Mr. J. J. Williams is not the first to have
detected Hebrew influence in darkest Africa—one might instance Merker and the Masai, with his more recent disciples—but he is the first to have followed up the clues with such persistence as to hypothecate a Hebrew parentage for the Ashanti. His volume, entitled Hebreurisms of West Africa (Allen and Unwin, 30s.), elaborates this thesis and gives the data on which his opinion was formed. He would even derive Ashanti from Ashan, a town in Jucla, making Ashanti "the people of Ashan." There is good evidence for Semitic infiltration throughout a large area of Northern Africa : even the Niloties were, in our view, not uninfluenced by this contact. But the author is too ready to see Hebrew origin in any African beliefs and rites, which show a similarity to Hebrew culture, regardless of the fact that these rites and beliefs also exist in other parts of Africa when nO such contact can be proved. The solution. we suggest, is not to be found in presuming a direct Hebrew
parentage for certain tribes, but in the fact that both Hebrew and African cultures draw their ultimate inspiration from a common source.
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