Sons of Ham: Part IPage 1
Christian Churches of God
No. 45A
Sons of Ham:
Part I
(Edition 2.0 20070917-20071020)
This paper is the first in a series that provides an overview of the settlement after the Flood and the distribution of the Sons of Ham.
Christian Churches of God
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(Copyright 2007 Wade Cox & ors.)
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Sons of Ham: Part I
Sons of Ham: Part IPage 1
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: "Thereis 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.