Madai are the Medes, a title given by the Assyrians to the multifarious tribes to the east of Kurdistan. They are first mentioned in the inscriptions about 820 b.c., and were partially subdued by Tiglath-Pileser II and his successors. At this time they lived in independent communities, each governed by its “city-chief.” The Median empire, which rose upon the ruins of Nineveh, was really the creation of the kings of Ekbatana, the modern Hamadan. The population of this district was known among the Babylonians as manda, or “barbarians;” and through a confusion of the latter word with the proper name Madâ, or “Medes,” historians have been led to suppose that the empire of Ekbatana was a Median one.
Javan is the Greek word “Ionian,” but in the Old Testament it is generally applied to the island of [pg 040] Cyprus, which is called the Island of Yavnan, or the Ionians, on the Assyrian monuments. A more specific name for it in Hebrew is Kittim, derived from the name of the Phœnician colony of Kition, now represented by Larnaka. Cyprus was first visited by the Babylonians at a very remote period, since Sargon I of Accad, who, according to Nabonidos (b.c. 550), lived 3,200 years before his time, carried his arms as far as its shores. As for Tubal and Meshech, they are as frequently associated together in the Assyrian inscriptions as they are in the Bible. The Tubal or Tibarêni spread in Old Testament times over the south-eastern part of Kappadokia, while the Meshech or Moschi adjoined them on the north and west. Ashkenaz is the Assyrian Asguza, the name of a district which lay between the kingdoms of Ekbatana and the Minni.
Cush and Mizraim denote Ethiopia and Egypt, Ethiopia roughly corresponding to the Nubia of today. As Ethiopia was largely peopled by tribes who had come across the Red Sea from Southern Arabia, the name of Cush was given in the Old Testament (as in verse 7 of this chapter) to Southern Arabia also. Properly speaking, however, it denoted the country which commenced on the southern side of the First Cataract. Mizraim means “the two Matsors,” that is Upper and Lower Egypt. Lower Egypt was the original Matsor, a word which signifies “wall,” and referred to the line of fortification which defended the kingdom on the eastern side from the attacks of Asiatic tribes. The word occurs more than once in the Biblical writers, though its sense has been obscured in the Authorised Version. Thus in Isaiah xxxvii. 25, Sennacherib boasts that he has “dried up all the rivers [pg 041] of Matsor,” that is to say, the mouths of the Nile; and in Isaiah xix. 6, we ought to translate “the Nile-arms of Matsor,” instead of “brooks of defence.” While Matsor was the name of Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt was termed Pathros (Isa. xi. 11), which is the Egyptian Pe-to-res or “southern land.” The Pathrusim or inhabitants of Pathros are mentioned among the sons of Mizraim in the chapter of Genesis upon which we are engaged.
Phut seems to be the Egyptian Punt, on the Somali coast. Spices and other precious objects of merchandise were brought from it, and the Egyptians sometimes called it “the divine land.” The Lehabim of verse 13 are the Libyans, while the Naphtuhim may be the people of Napata in Ethiopia. The Caphtorim or inhabitants of Caphtor are the Phœnician population settled on the coast of the Delta. From an early period the whole of this district had been colonised by the Phœnicians, and, as Phœnicia itself was called Keft by the Egyptians, the part of Egypt in which they had settled went by the name of Keft-ur or “greater Phœnicia.” From various passages of the Old Testament[1] we learn that the Philistines, whom the kings of Egypt had once employed to garrison the five cities in the extreme south of Palestine, had originally been Phœnicians of Caphtor, so that the words of the verse before us must have been moved from their proper place, “Caphtorim, out of whom came Philistim,” being the correct reading.
Canaan signifies “the lowlands,” and was primarily the name of the coast on which the great cities of Phœnicia were built. As, however, the inland parts of the country were inhabited by a kindred population, the [pg 042] name came to be extended to designate the whole of Palestine, just as Palestine itself meant originally only the small territory of the Philistines. In Isaiah's prophecy upon Tyre (xxiii. 11) the word is used in its primitive sense, though here again the Authorised Version has misled the English reader by mistranslating “the merchant-city” instead of “Canaan.” Sidon, “the fishers' town,” was the oldest of the Canaanite or Phœnician cities; like Tyre, it was divided into two quarters, known respectively as Greater and Lesser Sidon. Heth or the Hithites adjoined the Phœnicians on the north; we shall have a good deal to say about them in a future chapter, and therefore pass them by now. The Amorite was the inhabitant of the mountains of Palestine, in contrast to the Canaanite or lowlander, and the name is met with on the Egyptian monuments. The towns of Arka and Simirra (or Zemar) are both mentioned by Tiglath-Pileser II, while the city of Arvad or Arados (now Ruâd) is repeatedly named in the Assyrian inscriptions. So also is Hamath (now Hamah), which was conquered by Sargon, and made by him the seat of an Assyrian governor.
The name of Elam has first received its explanation from the decipherment of the Assyrian texts. It was the name of the mountainous region to the east of Babylonia, of which Shushan or Susa was at one time the capital, and is nothing more than the Assyrian word elam, “high.” Elam was itself a translation of the Accadian Numma, under which the Accadians included the whole of the highlands which bounded the plain of Babylonia on its eastern side. It was the seat of an ancient monarchy which rivalled in antiquity that of Chaldea itself, and was long a dangerous neighbour [pg 043] to the latter. It was finally overthrown, however, by Assur-bani-pal, the Assyrian king, about b.c. 645. The native title of the country was Anzan or Ansan, and the name of its capital, Susan or Shushan, seems to have signified “the old town” in the language of its inhabitants.
Asshur or Assur was originally the name of a city on the banks of the Tigris, the ruins of which are now known as Kalah Sherghat. The name was of Accadian derivation, and signified “water-bank.” The city long continued to be the capital of the district which was called after it Assyria, but was eventually supplanted by Ninua or Nineveh. Nineveh lay opposite the present town of Mosul, and it is from the remains of its chief palace, now buried under the mounds of Kouyunjik, that most of the Assyrian inscriptions in the British Museum have been brought. A few miles to the south of Nineveh, on the site now known as Nimrûd, was Calah, a town built by Shalmaneser I, who lived b.c. 1300. Calah subsequently fell into ruins, but was rebuilt in the ninth century before our era. “Between Nineveh and Calah” stood Resen, according to Genesis. Resen is the Assyrian Ris-eni, “head of the stream,” which is once mentioned in an inscription of Sennacherib. Rehoboth ´Ir, or “the open spaces of the city,” must have denoted the suburbs of Nineveh, and cannot be identified with Dur-Sarrukin, founded by Sargon at Khorsabad, several miles to the north.
It is plain from the context that Arphaxad must signify Chaldea; and this conclusion is verified by the fact that the name might also be pronounced Arpa-Chesed, or “border of Chaldæa.” Chesed is the singular of Casdim, the word used in the Old Testament to [pg 044] denote the inhabitants of Babylonia. The origin of it is doubtful, but, as has been suggested above, it most probably represents the Assyrian casidi, “conquerors,” a term which might very well be applied to the Semitic conquerors of Sumir and Accad. The Greek word Chaldeans is derived from the Kaldâ, a tribe which lived on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and is first heard of in the ninth century before our era. Under Merodach-Baladan, the Kaldâ made themselves masters of Babylonia, and became so integral a part of the population as to give their name to the whole of it in classical times.
Aram, the brother of Arphaxad, represents, of course, the Aramæans of Aram, or “the highlands,” which included the greater part of Mesopotamia and Syria. In the later days of the Assyrian Empire, Aramaic, the language of Aram, became the common language of trade and diplomacy, which every merchant and politician was supposed to learn, and in still later times succeeded in supplanting Assyrian in Assyria and Babylonia, as well as Hebrew in Palestine, until in its turn it was supplanted by Arabic.
Lud seems to be a misreading; at all events, Lydia and the Lydians, on the extreme western coast of Asia Minor, had nothing to do with the peoples of Elam, of Assyria, and of Aram. What the original reading was, however, it is now impossible to say.