Semitic studies, or Semitology, is the academic field dedicated to the studies of Semitic languages and literatures and the history of the Semitic-speaking peoples. A person may be called a Semiticist or a Semitist, both terms being equivalent.
It includes Assyriology, Arabic, Hebraist, Syriacist, Mandaean, and Ethiopian studies, as well as comparative studies of Semitic languages aiming at the reconstruction of Proto-Semitic.
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Theodor Nöldeke was a German orientalist and scholar. His research interests ranged over Old Testament studies, Semitic languages and Arabic, Persian and Syriac literature. Nöldeke translated several important works of oriental literature and during his lifetime was considered an important orientalist. He wrote numerous studies and contributed articles to the Encyclopædia Britannica. He is credited with starting the higher criticism of the Qur’ān.
Gotthelf Bergsträsser was a German linguist specializing in Semitic studies, generally considered to be one of the greatest of the twentieth century. Bergsträsser was initially a teacher of classical languages before deciding to approach Semitic.
The Prix Volney is awarded by the Institute of France after proposition by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres to a work of comparative philology.
Amorite is an extinct early Semitic language, formerly spoken during the Bronze Age by the Amorite tribes prominent in ancient Near Eastern history. It is known from Ugaritic, which is classed by some as its westernmost dialect, and from non-Akkadian proper names recorded by Akkadian scribes during periods of Amorite rule in Babylonia, notably from Mari and to a lesser extent Alalakh, Tell Harmal and Khafajah. Occasionally, such names are also found in early Egyptian texts; and one place name, "Sənīr" (שְׂנִיר) for Mount Hermon, is known from the Bible.
Johann Peter Adolf Erman was a German Egyptologist and lexicographer.
Ayin is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician ʿayin 𐤏, Hebrew ʿayin ע, Aramaic ʿē 𐡏, Syriac ʿē ܥ, and Arabic ʿayn ع.
Holger Pedersen was a Danish linguist who made significant contributions to language science and wrote about 30 authoritative works concerning several languages.
Carl Brockelmann German Semiticist, was the foremost orientalist of his generation. He was a professor at the universities in Breslau, Berlin and, from 1903, Königsberg. He is best known for his multi-volume Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur which included all writers in Arabic to 1937, and remains the fundamental reference volume for all Arabic literature, apart from the Christian Arabic texts.
The West Semitic languages are a proposed major sub-grouping of ancient Semitic languages. The term was first coined in 1883 by Fritz Hommel.
Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze Age. The oldest coherent texts are in Ugaritic, dating to the Late Bronze Age, which by the time of the Bronze Age collapse are joined by Old Aramaic, and by the Iron Age by Sutean and the Canaanite languages.
Fritz Hommel was a German Orientalist.
Rudolf von Raumer was a German philologist and linguist, known for his extensive research of the German language. He was the son of geologist Karl Georg von Raumer.
The Vasconic substrate hypothesis is a proposal that several Western European languages contain remnants of an old language family of Vasconic languages, of which Basque is the only surviving member. The proposal was made by the German linguist Theo Vennemann, but has been rejected by other linguists.
Hermann Hugo Paul Haupt was a Semitic scholar, one of the pioneers of Assyriology in the United States.
Saul Isaac Kaempf was an Austrian-Bohemian rabbi and Orientalist.
Justus Olshausen was a German orientalist who made contributions to Semitic and Iranian philology.
The Indo-Semitic hypothesis maintains that a genetic relationship exists between Indo-European and Semitic and that the Indo-European and the Semitic language families both descend from a common root ancestral language. The theory has never been widely accepted by contemporary linguists in modern times, but historically it had a number of supporting advocates and arguments, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Heinrich Zimmern was a German Assyriologist. He was the first professor of Assyriology at Leipzig University, and considered the founder of the discipline of the history of the ancient Near Eastern religions in Germany.
Philippi's law refers to a sound rule in Biblical Hebrew first identified by F.W.M. Philippi in 1878, but has since been refined by Thomas O. Lambdin.
The Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum is a collection of ancient inscriptions in Semitic languages produced since the end of 2nd millennium BC until the rise of Islam. It was published in Latin. In a note recovered after his death, Ernest Renan stated that: "Of all I have done, it is the Corpus I like the most."
