Wilhelm Max Müller

“ II. Hamitic Languages.—The whole north of Africa was once inhabited by tribes of the Caucasian race, speaking languages which are now generally called, after Genesis x., Hamitic, a term introduced principally by Friedrich Müller. The linguistic coherence of that race has been broken up especially by the intrusion of Arabs, whose language has exercised a powerful influence on all those nations. ”

“ This Libyan race is distinctively a white race, with dark curly hair; the Eastern Hamites are equally distinctively a brown people with frizzy hair. If, as Sergi believes, these brown people are themselves a race, and not a cross between white and black in varying proportions, they are found in their greatest purity among the Somali and Galla, and mixed with Bantu blood among the Ba-Hima (Wahuma) and Watussi. The Masai seem to be as much Nilotic Negro as Hamite. ”

“ Frequent attempts to detach Egyptian from Hamitic and to attribute it to a Semitic immigration later than that of the other Hamites cannot be proved. Egyptian is, in many respects, more remote from Semitic than the Libyan-Cushitic division, being more agglutinative than the better types of its sister branch, having lost the most characteristic verbal flection (the Hamito-Semitic imperfect) , forming the nominal plural in its own peculiar fashion, &c. ”

“ By the term is meant a brown people with frizzy hair, of lean and sinewy physique, with slender but muscular arms and legs, a thin straight or even aquiline nose with delicate nostrils, thin lips and no trace of prognathism. ”

“ The purest representative seems to be the language of the Algerian mountaineers (Kabyles) , especially that of the Zuawa (Zouaves) tribe, described by A. Hanoteau, Essai de grammaire kabyle (1858) ; Ben Sedira, Cours de langue kab. (1887) ; Dictionnaire by Olivier (1878) . The learned little Manuel de langue kabyle, by R. Basset (1887) is an introduction to the study of the many dialects with full bibliography, cf. ”

“ Egyptian exhibits constant influences from its Canaanitish neighbours; it is crammed with such loan-words already in 3000 B.C.; new affluxes can be traced, especially c. 1600. (The Punic influences on Libyan are, however, very slight, inferior to the Latin.) Hence the relations of Semitic and Hamitic still require many investigations in detail, for which the works of Reinisch and Basset have merely built up a basis. (W. M. M.)
↑ G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race. A Study of the Origin of European Peoples (London, 1901) ; idem. ”