Introduction
In both Genesis 5:32 and 6:10 Ham is listed as the second son of Noah.
Genesis 5:32 After Noah
was five hundred years old, Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
(RSV)
The Hebrew word for
Ham is cham (SHD 2526), meaning hot or
sunburnt “from the tropical habitat” (Strong). In Psalm 78:5, we see
Egypt described as the first-fruits of the strength in the tents of Ham.
The Hamitic peoples comprise the largest group (thirty) among
the Seventy Nations listed in both Genesis 10 and 1Chronicles 1. The latter
text records the first Patriarchs from Adam through the line of Seth to Noah
and his descendants. (See also the paper Doctrine of Original Sin Part 2:
The Generations of Adam (No. 248).)
1Chronicles 1:1-16 Adam, Seth, Enosh; 2
Kenan, Ma-hal'alel,
Jared; 3 Enoch, Methu'selah, Lamech; 4 Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 5 The
sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog,
Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. 6 The
sons of Gomer: Ash'kenaz, Diphath, and Togar'mah. 7 The
sons of Javan: Eli'shah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Ro'danim. 8 The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt
[Mizraim: KJV], Put, and Canaan.
9 The sons of Cush: Seba, Hav'ilah, Sabta, Ra'ama, and Sab'teca. The sons of
Ra'amah: Sheba and Dedan. 10
Cush was the father of Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one in the earth. 11
Egypt was the father of Ludim, An'amim, Le'habim, Naph-tu'him, 12 Pathru'sim,
Caslu'him (whence came the Philis'tines),
and Caph'torim. 13 Canaan was the father
of Sidon his fist-born, and Heth, 14 and
the Jeb'usites, the Am'orites,
the Gir'gashites, 15 the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, 16 the Ar'vadites,
the Zem'arites, and the Ha'mathites.
(RSV)
Thus we have the four
sons of the Hamitic line: Cush, Mizraim,
Put/Phut and Canaan, along with numerous grandsons – all patriarchs in their
own right (see Chart 1, Appendix). Each will be dealt with in separate papers
in this series. The place of the Ark’s landfall will provide the background to
the jumping-off point and subsequent dispersal of all the descendants of Noah.
Landfall of Noah’s Ark
The name Noah means
rest, comfort or consolation (SHD 5146) and is the same as nuach (SHD 5118) meaning resting place,
appropriate for a man synonymous with the Ark. He was a righteous man of
integrity (tamiym, SHD 8549), or blameless
in his generation.
Genesis 6:8-10 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. 9 These are the
generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation;
Noah walked with God. 10 And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and
Japheth. (RSV)
Genesis 7:7 And Noah and his
sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him went into the ark, to escape the
waters of the flood. (RSV)
All survived the great Flood of around 2348 BCE (Gen. 7:13; 9:18). The
floodwaters remained upon the Earth for 150 days, after which they began to
recede and “the Ark came to rest upon the mountains of Ararat” (Gen. 8:4). In
his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus notes several ancient historians
who claimed to know the actual location of the Ark’s resting place.
5. … After this, the ark
rested on the top of a certain mountain in Armenia; … the Armenians call this
place, Apobaterion (16) The Place of
Descent; for the ark being saved in that place, its remains are shown there
by the inhabitants to this day.
6. Now all the writers of
barbarian histories make mention of this flood, and of this ark; among whom is Berosus the Chaldean. For
when he is describing the circumstances of the flood, he goes on thus: "It
is said there is still some part of this ship in Armenia, at the mountain of
the Cordyaeans; and that some people carry off pieces
of the bitumen, which they take away, and use chiefly as amulets for the
averting of mischiefs." Hieronymus the Egyptian
also, who wrote the Phoenician Antiquities, and Mnaseas,
and a great many more, make mention of the same. Nay, Nicolaus
of Damascus, in his ninety-sixth book, hath a particular relation about them;
where he speaks thus: "There is a great mountain in
Armenia, over Minyas, called Baris,
upon which it is reported that many who fled at the time of the Deluge were
saved; and that one who was carried in an ark came on shore upon the top of it;
and that the remains of the timber were a great while preserved. This might be
the man about whom Moss the legislator of the Jews wrote." (Bk. I, iii, 5-6)
Footnote (16): This Apobaterion,
or Place of Descent, is the proper rendering of the Armenian name of this very
city. It is called in Ptolemy Naxuana, and by
Moses Chorenensis, the Armenian historian, Idsheuan; but at the place itself Nachidsheuan, which signifies The first place of
descent, and is a lasting monument of the preservation of Noah in the ark, upon
the top of that mountain, at whose foot it was built, as the first city or town
after the flood. See Antiq. B. XX. ch. 2. sect. 3; and Moses Chorenensis,
who also says elsewhere, that another town was related by tradition to have
been called Seron, or, The Place of
Dispersion, on account of the dispersion of Xisuthrus's
or Noah's sons, from thence first made. Whether any remains of this ark be still preserved, as the people of the country suppose, I
cannot certainly tell. (W. Whiston)
The mountain on which
the Ark rested, Baris, is known as Mt. Nimush (modern Judi Dagh) in the Gilgamesh
Epic and Al-Judi (or Gebel-Judi) in the Qur’an (Surah 11:44). This is a
6,500 ft (2000m) peak in the mountains of present-day Kurdistan. Eutychius of Alexandria (9th century CE) also
claimed that “the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat that is Gebel Judi,
near Mosul” (a city in northern Iraq). In The Lost Testament, the
Egyptologist and historian David Rohl gives a number
of convincing reasons for the mountain of the landfall to be identified with
Judi Dagh (Century, Random House Ltd, London, 2002,
pp. 54-55).
The first city built
after the Flood was called Apobaterion in
Greek, or Idsheuan in Armenian, and
apparently located at the foot of Gebel-Judi. Seron
was the place from which Noah’s sons began to disperse and re-colonise the
world.
In his book Legend:
The Genesis of Civilisation, David Rohl has this to say on the region:
The name Armenia itself may
well derive from the first millennium BC kingdom of the Mannai
(the Manneans) whose capital (modern Miyandoab -- ‘Between the Two Waters’), in the fertile
plain to the south of Lake Urmia, would perhaps have
been called Ur-Mannai (‘Foundation’ or ‘City of the Manneans’). It is clear from several examples that the name
element ur is
equivalent to biblical ar. The prefix ur/ar or uru/ara was in fairly common use throughout the ancient
Near East, the two most famous instances being the Sumerian city of Ur (simply
meaning ‘city’) and Jerusalem or Uru-Shalem (‘City’
or ‘Foundation of Shalem’).
The Assyrians of the first
millennium BC also referred to this area as ‘Urartu’,
which is where the biblical Ararat comes from. (Arrow Books Ltd, London, 1999,
p. 59)
The Ziusudra Epic claims Noah dwelt at some stage
“in the land of crossing – Mount Dilmun – the place
where the sun rises”. Along with several others, Ziusudra
is the name given to Noah; its derivation is given by Rohl
in The Lost Testament.
The name is formed by two
elements -- ‘long-lived’ (ziu) combined with
the epithet ‘the far-distant’ (sudra),
because of the tradition (later passed down in the Gilgamesh Epic) that the flood
hero and his wife were the only humans to be granted eternal life by the gods
in a far-off land where the sun rose. To the Semitic-speaking peoples of early
Mesopotamia Ziusudra was known as Atrahasis
‘exceedingly devout’, often accompanied by the epithet ruku
(‘the far-distant’). … [Genesis 6:9]
The later Babylonians gave him
the name Utnapishtim, which means something
like ‘he found (eternal) life’, whereas Berossus,
the Babylonian historian of the third century BC, called him Xisuthros after the original Sumerian epithet Ziusudra. Of course, we know the flood hero as Noah -- the
name given to him in the biblical tradition and which probably derives from the
second element of Ut-na-pishtim (sometimes written Ut-na’-ishtim where the na’ may have been vocalised nua). [Ftnt.* On the other hand earlier scholars
such as C.J. Ball read the Babylonian name as Nuh-napishtim
where, of course, Nuh would also be the equivalent of
Hebrew Noah.] (op. cit., p. 46)
The note that Utnapishtim or Noah found (eternal) life may simply
mean that he was certain of attaining the First Resurrection, along with his
wife. Although the Bible is silent on the matter, Rohl
and other scholars also suggest that Noah was a local ruler over the city of Shuruppak, one of the larger settlements in the land of
Shinar and located about 60 miles (100 km) to the north of Eridu.
The Gilgamesh XI tablet refers to Utnapishtim as the
“man of Shuruppak” (line 23).
For the sceptics, the
biblical Flood narrative has been confirmed in many ancient Mesopotamian
‘myths’ such as the Epics of Atrahasis,
Gilgamesh and Ziusudra, the wording of
which suggest a common origin. Atrahasis (extremely
wise) was the Akkadian name for Noah. The following are some extracts from
these parallel Flood stories.
"the
decision that mankind is to be destroyed" Ziusudra
iv,157-158
"The gods commanded total
destruction" Atrahasis II,viii,34
"The great gods decided
to make a deluge" Gilgamesh XI,14
"God...decided to make an
end of all flesh" Genesis 6:13
"Enki...over
the capitals the storm will sweep" Ziusudra iv,156
"He [Enki]
told him of the coming of the flood" Atrahasis
III,i,37
"Kronos...said...mankind
would be destroyed by a flood" Berossus
"God said to Noah...I
will bring a flood" Genesis 6:13,17
"...the huge boat" Ziusudra v,207
"Build a ship" Atrahasis III,i,22
"Build a ship"
Gilgamesh XI,24
"build
a boat" Berossus
"Make yourself an
ark" Genesis 6:14
"your family, your relatives" Atrahasis DT,42(w),8
"he
sent his family on board" Atrahasis III,ii,42
"into
the ship all my family and relatives" Gilgamesh XI,84
"Go into the ark, you and
all your household" Genesis 7:1
"who
protected the seed of mankind" Ziusudra vi,259
"Bring into the ship the
seed of life of everything" Gilgamesh XI,27
"to
keep their seed alive" Genesis 7:3 (KJV)
"coming of the flood on the seventh night"
Atrahasis,III,i,37
"after
seven days the waters of the flood came" Genesis 7:10
"consigned
the peoples to destruction" Atrahasis III,iii,54
"All mankind was turned
to clay" Gilgamesh XI,133
"And all flesh died...and
every man" Genesis 7:21
"On Mount Nisir the boat grounded"
Gilgamesh XI,140
"the
boat had grounded upon a mountain" Berossus
"After Khsisuthros... landed ... a long mountain" Moses of Khoren
"the
ark came to rest upon the mountains" Genesis 8:4.
During
their travels through Kurdistan in the early 20th century, the
brothers W.A and E.T Wigram learned of a peculiar
commemorative feast.
Noah’s sacrifice is still
commemorated year by year on the place where tradition says the ark rested -- a
ziaret which is not the actual summit
of the mountain but a spot on its ridge. On that day (which, strange to say, is
the first day of Ilul, or September 14 of our
calendar …) all faiths and all nations come together, letting all feuds sleep
on that occasion, to commemorate an event which is older than any of their
divisions.
… Shiah
and Sunni type, Sabaeans, Jews, and even
the furtive timid Yezidis are there, each group
bringing a sheep or kid for sacrifice; and for one day there is a “truce of
God” even in turbulent Kurdistan, and the smoke of a hundred offerings goes up
once more on the ancient altar. Lower down on the hillside, and hard by the
Nestorian village of Hasana, men still point out
Noah’s tomb and Noah’s vineyard, though this last, strange to say, produces no
wine now. The grapes from it are used exclusively for nipukhta
or grape treacle, possibly in memory of the disaster that once befell the
Patriarch. (The Cradle of Mankind, A & C Black, London, 1922, p.
335)
As recorded in
Genesis 7 and 8, the Flood actually began in the month of Iyar (2nd
month) and the Ark came to rest exactly 5 months later in the month of Tishri.
Elul/Ilul is the 6th month, which normally
falls in August rather than September, so the authors may be mistaken in their
assertion. Hence, the celebration by the people of Kurdistan would most likely
commemorate the landfall of the Ark in the month of Tishri, the holy month of
Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles in God’s Sacred Calendar. (See the paper God’s Calendar (No. 156).)
Assuming Cush/Kush
to be synonymous with Kish, the Sumerian King List recalls this to
be the area and the patriarch from which a new line of kings originated after
the Flood.
“When Kingship was lowered
again from Heaven, the Kingship was in Kish.”
Kish was also known
as Urzababa.
General Dispersion
The lineage of Noah
is repeated in Genesis 10.
Genesis 10:1, 6-20 These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham,
and Japheth; sons were born to them after the flood. … 6 The sons of
Ham: Cush, Egypt [Mizraim: KJV],
Put, and Canaan. 7 The sons of Cush: Seba, Hav'ilah, Sabtah, Ra'amah, and Sab'teca. The sons of Ra'amah:
Sheba and Dedan. 8 Cush became the father
of Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. 9 He was a
mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, "Like Nimrod a mighty
hunter before the LORD." 10 The beginning of his kingdom was Ba'bel, Erech, and Accad, all of
them in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went into Assyria,
and built Nin'eveh, Reho'both-Ir,
Calah, and 12 Resen between Nin'eveh and Calah; that is the great city. 13 Egypt
became the father of Ludim, An'amim,
Leha'bim, Naph-tu'him, 14
Pathu'sim, Caslu'him
(whence came the Philistines), and Caph'torim. 15
Canaan became the father of Sidon his first-born, and Heth,
16 and the Jeb'usites, the Amorites, the Gir'gashites, 17 the Hivites,
the Arkites, the Sinites, 18
the Ar'vadites, the Zem'arites,
and the Ha'mathites. Afterward the families of the
Canaanites spread abroad. 19 And the territory of the Canaanites
extended from Sidon, in the direction of Gerar, as
far as Gaza, and in the direction of Sodom, Gomor'rah,
Admah, and Zeboi'im, as far
as Lasha. 20 These are the sons of Ham, by
their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations. (RSV)
These were the
descendants of Ham according to their families (mishpachah,
SHD 4940), their languages (lashon, SHD 3956),
their lands (‘erets, SHD 776) and their
nations (goyim, SHD 1471).
In Legend,
David Rohl gives an overview of the movements of the
sons of Ham from their original homeland.
The descendants of Noah
rebuilt the cities of Uruk and Eridu,
founded by their great ancestor Enoch. Two of Uruk’s
rulers are particularly remembered by the later Sumerians as great kings. We
will deal with Enmerkar in a moment, but first I
should relate the strange tale of King Meskiagkasher
-- the biblical Cush, son of Ham and grandson of Noah.
The Sumerian King List tells
us that Meskiagkasher journeyed over the southern sea
and came ashore in a mountainous land. We can trace his journey from Eridu to the sacred island of Dilmun
(Bahrain) which had been used as a resting place by Sumerian sea traders
for many centuries. His fleet of ships had then journeyed on into the open
ocean and along the southern shore of the Arabian peninsula
to reach the coast of Africa near the mouth of the Red Sea. There they came
ashore in the mountainous land we today call Ethiopia but which was anciently
known as Kush. Throughout their history, the later Egyptians would call the
people of the Upper Nile ‘Kushites’, after their
eponymous ancestor. …
During the centuries which
followed the initial arrival of Cush and his fleet, many return journeys would
be made by individual ships laden with the produce of Africa. Eventually, after
trade with the Indus Valley had ceased (probably due to the invasion of Meluhha by the Aryan tribes) and supplies for copper ore in
Magan had begun to diminish, the new resources of
Africa became much more important to the later Mesopotamian civilisations. As a
result, the new regions which supplied the produce of the more ancient overseas
lands were named after the original toponyms. Thus Ethiopia became known as Meluhha whilst Egypt was named Magan. However, the pharaohs continued to regard
their southern neighbour as the kingdom of Kush.
In the company of Cush (or
perhaps following on later) came Ham’s younger ‘sons’, Mizraim,
Put and Canaan. They were not to stay with their Cushite
brethren but went in search of new lands of their own to conquer. (op. cit.,
pp. 446-448; emphasis added)
The three lands
mentioned thus far – Dilmun, Meluhha
and Magan – are the subject of conflicting ideas
amongst scholars, as noted in the Wikipedia article.
Meluhha, Dilmun and Magan
Sumerian
texts repeatedly refer to three important centres with which they traded: Magan, Dilmun, and Meluhha. Magan is usually identified with Oman,
though some identify it with Egypt.
Dilmun was a trade distribution centre for
goods originating in the region of modern-day Bahrain.
The location of Meluhha, however is hotly debated.
A
number of scholars suggest that "Meluhha"
was the Sumerian name for western India or the Indus valley
civilization. Asko and Simo Parpola, both
Finnish scholars, derive Meluhha from earlier
Sumerian documents with the alternative value "Me-lah-ha",
which they identify with the Dravidian
Met-akam "high abode/country". They
further claim that Meluhha is the origin of
the Sanskrit
mleccha meaning "barbarian, foreigner"[1].
Sergei
V. Rjabchikov, a Russian scholar, reads an archaic
form of Meluhha as a Proto-Indo-Aryan word ("solar
beam"; "to die"), and he compares it, in particular, with the
name of the mountain Meru in the Old Indian
mythology. However, much later texts documenting the exploits of King Assurbanipal
of Assyria
(668-627 BC), long after the Indus Valley civilization had ceased to exist,
seemingly imply that Meluhha is to
be found somewhere near Egypt, in Africa [2].
Indus Valley hypothesis
Earlier texts (c.2200 BC)
seem to indicate that Meluhha is to the
east, suggesting either the Indus valley
or India. Sargon of
Akkad was said to have "dismantled the cities, as far as the
shore of the sea. At the wharf of Agade,
he docked ships from Meluhha, ships from Magan."
There
is plenty of archaeological evidence for the trade between Mesopotamia and the
Indus Valley. Impressions of clay seals from the Indus Valley city of Harappa
were evidently used to seal bundles of merchandise, as clay seal impressions
with cord or sack marks on the reverse side testify. A number of these Indus
Valley seals have turned up at Ur
and other Mesopotamian sites. "Persian Gulf" types of circular
stamped rather than rolled seals, also known from Dilmun,
that appear at Lothal in Gujarat,
India, and Faylahkah, as well as in Mesopotamia, are
convincing corroboration of the long-distance sea trade.
What
the commerce consisted of is less sure: timber and precious woods, ivory,
lapis lazuli,
gold,
and luxury goods such as carnelian
and glazed stone beads, pearls
from the Gulf, and shell and bone inlays, were among the goods sent to
Mesopotamia in exchange for silver,
tin,
woollen textiles, perhaps oil and grains and other foods. Copper
ingots, certainly, bitumen,
which occurred naturally in Mesopotamia, may have been exchanged for cotton
textiles and chickens, major products of the Indus region that are not native
to Mesopotamia — all these have been instanced.
Mesopotamian
trade documents, lists of goods, and official inscriptions mentioning Meluhha supplement Harappan seals
and archaeological finds. Literary references to Meluhhan
trade date from the Akkadian, the Third Dynasty
of Ur, and Isin - Larsa Periods (ca 2350 - 1800 BCE), but the trade
probably started in the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2600 BC). Some Meluhhan vessels may have sailed directly to Mesopotamian
ports, although by the Isin - Larsa
Period, Dilmun, which was located "en
route" to Meluhha, monopolized the trade. By the
subsequent Old Babylonian period, trade between the two cultures had evidently
ceased entirely.
African hypothesis
Later
texts from the 1st millennium BC suggest that "Meluhha"
and "Magan" were kingdoms adjacent to
Egypt. Assurbanipal writes about his first march against Egypt, "In my
first campaign I marched against Magan, Meluhha, Tarka, king of Egypt and Ethiopia, whom Esarhaddon,
king of Assyria, the father who begot me, had defeated, and whose land he
brought under his way...".
Bernard
Sergent (in Genèse de l'Inde, Payot, Paris, 1997)
claims that Dravidians
were a "Melano-African" race from the African Sahel
belt [1] [2],
positing that these peoples migrated from there, and suggesting that Meluhha first referred to Ethiopia, and
later to the Indus Valley. It is important to note that from the third
millennium BC onwards, Ethiopia itself was never referred to as Meluhha, but as Kush.
Apart from Ashurbanipal's reference, there is no mention of Meluhha
in any Mesopotamian text after about 1700 BC, which corresponds to the time of
decline of the Indus Valley.
(Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meluhha")
These Indus cities
were Harappa and Mohenjo Daro,
referred to in the paper Mysticism
Chapter 1 Spreading the
Babylonian Mysteries (B7_1) .
In his book Legend,
under the heading ‘The Table of Nations’, David Rohl
states:
So the Bible and the early
historians all transport Cush, grandson of Noah, to Africa. How might he have
got there? By boat perhaps? Certainly if we are
looking for a route from southern Mesopotamia to the highlands of Ethiopia in
north-eastern Africa we would logically look to the sea rather than a crossing
of the inhospitable Arabian desert.
The movement of the Egyptians
was in opposition to the sons of Cush. The Egyptians moved through Canaan,
which was the area occupied by the son of Ham and brother of Mizraim.
After
this they were dispersed abroad, on account of their languages, and went out by
colonies every where; and each colony took possession
of that land which they light upon, and unto which God led them; so that the
whole continent was filled with them, both the inland and the maritime
countries. There were some also who passed over the sea in ships, and
inhabited the islands: and some of those nations do still retain the
denominations which were given them by their first founders; (Josephus, AJ,
I, v,1)
The waters that border on the
land of Sumer do not form part of the Mediterranean (the ‘Upper Sea’) but
rather the Persian Gulf (the ‘Lower Sea’) and, beyond, the Indian Ocean.
According to Josephus, on their way to Africa, the followers of Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan occupied islands (op. cit., pp.
219-222).
It appears likely
that, rather than taking the more direct overland route from Mesopotamia to
Egypt and Africa, the descendants of Ham journeyed by sea, following the
coastline southward to the island of present-day Bahrain where some of them
settled, before rounding the peninsula of modern Qatar and proceeding further
eastwards. Upon reaching the Strait of Hormuz, the seafarers would have had the
choice of continuing in a direct easterly direction, thereby fetching up in the
Indus River Basin (in modern-day Pakistan) or of turning south and following
the coastline of Oman and Yemen, then circumnavigating the Arabian peninsula
into the Red Sea. Apparently they did both, giving rise to the Harappa
civilisation in the Indus Valley (“the land of Havilah”: Gesenius)
and various other civilisations in Africa and Egypt. This would account for the
prolific spread of Hamitic genes throughout the
ancient world. These civilisations will be discussed in other papers in the Descendants
of Ham series.
It is almost certain
that the sons of Noah assisted with the construction of the Ark, thereby giving
them experience in building the ultimate seagoing vessel. Such invaluable
skills would have been handed down to their descendants, particularly Sidon,
son of Canaan, the forefather of unquestionably the greatest shipbuilders and
seafarers of ancient times – the Phoenicians (see the paper Sons of Ham Part V: Canaan (No.
45E)).
These Phoenicians also
included the sons of Tarshish that were a Japhethite group of the sons of Javan.
The Semitic linguist Zecharia Sitchin, in The
Twelfth Planet, quotes part of a Sumerian text which talks of the land
called Arali lying
some hundred berus away from Sumer. The
beru is either a time unit or a land
measure, so that 100 beru is equal to
about 200 hours of sailing time.
The text indicates that Arali was situated west and south of Sumer. A ship traveling two or three thousand miles in a south-westerly
direction from the Persian Gulf could only have one destination: the shores of
southern Africa. …
The various names and epithets
for Ea’s [lord of Abzu’s]
African Land of Mines are replete with clues to its location and nature. It was
known as A.RA.LI (“place of the shiny lodes”), the land from which the metal
ores come. … The land’s name -- Arali -- could also
be written as a variant of the pictograph for “dark-red” (soil), of Kush (“dark-red,”
but in time meaning “Negro”), or of the metals mined there; (Allen & Unwin, London, 1977, pp. 284-289).
The term for black
soil is a name for Egypt as opposed to the red soil of the surrounding desert.
Kush is understood as meaning black, hence the term Negro.
Sitchin also comments on the
biblical text in 1Kings 10:22 describing Solomon’s fleet of ships that brought
back animals and produce from Africa.
1Kings 10:22 For the king had a fleet of ships of Tarshish at sea with the fleet of Hiram. Once every three
years the fleet of ships of Tarshish used to come
bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. (RSV)
The fleet of Tarshish took
three years to complete the round trip. Allowing for an appropriate time to
load up at Ophir, the voyage in each direction must
have lasted well over a year. This suggests a route much more roundabout than
the direct route via the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean -- a route around Africa.
Most scholars locate Tarshish
in the western Mediterranean, possibly at or near the present Strait of
Gibraltar. This would have been an ideal place from which to embark on the
voyage around the African continent. Some believe that the name Tarshish means “smeltery.”
Many biblical scholars have suggested that Ophir should be identified with present-day Rhodesia
[Zimbabwe]. Z. Herman (Peoples, Seas, Ships)
brought together evidence showing that the Egyptians obtained various minerals
from Rhodesia in earliest times (ibid., pp. 288-289).
The candidates for this area have included
Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, and the Arabian Peninsula. The matter is also discussed in
the papers on the Sons of Shem.
Language clues
Together with other
ancient sources, the Bible shows that all peoples of the Earth had the same
language both before and immediately following the Flood. At some stage a
rebellion occurred, whereby men presumptuously tried to make a name for themselves. The city and tower of Babel, the epicentre of
that rebellion, were both left unfinished, as communication had suddenly become
impossible from ‘confusing’ of the common language by the elohim.
Genesis 11:1-9 Now the whole earth had one language and few
words. 2 And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in
the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one
another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And
they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said,
"Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the
heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon
the face of the whole earth." 5 And the LORD came down to see
the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. 6 And the
LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language;
and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they
propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go
down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one
another's speech." 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from
there over the face of all the earth, and they left
off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Ba'bel, because there the LORD confused the language of
all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face
of all the earth. (RSV)
It appears from the
prophecy in Zephaniah 3:9 that the world will eventually return to a single
pure language, as in those pre-Flood days when they spoke what has been
described as Edenic. It is interesting that
the land of Cush is mentioned in the same context.
Zephaniah 3:9-10 “Yea, at that time
I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may
call on the name of the LORD and serve him with one accord. 10 From
beyond the rivers of Ethiopia [Cush] my suppliants, the daughter of my
dispersed ones, shall bring my offering.” (RSV)
Even the Russian
scholars and linguists of the 1960s (e.g. V.V Shevoroshkin),
who had no particular interest in confirming the biblical account, concluded
that there must have been a single original Mother Tongue, whose origins they
traced back, unsurprisingly, to the Ararat mountains.
With regard to
written language, Richard Rudgley in Lost
Civilisations of the Stone Age (Arrow Books, UK, 1999) says:
It is generally agreed that
the earliest known writing comes from the Ancient Near East and first occurred
during the period 3500 to 2800 BC. Expert opinions favour 3100 BC as the most
likely time for this major historical landmark to have taken place. It was in
the city of Uruk (in present-day southern Iraq),
epicentre of the Sumerian world, that this great innovation took place. This
initial form of writing has been called proto-cuneiform … It was followed
shortly afterwards by the Proto-Elamite script in
south-western Iran and, a little later, by Egyptian hieroglyphics. About a
thousand years later, writing appeared for the first time in the Indus Valley
civilisation (p. 48).
Egyptian hieroglyphs
are thus seen as a later invention, presumably a development from the pictorial
proto- or pre-cuneiform (wedge-shaped) writing of Sumeria.
Rudgley also noted that some
language experts “believe that it is simply impossible for historical linguists
to say anything of value – let alone certainty – about the state of any
language whatsoever before about 4000 BP [before present].” (ibid.,
p. 46).
In addition, the idea
of a long-standing connection between Mesopotamia and Egypt is strengthened by
the linguistic similarities between the two cultures. In his earlier work Legend,
David Rohl wrote:
[T]here are clear indications,
based on detailed comparative linguistic studies, that ancient Egyptian was
influenced by the Semitic languages of Mesopotamia. Indeed, it seems that
the two languages stem from a single original mother tongue. The point at
which the two separated from each other is hard to pinpoint but there is no
doubt that it was way back in the distant past. As the great Semiticist, William Foxwell
Albright, wrote in 1970:
If
a language community splits into two or more groups which are subsequently and
immediately isolated from one another, the language of each group will continue
to evolve. But because there is no fixed direction for linguistic change, these
languages will gradually diverge from one another in both form and content,
until, after a suitable time, they will have become quite distinct. … Although
Egyptian is not to be placed within the Semitic family, there are few
grammatical features which can be considered alien to that group. A close
genetic relationship is thus indicated and accepted; only on details is there a
divergence of scholarly opinion. [Albright & Lambdin,
‘The Evidence of Language’ in CAH I:1,1970, pp.
124,133]
We do not only have the
vocabulary of Mesopotamia and Egypt to consider but also the basic structure of
the two language groups. Although less obvious to a non-specialist, the rules
of language are a better indicator of a common linguistic origin … and a
good number of Egyptian words can be traced back to Semitic originals.
However, one crucial little word is very important to our discussion of the
origins of the pharaonic state. The concept of maat, ‘divine truth’ or ‘cosmic order’ is
fundamental to Egyptian royal theology … The word maat
is again a feminine word which carries an unpronounced ‘t’ ending and we would
therefore expect it to be pronounced something like ‘ma’ or ‘mua’. It is interesting to note that the Sumerian word for
the elements of cosmic order is me.
This linguistic clue aside, the
greater part of the Egyptian vocabulary appears to be native to the Nile valley
and may be of African -- what we call Hamitic --
origins. This would be consistent with the idea that the Nakada II newcomers had initially spent an intermediate
period in a third geographical location where they adopted new terms from the
local inhabitants which better described their more exotic environment. One
such African location may have been Punt. Some of the migrators
could then have moved on up into the Nile valley where again they would have
quickly adapted to their new home by readily incorporating elements of
vocabulary from the local population. Indeed, as a minority group, they would
undoubtedly have been forced to adopt the local tongue in order to communicate
with the majority. This whole process may have spanned several generations, by
which time the original mother-tongue of the migrating clan would have become
submerged, only surfacing as a small percentage of the total haraonic vocabulary. …
Ancient Egyptian is classified
within the Hamito-Semitic group of languages which include Berber, Tuareg and Cushitic. The latter is spoken by the indigenous
folk who live in the geographical territory of modern Sudan and Ethiopia. …
Thus ‘Cushitic’ was spoken by the descendants of Cush and the broader term ‘Hamitic’, used for the languages of north-east
Africa, is derived from Ham … In adopting these biblical terms for the
linguistics of the ancient world, nineteenth-century scholars were actually
conforming to the historical picture which is beginning to emerge from our own
investigations. Their use of biblical terminology may not have been so far from
the actual reality. (op. cit., pp. 323-326)
The Northern Cushites spoke another language system related to the
Uralic-Altaic systems. Although from above, as would be expected, there is a
recognisable connection between at least two of the patriarchal language stems.
Along with many others, the late Lithuanian archaeologist Marjia
Gimbutas proposed that the area north of the Caucasus
and the Black and Caspian Seas was the original ‘homeland’ of the Indo-European
languages (see Proto-Indo-European Culture, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press,
1970). The 20th-century language scholar, Frederick Bodmer, added:
Though the Semitic and Hamitic group diverge widely, their kinship is generally
recognized. They share more root-words than can be explained by borrowing; and
they have some common grammatical peculiarities (The Loom of Language,
Geo. Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1944, p. 420ff.).
Quite apart from
genetics and archaeology, therefore, we have the linguistic record as a means
of tracing the migrations of people throughout the world.
In subsequent papers
in this series we will look at the various tribes and groups descended from Ham
through his four sons down to the present day.
The curse of Canaan
The grievous sin of
Noah’s son or grandson is recounted in Genesis 9. Its far-reaching
implications, including slavery, are discussed below.
Genesis 9:18-27 The sons of Noah
who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of
Canaan. 19 These three were the sons of Noah; and from these the
whole earth was peopled. 20 Noah was the first tiller of the soil.
He planted a vineyard; 21 and he drank of the wine, and became
drunk, and lay uncovered in his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of
Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23
Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it upon both their shoulders,
and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were
turned away, and they did not see their father's nakedness. 24 When
Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest [younger: KJV] son had done
to him, 25 he said, "Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves
shall he be to his brothers." 26 He also said, "Blessed by
the LORD my God be Shem; and let Canaan be his
slave." 27 God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents
of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave." (RSV)
Some are
of the opinion that the curse of Canaan involves racial superiority, and that
the prophecy about Canaan (also a ben or
son of Noah)
being made a slave to his brothers and their descendants (vv. 25-27) directly
condoned the enslavement of black people. This view was prevalent during the 18th-20th
centuries even among Bible-believing Christians. It was always assumed that Ham
himself was a black man, however, only one of his
sons, Cush, has a name meaning black. The sons of Cush are widespread
and his descendants are in Northeast and West Africa in both C and B Haplogroups, but they are also the ancestors of the HG C
Australian Aboriginals (Hg. C4), some Indians but also the Mongols and some
East Asians, Maori, Chippewa or Nadine, Cheyenne and Apache and the C3 element
of the Maya Amerindians and the forebear of the black tribes of both Africa and
India. It is probable that Ham’s wife was also the mtDNA
Haplogroup L, which is now confined to Africa (in L1
and L2). Eve herself must have been red to dark-skinned, as was Adam.
Canaan was absorbed into a number of nations, including the modern
Jews, as the Hg E3b element for one. The most common element in Jews is E3b1c
which was the old E3b3. It originated in Canaan.
As
will be shown in later papers, that the sons of Ham were in fact the
progenitors of widely divergent groups of people, from Malians to Maori, and
from Mongols to Moroccans, only some of whom were black-skinned. The paper The Genetic Origin of the Nations
(No. 265) gives the various Haplogroups (Hg)
to which many of the sons of Ham belong, in both modern people groups and
countries where they predominate. These are summarised as follows:
Hg A:
Ethiopia
Morocco
South
Africa
Sudan
Hg B:
Cameroon
Ethiopia
Mali
Central
African Pygmy
Sudan
Hg B
is found essentially in sub-Saharan Africa. Hg A &
B are most common in Africa and in African-Americans.
Hg C:
Altaians
Amerindians
Australian
Aborigines
Buryats
Cameroon
Evenks
Khazaks
Koryaks
Maori
Mongols
These
Hg C groups moved from Africa and the Middle East to India and developed form there moving
into various areas of central Asia, which in turn became the origin for the
entire Mongol and Maori Pacific systems. The Northern Polynesians are also part
Hg O related to the Chinese and Malays.
Hg D:
Japan
Sumatra
Tibet
Hg D
groups tend to share a common linguistic system with those of Uralic-Altaic
languages although many of those languages are also Japhethite
lines of N and R1.
Both Hg D and Hg E stem from the YAP division (M145, M213) thus the occupants of both Canaan and Egypt were from a common YDNA root and that division, as Hg D, is found in all the Asian Negritos of the Andamans and in India and in South-East Asia, and comprised over 20% of Japanese and Tibetans and a large section of Sumatrans.
Hg E:
Burkina
Faso
Cameroon
Mali
South
Africa
This
group is found mainly in North Africa, but with some found in the Middle East
and Southern Europe with large concentrations in Greece. Many Jews are of this
group coming from the occupation of Canaan and from the Mixed Multitude. It is
also found in Egypt and North Africa. The premise is that it came from Africa
but it actually moved into Africa and spread from there.
Hg F:
Forms the Root origin of the sons of Japheth and Shem and all other Haplogroups.
One unexpected result
of the racial superiority theory (supposedly) was the inter-tribal wars between
the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda during the 1990s. The Wikipedia article
gives details.
Hamitic theory in Rwanda
In Rwanda,
the Hamitic hypothesis was a racialist
hypothesis created by John Hanning Speke which stated that the "Hamitic" Tutsi
people were superior to the "Bantu"
Hutus
because they were deemed to be more "White"
in their facial features, and thus destined to rule over the Hutus.[7]
The fact is that the Tutsis came in to Rwanda
from the North East and were assumed to have Semitic lines from the Hebrew
offshoots in Ethiopia. The Churches, both Roman Catholic and Anglican and even
the Seventh-Day Adventists, actually compiled records on the Tutsis and then
provided those records to the killing squads which they paid to engage in the
massacres, and the nuns carried jerry cans of petrol to burn down the buildings
in which the Tutsi victims took shelter. There were a number of bishops,
ministers and nuns charged with genocide and other crimes, convicted and sent
to prison for the offences. A story is contained in the web site www.holocaustrevealed.org.
Slavery
The Bible is racially
neutral and refers only to a curse on Canaan son of Ham for the actions that either Ham or Canaan perpetrated on Noah after the Flood.
There is only one
name that has any indication of the term colour. Cush means black;
Ham means hot or multitude. Yet, there are a number of nations of
Cushite descent that are not black at all, but range
from racially white to Asiatic, Polynesian or some of Amerindian descent. The
YDNA groups are the only way some can be differentiated. The greatest man in
ancient times was Nimrod, son of Cush, and it was he that established the
cities of the Ancient Middle East (Gen. 10:6-11).
The curse uttered by
Noah against Canaan was carried out and the Canaanites were placed within the
nations of both Shem and Japheth.
That aspect of the
curse of Canaan will be dealt with in the paper Sons of Ham Part V: Canaan (No.
45E). These people – whose land was Palestine, to Tyre and Sidon, at
present in Lebanon – were subjugated by and absorbed into the Hebrews and
surrounding nations. They became slaves of slaves to false gods and were to be
liberated in Christ. We will explain what was to happen to them and how they
were affected by this punishment and how it is to be overcome. These aspects
are also dealt with in the papers The Sons of Shem (No. 212 A-G). As we
progress it will be obvious that the sons of Ham made a very significant
contribution to world culture, knowledge and history, and at times have
dominated the major part of the known world.
The overall aspects
of slavery have been inflicted on all nations over time, and it is quite
inappropriate to discuss slavery in relation to the sons of Ham alone, even
though they themselves, through their intertribal conflicts in Africa, created
a slave trade many centuries and even millennia ago. The Ashanti were the largest native traders
since at least the 8th century CE, and their economy utterly
depended upon it; but they were only one of several African states who dealt in
mass slavery. African slavery was brutal, with recorded instances of beatings,
rape and mutilation. Shaka Zulu ruled with absolute
cruelty and enslaved nations.
That trade was taken
up by the Arabs and North African Hamites and turned
into a worldwide trade in human misery. It became, in effect, another type of
Exodus situation and allowed the general development of millions. Its racist
development in the USA is an indictment on the entire white civilisation there
and in Britain. Slavery was a function of all the major powers in all
continents. The great powers up until Ottoman times were ruthless in the
treatment of slaves, and especially runaways, no matter what the tribe or
colour. White slaves were forbidden to gain literacy among the Greeks and other
nations.
The year 2007, or
30/120, marks the bicentennial of the passing of a Parliamentary Bill to end
Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, following protracted
campaigns by William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and others. The Civil War saw the
end of slavery in the US, but that was not the intention of the war.
At its height, the
trade provided 40,000 African slaves a year for the British alone, while it has
been calculated that about 28 million Africans in total were transported
between 1450 and 1807. Three times as many were sent to the sugar plantations
of Jamaica as to America.
A lesser-known fact
is that Denmark, although only a minor player in the slave trade was actually
the first country to legislate against it. This was followed by several of the
northern American states. Most prominent among the British abolitionists were
the humanitarian Quakers.
White slavery
continues unabated today in the sex trade.
The Bible is clear on
the regulation of slavery in societies that tolerate this aberration in human
misery.
The Bible does not
make any elevation in racial hierarchies but, in fact, proclaims that the Plan
of God is to merge all nations into one people under the twelve Apostles as the
twelve tribes of Israel; and all men are to be saved, as salvation is of the
Gentiles through Jesus Christ.
We will proceed to
develop the story of the Sons of Ham and watch as they progress throughout the
world and the pages of history, making a great
global impact, as we can see from the
distribution of their DNA Haplogroups.
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