Fact-Checking the Torah -- Who's Who

Now let’s look at Cham’s descendants. 

The sons of Cham Kush and Egypt and Fut and K’naan.

The sons of Kush Seva and Chavilah, Savtah and Ramah, Savtekha and the sons of Ramah Sheva and Dedan.

Kush sired Nimrod, he began to be mighty in the land.

He was the mighty hunter before the Lord therefore they say “like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.”

The beginning of his kingdom was Bavel, Erekh, Akkad, and Khalneh in the land of Shinar.

From that land went forth Ashur and built Nineveh and the wide places of the city and Kalach.

Resen between Nineveh and Kalach, that is the great city.

Egypt sired Ludim, Anamim, Lehavim, and Naftuchim.

Patrusim and Casluchim from which went out the Pelishtim and Kaftorim.

K’naan sired Tsidon his firstborn and Chet.

The Yevusi, the Emori, the Girgashi.

The Chivi, the Arqi, the Sini.

The Arvadi, the Tsemari, the Chamati and after that the families of the K’naani spread out.

 

I’ll talk about Nimrod later.

Cham’s son Kush is Ethiopia, southwest of Egypt, known in ancient Egyptian as Kash.  It established a substantial presence in a period straddling the destruction of Ebla, when Kush was called Kerma.  By the time the Hyksos took over in northern Egypt, Kerma/Kush took over a substantial portion of Egyptian territory as far as the Nile.  Its Classic period ends about the same time as the Thera explosion.

Egypt as the ancestor of Pelishtim and Kaftorim has interesting consequences.  Kaftor is Crete, where Linear B Mykenaean tablets from the 1400s BCE refer to the Iawones.  Linear B is a known script of the Pelishtim in their language. 

Modern archaeology has found notched scapular bones near the old Pelishtim Pentapolis which are identical to finds on Crete.

As part of the Sea Peoples, the Pelishtim associated with the ancestors of the Greeks, whom most people probably think of as the Ahiyyawa.  That’s not quite accurate.  The Egyptians called the Mykenaeans Pelishtim.  The Hittites called the Mykenaeans Ahiyyawa, according to Singer.  (Remember that Agamemnon, the Achaean leader who attacked Wilusa, was king of Mykenae.)

The Iliad is not a Greek epic, it’s an epic of the Sea Peoples or at least of the Cretan contingent, and the written version records the dialect of the Ionians.

The objection, of course is that Wilusa was destroyed by 1190 BCE.  That is too late for any relationship to Ebla.  But that is level VIIb.  Troy/Wilusa existed in one form or another for 18 centuries before that time, and the heyday of Level II coincides with the great days of Ebla – and comes to an end at the same time.

Have I said this enough ways now?  Good, then we’ll move on.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved