CASLUHIM Sept. Xcuri.tomti.e), a Mizraite people from whom went forth a portion of the Philistines (Gen. x 14 ; 1 Chron. i. 12). Bochart, on the ground of the similarity of the names, and the assertion that the Colchians were an Egyptian colony (Herod. ii. 104 ; Diod. Sic. i. 28), identifies them with the Colchians (Phaleg. iv. 31); but in these reasons there is little weight, and it is extremely improbable that the Philistines should have migrated from Colchis to the south of Palestine. More recent scholars generally adopt the suggestion that the Casluhim were the abori gines of Casiotis, a region lying on the borders of Egypt towards Arabia Petrxa, south of the Serbonian bog (Ptolem. Geogr. iv. 5. 12 ; Amm. Marcell. xxii. 16), and which contained the town Casium, the modern el Kai.. Here was the Mons Casius to which reference is repeatedly made by the ancient writers (Strabo, i. p. 50, 55 ; Plin. v.
I, 12 ; Lucan PharsaL viii. 539 ; X. 433). It is described as a low littoral tract of rock, covered with shifting, and even quicksand,' and this has been regarded as furnishing a serious difficulty in the way of the supposition that it was from it that the Casluhim went forth (Smith's Dict. of the Bible, i. 282). But Ptolemy (1. c. comp. Joseph. Bell. yud. iv. 5) gives us the names of several towns lying in this district, so that it must have been capable of supporting a population, and may have, in an earlier period, been quite adequate to the support of a tribe. The position of the Cas luhim in the list beside the Pathrusim and the Caphthorim renders it probable that the original seat of the tribe was somewhere in Lower Egypt, and not far from the vicinity of that Serbonian Bog betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old' (Par. Lost. ii. 592).—W. L. A.