“Even the most learned expositors (Bochart and Mede) have implicitly adopted the appropriation of the curse of servitude to Ham and his posterity.” Yet “the integrity of the received text of prophecy, limiting the curse to ‘Canaan’ singly, is fully supported by the concurrence of the Massorite and Samaritan Hebrew texts, with all the other ancient versions except the Arabian; and is acknowledged, we see, by Josephus and Abulfaragi (sup.), who evidently confine the curse to Canaan—though they inconsistently consider Ham as the offender, and are not a little embarrassed to exempt him and the rest of his children[70] from the operation of the curse—an exemption, indeed, attested by sacred and profane history; for Ham himself had his full share of earthly blessings, his son Misr colonised Egypt, thence styled the land of Ham (Ps. cv. 23), which soon became one of the earliest, most civilised, and flourishing kingdoms of antiquity, and was established before Abraham’s days (Gen. xii. 14-20), and in the glorious reign of Sesostris ... while Ham’s posterity, in the line of Cush, not only founded the first Assyrian empire, under Nimrod, but also the Persian (?), the Grecian (?), and the Roman (?) empires, in direct contradiction to the unguarded assertion of Mede [that ‘there hath never yet been a son of Ham that hath shaken a sceptre over the head of Japheth.’] How, then, is the propriety of the curse exclusively to Canaan to be vindicated?—evidently by considering him as the only guilty person ... upon the very ingenious conjecture of Faber, that the ‘youngest son’ who offended was not Ham, but Canaan—not the son, but the grandson of Noah. For the original, ‘his little son,’ according to the latitude of the Hebrew idiom, may denote a grandson, by the same analogy that Nimrod.... this (the former) interpretation is supported by ancient Jewish tradition, ‘Boresith Rabba,’ sec. 37, recorded also by Theodoret ... the tradition, indeed, also adds that Ham joined in the mockery, but for this addition there seems no sufficient grounds.”
There is, however, the tradition, and, moreover, a distinct tradition that Ham was black. Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, in his “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,” i., says—
“The Hebrew word Ham is identical with the Egyptian Khem, being properly written Khm, Kham, or Khem, and is the same which the Egyptians themselves gave to their country in the sculptures of the earliest and latest periods” (261). Egypt was denominated Chemi (Khemi), or the land of Ham, “as we find in the hieroglyphic legends; and the city of Khem, or Panopolis, was called in Egyptian Chemmo, of which evident traces are preserved in that of the modern town E’Khmim” (260). “Besides the hieroglyphic group, composed of the two above alluded to (260), indicating Egypt, was one consisting of an eye, and the sign land, which bore the same signification; and since the pupil, or black of the eye, was called Chemi, we may conclude this to be a phonetic mode of writing the name of Egypt, which Plutarch pretends was called Chemmia, from the blackness of its soil” (263). “Chame is black in Coptic, Egypt is Chemi, and it is remarkable that khom or chom is used in Hebrew for black or brown, as in Gen. xxx. 32–40.”—Id.
Here then, at any rate, the name of Ham or Cham is curiously associated with blackness, and must have been so associated from the commencement of Egyptian history. I leave it to the Egyptologist to decide whether the presumption is stronger that the name of Egypt, identical with that of Ham, was originally derived from the blackness of its soil, or from the blackness of him whose name was identical with it (“the land of Ham” being both the scriptural and Egyptian appellation), more especially when “the eye” (apparently a personal or historical, not certainly a geographical allusion) was used as an equivalent hieroglyphic symbol for land.[71]
Here, as in other instances, if we follow the strict lines of tradition, it seems to me that we shall escape all the difficulties which are usually alleged against it. It will result then that, although according to the text of Scripture, the curse of servitude was limited to the posterity of Chanaan; yet, seeing that the criminality was common to Ham and Chanaan, according to the tradition referred to, and as is, moreover, implied in the marked manner in which Scripture (Gen. xviii. 22) indicates Cham as “the father of Chanaan,” it is presumable that, if blackness was the concomitant of the curse, it extended to both Ham and Chanaan, and, by implication, to their posterity, but then after the curse. As Chanaan, according to the tradition, was then a boy, all his children would have been affected by the curse; but does it follow that all Ham’s descent was involved in the malediction? This would be to suppose a retrospective curse, for which the only analogy would be the hypothesis that if Adam had sinned after the birth of Cain and Abel, they and their posterity would also have incurred the guilt of original sin. Now the sons of Ham were (Gen. x. 6) “Chus and Mesram and Phuth and Chanaan,” i.e., Chus and Mesram and Phuth were the elder brothers of Chanaan, and therefore not the children of Ham after the pronouncement of the curse. If, then, we find the children of Mesram dark, but without the negro features or the blackness of Canaan; if “Sesostris, his descendant, was a great conqueror;” if Nimrod, the son of Chus, was a powerful chieftain, and the founder of the Assyrian empire; if nothing is known of the posterity of Phuth beyond the conjecture that they were the Lybians—in a word, if the descent from these three sons does not bear out the evidence of the curse, can it be said to militate at all against the hypothesis of the curse of Ham as well as of Canaan?
Moreover, if there are differences among the black races which may present difficulties, would not the knowledge that there may have been a posterity of Ham, born after the curse,[72] go far to remove them? Hales, indeed, assumes that “Ham himself had his full share of earthly blessings; his son Misr colonised Egypt,” &c. (as sup.); but this prosperity, as he indicates it, is only seen in the prosperity of his three sons, whom I assume to have been exempt from the curse. It must be remembered, however, that the occult science of the Cainites was said to have been preserved by the family of Ham, and, as we have seen, the taint was in the race.[73]
I am very far from claiming for these theories any special ecclesiastical countenance and authority. I have already intimated my opinion that, on the whole, they would be as much opposed from the point of view of scriptural exegesis as from that of unbelief. It will be said, for instance, that there is evidence in Scripture of the curse of Canaan, but no proof that blackness was the concomitant effect of the curse; and certainly it is not Scripture which affirms this, but only tradition.
To those who admit the curse, but deny the consequences which tradition attributes to it, I would oppose an almost identical argument with that which accounts for all differences in the human race by geographical location. I do not know where this argument is more forcibly put than in Latham’s “Ethnology.” There it is seemingly demonstrated that certain conditions, not merely of colour, but moral and intellectual, are the inseparable accompaniments of geographical location. Grant it, pro argumento, but I am arguing now upon the scriptural evidence, and with one with whom I assume I have a common belief in its inspiration.
It is true, then, that the curse of blackness is not recorded, but the distribution of the races is at least implied: Deut. xxxii. 8, “When the Most High divided the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, he appointed the bounds of people according to the number of the children of Israel;” and Acts xvii. 26, “And hath made of one all mankind, to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, determining appointed times, and the limits of their habitation.” (The Prot. version translates, “Having appointed the predetermined seasons and boundaries of their dwellings.” Vide Hales’s Chron., i. 351, who adds that this was conformable to their own allegory “that Chronos, the god of time, or Saturn, divided the universe among his three sons.”)[74]
If, then, the different races of mankind, according to their merits or demerits, were apportioned to, or miraculously directed or impelled to, respective portions of the earth, which necessarily superinduced certain effects, is not the curse as apparent in its indirect operation as it would have been in its suddenness and directness?