayed itself in suggesting
derivations for the words in question, which were sometimes absurd,
sometimes plausible, but never more than very doubtful conjectures. No
sound historical critic could be content to base a positive view on any
such unstable foundation, and nothing remained but to decide the
controversy on other than linguistic considerations.

Various grounds existed on which it was felt that a conclusion could be
drawn. The Scriptural genealogies connected Asshur with Aran, Pier, and
Joktan, the allowed progenitors of the Armaeians or Syrians, the
Israelites or Hebrews, and the northern or Joktanian Arabs. The
languages, physical type, and moral characteristics of these races were
well known: they all belonged evidently to a single family the family
known to ethnologists as the Semitic. Again, the manners and customs,
especially the religious customs, of the Assyrians connected then
plainly with the Syrians and Phoenicians, with whose practices they were
closely allied. Further it was observed that the modern Chaldaeans of
Kurdistan, who regard themselves as descendants of the ancient
inhabitants of the neighboring Assyria, still speak a Semitic dialect.
These three distinct and convergent lines of testimony were sufficient
to justify historians in the conclusion, which they commonly drew, that
the ancient Assyrians belonged to the Semitic family, and were more or
less closely connected with the Syrians, the (later) Babylonians, the
Phoenicians, the Israelites, and the Arabs of the northern portion of
the peninsula.

Recent linguistic discoveries have entirely confirmed the conclusion
thus, arrived at. We now possess in the engraved slabs, the clay
tablets, the cylinders, and the bricks, exhumed from the ruins of the
great Assyrian cities, copious documentary evidence of the character of
the Assyrian language, and (so far as language is a proof) of the ethnic
character of the race. It appears to be doubted by none who have
examined the evidence, that the language of these records is Semitic.
However imperfect the acquaintance which our best Oriental
archaeologists have as yet obt