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CHAPTER VIII.

Ham-His possessions and descendants.-Cush the progenitor of the Arabians and Ethiopians: also of the negro nations of Africa: The Egyptians derived from Ethiopia ;-Proofs from Herodotus :-The primitive Ethiopians a civilized nation;— The aboriginal Arabians still more cultivated;-Hypothesis proposed respecting them :-The South of Arabia the source of the polytheistic idolatry of Egypt and India.

The position advanced, that Egypt is not the Mitzraim of Scripture:-Ancient physical state of Lower Egypt;-Proofs from Herodotus that the Delta and adjacent country were formerly covered with water;-Modern confirmation of this opinion;Diminution of the Delta :-The former extent northward of the Gulf of Suez greater than at the present time:-The Gulf of Suez not the Red Sea which was crossed by the Israelites ;Direct proofs from the words of Scripture ;-Conclusion thence that the Gulf of Akaba is the Red Sea of Scripture ;-The same conclusion arrived at from the consideration of the action of the "strong east wind."

Results of the foregoing conclusion:-Neither Mount Sinai nor the Midian of Jethro within the Peninsula of Mount Tor:The country of Midian identical with that of the Ishmaelites; -Its position :-The passage of the Red Sea not attributable to the alleged scientific knowledge of Moses.-The true situations of Horeb and of Mount Sinai approximately determined. -The opinion asserted that the forty years' wanderings of the Israelites were in the Desert' of Arabia.

THE grand division of the earth which became the possession of Ham and his posterity, is included,

POSSESSIONS AND DESCENDANTS OF HAM. 155

as has already been shown', between the northern extremity of the Persian Gulf towards the east, and the Mediterranean Sea towards the west, within the limits of which division are comprised the peninsula of Arabia, and the entire continent of Africa; and taking into consideration the country up to the central point of dispersion, it will also include the south-western part of Mesopotamia, the whole of the great Syrian Desert, and, lastly, the land of Canaan.

The propriety, generally, of attributing the original settlement of these countries to the descendants of Ham has never, I believe, been questioned. Some erroneous notions, however, on the subject are extant, which appear to be referrible to two distinct causes: The first of these causes is, that the Hamites have not been strictly confined by authors (as I conceive they ought to be,) within the natural division of the earth just defined, but have been imagined to have inhabited various other portions of the globe; the Cushites in particular having ascribed to them possessions in Bactria, Assyria, Susiana or Chusistan, and elsewhere: the second

Pages 73, 74.

2 See Bagster's Comprehensive Bible, Introduction, p. 94. Taylor's Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible, art. CUSH. The writer of a paper on Egyptian Antiquities, in the Foreign Quarterly Review for October 1833, (vol. xii. p. 372.) says:

"

"From

whence then did Osiris draw his Ethiopian colony? We an"swer without fear of confutation,-undoubtedly from the pri"mitive Ethiopia, Cush, or Susiana, in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates and Tigris, the birth-place of nations, and where the

156 POSSESSIONS AND DESCENDANTS OF HAM.

cause of error is, that the original settlements of the descendants of Joktan have been placed within the peninsula of Arabia; the incorrectness of which location has been already shown'. As opposed, then, to both these opinions, I consider that upon the

race of Cush, the earliest umpires of supremacy, probably re"mained congregated long after the departure of the Egyptian "and other races, as would appear from the fact of the Ethiopic tongue being allied (we quote Professor Lee) to the Hebrew, "the Arabic, the Syriac, the Chaldaic, the Samaritan, and in a great degree to the Persic'-these being the languages of the "people immediately surrounding the primitive settlement.”—Independently of all other objections to this assumed location of the primitive settlement of Cush, the arguments adduced by me in Pages 19-24, if of any weight, must demonstrate its entire inaccuracy. With respect to the language of Ethiopia,-which term I understand as meaning the Geez of Abyssinia,-its derivation from the Arabian side of the Red Sea, at a comparatively recent date, is sufficiently demonstrable. Its connexion, therefore, with the Arabic and other cognate tongues is perfectly intelligible, without seeking for its origin in the supposed primitive settlement of mankind, in Susiana, to the ancient language of which country I am at a loss to understand its relation. I am ignorant from what work the quotation from Professor Lee is extracted, but I conceive that the expression Persic' attributed to that distinguished philologist must be intended to refer to the Persian of the present day, (the intimate connexion of which with the Arabic is of course well known,) and not to the ancient Persic, which belongs to a division of languages totally distinct from the Arabic and cognate tongues.

1 Pages 112, 113. The native traditions also allude to the existence in Arabia of other Shemitish tribes now extinct, (see Mod. Trav., 'Arabia,' pp. 21, 22,) but with no greater foundation in truth than their considering Joktan as one of the stocks from which the present race of Arabians is descended.

POSSESSIONS AND DESCENDANTS OF CUSH. 157

Dispersion, Ham and his descendants settled in the country to the southward of Babel, keeping at first within that division of Mesopotamia which is bounded by the Khabour river on the east, to which country (as already asserted') the name of "the land of Shinar" became extended, and in which Nimrod built his cities of Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh. From this country the Hamites, in their progress to the south, (being shut out from proceeding eastward by the possessions of the descendants of Shem, and by the Persian Gulf,) would, ere long, have crossed the Euphrates into the plains of Syria and Arabia, and thence, in the course of time, they would have extended over the whole of that division of the earth which had been allotted as their inheritance.

We are told that "the sons of Ham [were] Cush, "and Mitzraim, and Phut, and Canaan." According to the second principle of distribution advanced in this Work', the possessions of Cush and his descendants must be placed to the eastward of those of his brethren; and we may accordingly consider the eastern boundary of the lot of Cush to have been in the neighbourhood of the river Khabour*, 1 Pages 25, 26. › Page 78. * This river, as being that which "compasseth the whole land "of Cush"-that is to say, the whole of the original possessions of that son of Ham,-would consequently appear to be the Gihon mentioned in Gen. ii. 13. as one of the four rivers of Eden. See further on this subject in the Appendix. The original connexion of the descendants of Cush with the particular country which thus

2 Gen. x. 6.

158

SETTLEMENT OF NIMROD.

and as extending thence to the western side of the Persian Gulf; being joined in that direction by the possessions of the Shemitish Casdim, which lay to the head of that gulf, as before mentioned'. "The sons of Cush," as we are subsequently informed, were Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, "and Raamah, and Sabtechah: and the sons of “Raamah; Sheba and Dedan. And Cush [also] begat Nimrod"." The name of this " mighty "hunter before the Lord" being mentioned out of the geographical order in which those of his brethren are placed, we have not the same means of ascertaining the real location of his possessions, as we have of determining those of the other sons of Cush; but we shall probably not be far from the truth, if we assume that Nimrod remained at or near the spot of the original settlement of his father, whilst the other sons of Cush, in their progress southward, appropriated to themselves the eastern side, and, in the course of time, the whole of the southern part, of the peninsula of Arabia. From hence, as population increased, colonies of those Cushites whose settlements lay towards the western side of that peninsula, crossed over into Ethiopia, and settled

first bore the name of that patriarch, (which name at a subsequent period received a much more extended application, as indeed has been the case with the names of most countries; see Page 26 and the note there,) may be considered as a further confirmation of the opinion expressed in Pages 116-121 respecting the early composition of the Book of Genesis.

1 Page 114.

2 Gen. x. 7,

8.