I. CUSH (Xoikros)`:reigned over the Ethiopians; r.4frican Cusbites], Joseph. ; ',Ethiopia' (vaguely), jer. (in Quest. IIebr. in Genes.); Both the Arabian Ethiopia, which was the parent country, and the African, its colony' [Abyssinia = Cush in Vulg. Syriac], Ros.* after M. ; but these gradations (confining Cush first, with Joseph., to the western shorc of the Red Sea, and then, with M. and Ros., extending the nation to the Arabian Peninsula) require further extension ; modern discoveries tally with this most ancient ethnographical record in placing Cush on the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, R. The earliest empire, that of Nimrod, was Cushite, literally and properly, not per cata chresin, as Heeren, Bunsen, and othcrs, would have it, R.t According to V., the tcrm Ethiopian, coextensive with Cush, included even the Hindus ; he seems, however, to mean the Southern Arabi ans, who were, it is certain, sometimes called Indians,-.1.- especially the Yemenese ; J. indeed, on the ground of Sanscrit affinities (‘ Cies or Cush being,- among the sons of Brahma, e., among the progenitors of the Hindus, and at the head of an ancient pedigree preserved in the Raneayan'), goes so far as to say, We can hardly doubt that the Cush of Moses and Valmic was an ancestor of the Indian race.' J., however, might have relied too strongly on the forged Purana of Wilford (Asiatic Research es, 432) ; still, it is certain that Oriental tradition largely (though in its usual exaggerated tone) confirms the Mosaic statements about the sons of Noah and their settlements. In the Rozit Suph it is written that God bestowed on Ham nine sons,' the two which are mentioned at the head of the list (Hind, Shed, with which comp. Abul. as quoted in one of our notes above), ex pressly connected the Hina'ns with Ham, although not through Cush, who occurs as the sixth among the Hamite brethren. See the entire extract from the Khelasszet eel Akhbar of Khondemeer in Ros. (Bibl. Gag-. append. to chap. 3, vol. i. p. 109 [Bibl. Cab.]) Boh. (Genes. in loc.), who has a long but indistinct notice of Cush, with his San scrit predilections, is for extending Cush as far as the dark India,' claiming for his view the sanction of Ros., Winer, and Schumann. When Job (xxviil. 19) speaks of Me telSaz of Ethiopia' [C,;C-n1US], - Boh. finds a Sanscrit word in mtn, and conse quently a link between India and Cush Ethiopia.] He refers to the Syriac, Chaldxan, and Saadias versions as havin,,.. India for Cush, and (after Braun, de Vest. Sacera'. tr5), assigns Rab binical authority for it. Assemann, who is by Bob. referred to in a futile hope of extracting evidence for the identification of Cush and India (of the Hindus), has an admirable dissertation on the people of Arabia (Bibl. Or. iii. (2), 552, ff.), one element of the Arab population he derives from Cush (see below). We thus conclude that the children of Ham, in the line of Cush, had very extensive settle ments in Asia, as far as the Euphrates and Persian Gulf at least, and probably including the district of the Indus ; while in Africa they both spread widely in Abyssinia, and had settlements apparently among their kinsmen, the Egyptians ; this we feel war ranted in assuming- on the testimony of the Ambian geographers ; e. g., Abulfeda (in his section on
Egypt, tables, p. in the original, p. 151 trans. by Reinaud) mentions a Cush or rather CM [47.10 as the most important city in Egypt aftei the capital Fosthaht ; its port on the Red Sea was Cosseyr, and it was a place of great resort by the Mohammedans of the west on pilgrimage. We have dwelt the longer on these particulars about the Cushites, because we wish to give greater prominence to their Asiatic settlements than has bcen done by some writers ; this we would do and at the same time avoid the extravagance of opinions which (like those of Feldhoff, for instance) cover all Southern Asia to the Pacific with an Hamitic population. We conclude this part of our art. with some remarks of Br. on the enterprise of the Cushites, and the affinity of the primitive Chaldeans and Egyptians, so corroborative of Holy Scripture, —` The sons of Cush where they once got posses sion were never totally ejected. If they were at any time driven Away, they returned after a time and recovered their ground ; for which reason I make no doubt but many of them in process of time returned to Chaldxa, and mixed with those of their family who resided there. Hence arose the tradition, that the Babylonians not only conquered Egypt, but that the learning of the Egyptians came originally from Chalda : and the like account from the Egyptians, that people from their country had conquered Babylon, and that the wisdom of the Chaldoeans was derived from them' (On Ancient Egypt, Works, vi. 250).
I. SEBA (.1'cipay) is universally admitted by critics to be the ancient name for the Egyptian [Nubian] illerobr Boh. This is too larg,e a state ment ; Bochart denies that it could be Meroe, on the assumption that this city did not exist before Cambyses, relying on the statement of Diodorus and Lucius Ampelius. Joseph. (Antiq. 10), however, more accurately says that Saba was a royal city of Ethiopia [Nubia], which C'ambyses eerwards named llferoe; after the name of his sister.' B. would have Seba to be Saba-Mareb Arabia, confounding our Seba, . written with a Samech [t•Ci7fl, with Sheba bICCI, with a Schin.
Merl* with the district around it, was no doubt settled by our Seba. (See G. s. v., who quotes Burckhardt, Riippell, and Hoskins so C. a L., Ros., and Kal. ; Pats. agrees with 'B. ; V. (who differs from B.) yet identifies Seba with the modern Arabian Sabbea ; Heeren throws his authority into the scale for the Ethiopian* Meroe ; so Kn.) It supports this opinion, that Seba is mentioned in conjunction with the other Nile lana's (Ethiopia and Egypt) in Isaiah xliii. 3, and xlv. 14. [The Sheba of Arabia, and our Ethiopian Seba, as representing opposite shorcs of the Red Sea, are contrasted in Ps. lxxii. RD.] See F. (Volkertel, 71), who, how ever, discovers nzany Sebas both in Africa (even to the south-west coast of that continent) and in Asia (on the Per,ian Gulf), a circumstance from which he derives the idea that, in this grandson of their patriarch, the Hamites displayed the energy of their race by widely extended settlements.