In this smdy, the author presents Semitic languages briefly, indicating their historical development and affmity with other languages, i. e. the Hamitic ones. Although one has to deal here with a deep past of this language branch, we notice nevertheless that there used to be an affinity of the Hamitic with the Semitic languages in their prehistory, as well as of the Semitic languages with the Indo-European ones. Hence the philologists of the ancient languages have nothing against concepts in the so-called Table of nations in Genesis (Ch. 10) with a genealogy of Noah’s sons, Sem, Ham and Japhet, and of the peoples who generated from them, as well as the languages they formed, those of Semitic, Hamitic (African peoples) and Indo-European origin.
For the reason that the author deals here primarily with Semitic languages and their history, the glory and importance of the Semites in their history stipulated it that their history be presented here through the most important examples, the most characteristic preserved monuments and language forms that are still perceived, and which research workers of ancient languages observe.
The present study exposes the most significant regions of the (Old) Orient where this group of peoples mainly inhabited, starting with the Middle East, ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and going to Mauritania and the far south of the Arabic Peninsula, where in the territory of today’s Yemen already in the ancient times a high civilization fiourished, othenvise still insufficiently known. Also, Abyssinia (Ethiopia), the antiquity of culture of various peoples in these regions, their links with the African as well as with Arabic and Nubian peoples, were sufficiently elaborated.