LANGUAGES.
I. Semitic Family. (as Hebrew.) II. Iranian Family. (Greek.) III. Barbaric Class.
Families. r. Egyptian.
2. Nigritian.
3. Tatar.
In the table which follows, the first column gives those names from Gen. x. far which there are highly-probable geographical identifications ; the second column states these identifications ; the third contains ethnological evidence from Egyptian (Eg.), Assyrian (As.), or other sources ; the fourth exhibits the like philological evidence.
From this evidence we may draw the following inferences on several important points :— Order of Names.—The Japhethites seem to be placed first, as the most distant nations. In the list of the Hamites, the southern and therefore most distant Cushites are arranged from west to east, Seba (Meroe) being followed by Raamah (in Arabia), and the series closing with Nimrod, who ruled in Babylonia and Assyria. North of Cush is Mizraim, in the enumeration of whose tribes the western Lehabim (Libyans) are followed after an interval by the easternmost Philistim, apparently the only Mizraites of Palestine. The list of the Canaanites begins with Sidon, the Phoenicians of the sea-coast north of the Philistines ; then men tions under Heth the Hittites, perhaps on account of their southern settlement, and going northwards enumerates tribes near Lebanon, •closing with the Syrian Hamathites. The Shemite tribes begin in the east, extending regularly from Susiana to Arabia, and then ascending to Syria. Lud may be an exception, but as we have seen the Lydians may primevally have been settled near Syria ; otherwise Lud may be mentioned between the Arabs and Aram as an outlying Shemite tribe, to he spoken of before the enumeration of those nearest Palestine.
Race.—All the names identified with a high degree of probability are, with six exceptions, of Caucasian nations. The exceptions are : three cer tainly of the Lower Nilotic race, which is inter mediate between the Caucasian and Nigritian races, showing strong traits of both, a fourth probably of the same race, and two others which require more particular investigation. Cush, in ancient Egyptian, applies to Nigritians; for the race of KEESH is repre sented on the Egyptian monuments as of the most marked Nigritian type : the kings and other royal personages of Meroe, and the Ethiopians of rank under them, are, however, represented on their monuments as similar to the Lower Nilotic race. This suggests that Cush may indicate a country mainly peopled by Nigritians, yet with a governing mixed race. The remaining exception is the case of
the Hittites, who are represented on the Egyptian monuments as of two types—the one Caucasian, the other apparently Tatar. This may show that two different races were ruled by those Hittite kings with whom the Pharaohs warred, as Og the king of Bashan was a Rephaite, not an Amorite. Langitage.—The languages are all Iranian or Se mitic, with three exceptions. Egyptian, occurring twice in our table, has a monosyllabic barbaric vocabulary, with an amalgamate Semitic grammar. Here, therefore, as in race, there is a departure from the unmixed type. To Cush we have con jecturally assigned a barbaric Nigritian language, because the names of Ethiopian tribes conquered by the Egyptians, and of Ethiopian sovereigns of later times, are not readily traceable to either an Egypt ian or a Semitic source ; but we cannot say cer tainly that a Semitic element is wholly wanting in the languages to which these words belong.
The order indicates that the intention of the list is partly geographical. In the detail of each divi sion the settlements of races are probably indicated rather in the order of position than of ancestral relationship, though the principle of relationship is never departed from as far as we can see.
The list of Gen. x, contains certain statements which may now be examined, in order to infer the date to which the document refers. It is said, ' Afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad' (x. 18) ; which may indicate the formation of the great Hittite settlement in the valley of the Orontes, or other like extensions. In any case, it points to an event, or series of events, almost certainly prior to the establishment of the Israelites in Palestine. So, too, the defi nition of the otherwise unknown Resen, as the great city' (Gen. x. 12), indicates a period anterior to that of the kings who ruled at Asshur (Kal'ah Sherghat) and Calah (Nemrood), the earliest of whom is placed about B.C. 1270. At the time of the Egyptian empire the capital appears to have been Nineveh, and the date of the list would there fore be anterior to that time, or, at least, to the reign of Thothmes III., to whom it was tributary about 1450 B.C. It would appear, therefore, that the list was either written or put into its present form not long after, or at the time of Moses, if not earlier ; and that it refers to a yet earlier period—. that of the first spread of the Noachians.