Chapter II

THE SONS OF HAM. THEIR MORE RECENT NAMES.

=1.= (a) =Cush= was the first mentioned son. Dr. Franz Delitzsch has shown that the Assyrian monuments now prove that Cushites settled in the early ages of the world near the northwest of the Persian Gulf. They afterwards migrated southward along the western shore of the Persian Gulf and onward to the south and southwest of Arabia. Some of these crossed the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb to Africa, and there established themselves in that part now known as Abyssinia, and called first by the Greek geographers Ethiopia.

=2. The Hebrew name Cush= is translated Ethiopia twenty of the twenty-one times it occurs in the Scripture. There can be no reasonable doubt that in the first mention of the word Ethiopia in Gen. 2:13 the region northwest of the Persian Gulf is meant. In after ages the Cushites had established themselves in Arabia, and the inhabitants in that region were called Cushites, or as it is in our English translation, “Ethiopians,” as in the case of Moses’ wife, who is called an “Ethiopian woman,” Num. 12:1, but it is “Cushite” in the Hebrew.

The varying meanings of the name Cushite afford an indication that all these passages of Scripture could not have been written in the same period of time.

=3. The earliest monuments in Egypt= make a strong distinction between the =Ethiopians= south of Egypt and the =negro races=, for although the Ethiopians were of a dark or dusky skin, they had straight hair, thin noses, and the form of the head of different shape. It is not apparent that any reference in Scripture is made to the negro race as such; the passage in Jer. 13:23, “_Can the Ethiopian change his skin?_” may apply to the dark Ethiopian and not to the negro, whose native land was west of Ethiopia.[29]

=4. Five races= spring from CUSH: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabtecha. These have generally been referred to large tribes settling in Arabia. From Raamah we have the nations Sheba and Dedan. These have been located in Arabia, and it was the queen of the former who visited Solomon, 1 Kin. 10:1 and 2 Chron. 9:1. Dedan was a district north of Sheba, and its inhabitants seem by caravans to have traded and settled northward until the time of Abraham, Gen. 25:3, when their descendants were numerous enough to be known by the old name of their ancestors.

=5. Cush begat= Nimrod, whose exceptional prowess and enterprise gave him precedence over all his brethren. He was a mighty hunter upon the plains of Babylon, and from the monuments of Assyria it seems that the lion was the chief object of his hunting expeditions. He was the founder of some of the earliest cities. The first mentioned is BABEL, afterwards called Babylon by the Greeks, which was built upon the Euphrates.

=6. At that early time= this city was about one hundred and seventy-five miles northwest from the head of the =Persian Gulf=, but it is now three hundred miles, the land having been extended southeastward by the annual deposits brought down by the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. ERECH, the second city of Nimrod, was seventy-five miles northwest (now 200) of the same gulf; ACCAD, recently discovered by Rassam, was forty-five miles almost due north from Babylon; and CALNEH about fifty miles southeast of Babylon; it is now called _Niffer_.

=7. The land of Shinar= was the district corresponding with that now known as the land of _Chaldæa_. “Out of that land went forth Asshur and builded Nineveh” is the statement made, and the monuments recently discovered have remarkably corroborated this text, for the history shows the importance of Asshur, and that Nineveh, which was the capital of the Assyrian kingdom, was a more recent city than Babylon.[30] Its ruins are two hundred and seventy-five miles north by west from Babylon and upon the Tigris River.

=8.= But it will be seen that Asshur was a son of Shem, while Nimrod was a son of Ham, and recent discovery has sustained the distinction, showing that another people preceded the Assyrians and Babylonians which were not descendants of Shem. In connection with Nineveh are mentioned “the city REHOBOTH”[31] and CALAH: the former is not known, and the latter is supposed to be at the ruins nearly twenty miles south of Nineveh, now called _Nimrud_, and a few miles north of the latter is supposed to be the site of _Resen_.

Further excavations are needed to attest the accuracy of these identifications.

=9.= (b) =Mizraim= is mentioned as the second son of Cush, and is supposed to have =colonized Egypt=. The word is in the dual form and indicates the double land of Egypt, which from the earliest times was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt.

(1.) =Mizraim’s descendants= are LUDIM, probably simply a name for the Egyptians themselves; they held themselves “the best of all men,”[32] and they were the same as Libyans or Lubim, 2 Chron. 12:3; 16:8; Nah. 3:9. The Libyans of the most ancient era inhabited the west of the Nile and parts near the Mediterranean Sea. They appear of bright complexions as represented upon the Egyptian monuments.

(2.) “ANAMIM and LEHABIM and NAPHTUHIM and PATHRUSIM” appear to be only names of the people of the different settlements along the Nile and not distinct races. (3.) The CASLUHIM have been identified with a people settling east of the Delta near the Mediterranean coast towards Palestine, and seemed to have been of Phœnician origin (Ebers). (4.) CAPHTORIM were the earliest settlers on the coast of the Delta or on its Mediterranean shore, even before the Egyptians occupied that part of Egypt (Ebers). The Philistines of Palestine (southwest coast) were descendants of both Casluhim and Caphtorim. “Kaft” was the Egyptian name of the latter people, who early settled in the island of Crete, but also, as we have stated, on the seacoast of the Nile, and gradually moved through the lands of the Casluhim to their final resting-place in Palestine.[33]

=10.= Thus the =passage in Amos 9:7= is explained by the discovery that the Philistines came from Caphtor (Crete), but they passed through the land of the Casluhim. This explains =Deut. 2:23=, wherein the inhabitants of Azzah (or Gaza) are called Caphtorim, but more distinctly in Jer. 47:4, “the Philistines, the remnant of the country of Caphtor.” So that the Philistines, who came originally from Crete (Caphtor), settled on the Delta coast, and thence passing through the land of Casluhim, settled in Philistia, as Ebers has shown.[34]

=11.= A migration of the earliest Phœnicians to the coasts of the Delta is generally accepted as =leading to the invention of the alphabet=, for these settlers soon learned the new form of hieroglyphics (called the hieratic or priestly form), and afterwards improved these signs, as in the Phœnician alphabet. The most ancient manuscript in hieratic is referred to an age in the third millennium B. C., or perhaps about 2500 B. C. In the trading intercourse between Egypt and Phœnicia this new form was introduced into Phœnicia, where the full alphabetic forms were originated. Wise men of that day must have very generally adopted the improved letters, and in the course of the centuries, but certainly before the time of the Exodus, the alphabet on the Phœnician model was well formed. De Rougé has shown that the Phœnicians adopted these hieratic forms long before the Exodus.[35]

=12. This alphabet must have been known to Moses=, and perhaps to all the elders of Israel, and became that Hebrew alphabet which furnished the source of the lettering of the law and its accessories.

The similarity between the old Hebrew and the Phœnician letters has been fully shown in the discoveries of tablets near Tyre and in the Moabite stone, so called, which was discovered at some ruins east of the Dead Sea, upon the site of the ancient Dibon. It is probable therefore that the first elements of the alphabetic form of letters were invented about this era of the world’s history, when the Phœnicians began their trading with the races upon the shores of Egypt, which we have last mentioned.

=13. The next son of Ham= is (c) PHUT. The hieroglyphics of Egypt represent the nation east of the Red Sea and along the northern half of the coast as the people of _Punt_, and this people is supposed to be meant by _Phut_ or _Put_. They traded in incense and turquoise (a blue mineral not so hard as quartz but as heavy). They were a wandering tribe of a dusky hue, but entirely distinct from the Cushites on whose confines they dwelt.

=14. The last= mentioned =descendant of Ham= was (d) CANAAN. He begat Sidon, the firstborn of eleven heads of tribes or nations. Sidon became in after centuries the name of the chief city of Phœnicia. The rest of the descendants of Canaan formed the Canaanites.

=15.= A very important fact should be noticed here. These Canaanites spoke a Shemitic language, but they were, as here seen, descendants of Ham through Canaan. Recent discoveries show that long before their settlement in the land of Canaan they are met with first in Southern Arabia, from whence they made their way northward to certain islands in the Persian Gulf, their next resting-place being on the flat shores of the Persian Gulf at the mouth of the Euphrates. They then emigrated to the shores of Phœnicia, carrying the name Canaan, or, as they pronounced it, Chna, “the low-lying,” to their new inheritance on the shores of Phœnicia. Their associations were Shemitic and their language also, although they were by descent Hamitic.

=The temples= still standing in the times of the Romans upon the islands in the Persian Gulf were Phœnician, and the inhabitants claimed to be the original stock of the famous race of Palestine.[36] “Canaanite” in after times became the term used to signify a merchant or trader, from the habits of the people.[37]

=16. The people of Heth=, another son of Canaan, became in later times a very powerful nation, whose history has only recently been brought to light. Their name as Hittites has been found in the Egyptian records, from which it is shown that at one time, so early as that of Moses, they were sufficiently powerful to resist the forces of the king, Rameses II., of Egypt. On one of the Egyptian monuments they are represented as making a treaty with the Egyptian monarch which was as favorable to them as to him, B. C. 1333 (Brugsch).

=17. Sidon=, the city of that name, was early a fishing station of the Phœnicians on the coast of the Mediterranean west of the Lebanon Mountains, twenty-two miles north of Tyre. This place, now in existence, yet bears the name of the ancient son of Canaan.

=18. The Canaanites= were “spread abroad” over what is now known as Palestine, from Sidon to Gaza and Gerar, “as thou goest to Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboim, even unto Lasha,” Gen. 10:19. Gaza is well known, being 150 miles southwest of Sidon and about two miles from the shore of the Mediterranean, and is now a town of 15,000 inhabitants. Sodom and Gomorrah are not certainly located, being by some supposed to have been at the south end of the Dead Sea, but by others at the north end. Neither of the remaining names can be identified with any known sites. But it is plain that the Canaanites occupied the whole of Palestine west of the Jordan and as far north as the Lebanon Mountains, the Arvadites and Hamathites extending beyond them more than 130 miles north of Sidon. _See the map._