1. Cush is immediately recognised in REESE, the ancient Egyptian name of Ethiopia above Egypt. With this identification all geographical mentions in Scripture, except that in the account of Paradise (Gen. ii. 13), agree. The latter may refer to a primmval Cush, but an Asiatic settlement is positively indicated in the history of Nimrod, and we shall see that the settlements of the Cush. ites extended from African Ethiopia to Babylon, through Arabia.
a. Seba is connected by Isaiah with Egypt and Cush (xliii. 3 ; xlv. 14), and the statement of Jo sephus that the island and city of Meroe bore this name is therefore to be noticed. In the ancient Egyptian geographical lists, 5AHABA and SABARA occur among names of tribes or places belonging to Ethiopia (Brugsch, Geogr. Insehr. p. 9, tay. xii., k. 1.) b. Havilah.—The identification of Havilah is difficult, as the name recurs in the list of the sons of Joktan ; and in Biblical geography, except only in the description of Eden, it is found in Arabia alone. If the two stocks intermixed, and thus bore a common name, a single localization would be sufficient.
c. Sabtah can only be doubtfully traced in Arabian geography.
d. Raamah, in the LXX., 'Pevci, is well traced in the 'Pay/La of Ptol. (vi. 7), and 'Piry,ucc of Steph. Byz. (s.v.), a city of Arabia on the Persian Gulf.
a. Sheba, and b. Dedan, bear the same names as two descendants of Keturah (Gen. xxv. 3), from which it has been reasonably supposed that we have here an indication of a mixture of Cushite and Abrahamite Arabs, like that of Cushite and Joktanite Arabs inferred in the case of the two Havilahs. It is to be remarked that the name of Dedan has been conjecturally traced in the modern name of the island of Dadan, on the east coast of Arabia, and that of Sheba in the ruins of an ancient city called Seba, in the neighbouring island of Alva] (E. S. Poole in Smith's Diet. of the Bible, s. v v Dedan, Sheba).
e. Sabtechah is not identified.
j`.. Nimrod is generally thought to have been a remoter descendant of Cush than son, and this the usage of Hebrew genealogies may be held to sanc tion. He is the first and only known instance in the list of the leader of a dynasty rather than the parent of a nation or tribe. His name is followed by a parenthetical passage relating to his power and the establishment and extension of his king dom. It is probable that this narrative is intro
duced to mark the commencement of the first Noachian monarchy. It may be compared to the notices of inventions in the account of Cain's de scendants (Gen. iv. 20.22). The name of Nimrod is probably Semitic, from 'he was rebellious.' It occurs in ancient Egyptian, in the form RET, in the family of the 22d dynasty, which was certainly, at least in part, of foreign origin. The like names SHESHENK, USARKEN, TEKERUT, ap pear to be Semitic.
2. Mizraim, literally the two Mazors,' is the common name of Egypt in the Bible; the singular, Mazor, being rarely used. It has been thought to be a purely geographical name, from its having a dual form, but it has been discovered in ancient Egyptian as the name of a Hittite or kindred chief, B. C. air. 1300, contemporary with Rameses II., written in hieroglyphics MATREEMA, where the MA is known to express the Hebrew dual, as in MA HANMA for Mahanaim. That it should be used at so early a time as a proper name of a man, suggests that the fact that Egypt was so called may be due to a Noachian's name having had a dual form, not to the division of the country into two regions. If, however, we suppose that in Gen. x. Mizraim indicates the country, then we might infer that Ham's son was probably called Mazor. It is re markable that Mazor appears to be equivalent to Ham : as we have seen, the meaning of the latter is evidently ' hot' or black,' perhaps both, and a cognate word is used in Arabic for 'black mud ;' among the meanings the Arabic equiva lent of Mazor, the KAmoos gives red earth or mud.' Thus Ham and Mazor or Mizraim would especially apply to darkness of skin or earth; and, since both were used geographically to designate the 'black land,' as cultivated Egypt always was from the blackness of its alluvial soil, it is not sur prising that the idea of earth came to be included in one of the significations of each. If Mizraim be purely geographical in the list, then we might per haps suppose that it was derived from Mazor as a Semitic equivalent of Ham. It is certainly remark able that all the descendants of Mizraim are men tioned as tribes in the plurals of gentile nouns.