3. The same ethnologist who made Noali tha second founder of the human race had to iiviJe the nations of the earth among his sons ; the names Shem and Japheth being unknown except in this tradition, could be employed without diffi- culty ; but the name ' Canaan ' had very distinct
HA.M
HAMATH
28S
Import, and yet was too insinTiificant to count as one of the three world-races. For this name, therefore, in the etlinological table another known name was substituted, and the native name of E<r\|)t lent itself well to this purpose. That Cush and .Mi^.raini should ho infliided under the name of Kemi net'd occasion no surprise, as these two nations were known conjoiiitiy ; tliat Cush is made the eldest son (Gn HI") is perhaps due to Ethiopia being farthest from Palestine, but it may have political sijrnilicance. That Can.aan should be reckoned as Ilamite has been thoujjlit stran^'e, some accountinj; for it on the ^'lound of national antipathy on the part of the Israelites, while others (e.(j. JJillmann, a<l luc.) tliought it due to a tradition current in antiquity which made the Can.aanites immigrants from the South. The above account of the introduction of the name Ham really gets rid of the dithculty ; for Canaan's place having been taken by Ilam, a place had to be found fur Camum, and this could only be in Ham's family. Ham's name was not Bubstituted for Canaan's in the speech of No.ah, partly perhaps owing to its repeated recurrence, partly perhaps because the curse of slavery could not be made to fall on the powerful nations repre- sented by Ham's elder children. The recension of Un which we have, wliere the father is made to sin, and one of the sons to receive the curse, shows us the dilUculty solved as far as it was capable of solution.
4. The cla.ssification of Canaan under Ham led to a serious result fur the ethnological tjihle : whereas Canaan in the older scheme represented a subject caste, the name now had to include all the non-Israelitic inhabitants of I'.vlestine, among whom were many races decidcilly 'Semitic' in character, such as the riicenicians. Some further dilliculty was introduced by confusion between the Cush and the Cossaei, but the ground for making all the tribes mentioned in v.' etc. Cushites will probalily remain hidden long. The Put (which see) are probably included with the Egyiiti.ans and Nuliians as being in any case a soutliern race. The Egj'ptian classilication of mankind compared by M. Lefebure {PUBA, 18S7, p. 167 It'.), while it oilers some slight analogy to that with which we are dealing, does not seem to e.xplain the name ' Ham,' or throw any real light on the problems.
5. The name ' Ham ' occurs in 1 Ch 4", where certain settlers at (ierar found the land quiet and well cultivated, because the previous inhabitants were ' from Ham.' Some of the Uabbis compared the statement in Jg 18'- ", where very similar language is used about people who lived ' after the fashion of the Sidonians' (also, according to the tables, Uamites, through Canaan), and indeed the passage of Ch would seera to be modelled on that of Jg. It is not, however, easy to render the words in Ch satisfactorily, since 'from Ham' should mean from the country called Ham, which t« not here very intelligible, and 'of the children W Ham,' or ' from the days of Ham,' would not naturally he thus abbreviated. There is there- fore ground for suiiposing the text corrupt, and indeoa the Pesli. suLstituted cn^ 'of them' for the Dij p of the text. An easier alteration is cnjo, BU[>po8ing that word to have the sense of the analogous Syriae fonn pnjo ' peaceful, easy-going,' cf wliich examjiles are given in Tkt.t. St/r. col. 'J;U4.
1). S. Marcoi.iouth. HAM. — According to (!n 14' Cliedorlaomer and his allies smote the Zuzim (who may be the .same as the Zam/.unimim of Dt '1") cn3. This last is vocalizeil in Ml" c.^3, which is represented by AV, RV 'in Ham.' .leronie (Qiurst. in lihr. Gin.) reads onj. Alost of the \'SS vocalize any, hence LX.\ dim vou II. —19
airoii, 'with them.' Olshausen conjectures n^-; ' in Hamath.' It is most probable that a proper name is intended. If ' Ham ' be the correct read- ing, it is the name of a place that is otherwise unknown. Dillmann, following Tuch, suggests that it may have been the ancient name of the Ammonite capital Kabbath Amnion. The strange argument of Sayce (/{CM IbO f.), that the form ct points to a direct transcription of Gn 14 from a cuneiform document, is dewt with by 15all (SBOT, adlui:). J. A. Selbik.
HAM {en). Land of. — A poetical designation of Egypt, used in the Psalms in reference to the so journ there of the children of Isr. (Ps lOu-^- " 106-) ; so also ' the tabernacles (KV ' tents ') ol H.' (Ps 78") stands for ' the dwellingsof the Egj-ptians.' Prob- ably in Heb. thought H. was here used as the name of the son of Noah rather than as a name for Egy[)t. Two derivations have been proposed for it : (1) The native name for Egypt itself was Knit, in Coptic times pronounced Komi (hardly KhemD, and strictly signifying the ' black land ' or alluvial soil of the cultivable part, as opposed to the iJcshert or 'red land,' i.e. the sandy deserts which enclosed Kfimi on all sides except the N. (2) The chief Priapic god of the Eg^-ptians was sometimes called Menu (in Greek Min), but at other times probably Khem. If the latter reading is correct, it is almost identical with the name of the progenitor of the Hamitic peo|>les, and it is very remarkable that the most primitive sculptures hitherto found in Egypt represent this god (see Petrie's Ko/itus). Menu was especially worshipped on the imjiortant route from the coast of the Ited Sea to Koptos, and this would imi)ress the fact of his worshi|> on the E. neighbours of Egypt. The characteristics of Menu are in accord with the shamele-ssness recorded of H. in Gn ff^'"-. The derivation from KjiU is improbable, for phonetic reasons. F. Ll. Griffith.