“When Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses, and for Israel his people, and that the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt, then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses’ wife, (after he had sent her back,) and her two sons.” Exod. xviii. 1, 2, 3.
“And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses, because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married, for he had married an Ethiopian woman.” Num. xii. 1.
Even in the poetic strain of the prophet, there is a vestige that goes to prove the sameness between the Midianites and the Ethiopians. “I saw the tents of Cushan (כוּשָׁ֑ןkûšān Ethiopians) in affliction, and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble.” Hab. iii. 7.
Are these facts no proof that the descendants of Misraim were black?
Let us then proceed to the same inquiry concerning the descendants of Phut.
In the Antiquities of Josephus, book i. 6, we find the following: “The children of Ham possessed the land from Syria and Amanus and the mountains of Lybanus; seizing upon all that was upon the seacoasts and as far as the ocean, and keeping it as their own. Some, indeed, of its names are utterly vanished away; others of them being changed, and another sound given, hardly to be discovered; yet a few there are, which kept their denominations entire. For of the four sons of Ham, time has not at all hurt the name of Chus; for the Ethiopians, over whom he reigned, are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men of Asia, called Chusites.” “The memory also of the Mesraites is preserved in their name, for we who inhabit this country (Judea) call Egypt Mestra, and the Egyptians Mestreans. Phut also was the founder of Lybia, and called the inhabitants Phutites, from himself. There is also a river in the country of the Moors which bears that name, whence it is that we may see the greatest part of the Grecian historiographers mention that river, and the adjoining country, by the appellation of Phut. But the name it has now has been by change given it from one of the sons of Mestraim, who was called Lybios.” His name, in the English version of Genesis, is Ludim. From him the Lybian desert has taken its name, and the country now called Lybia. Thus we discover from Josephus that the memorials of the nephew had obliterated those of Phut, his uncle. As Phut was the founder of Lybia, which was at one time called by his name, it may be well to inquire as to the extent of that region, that we may know where the descendants of Phut have resided from the time of their progenitor till now.
In order to form a tolerably correct idea of what was the country once called Phut, we have to examine how far the son of Misraim extended his name in superseding him. We quote from the Melpomene of Herodotus, where he compares the extent of Lybia, Asia, and Europe. Concerning Lybia, he says—
“Except in that particular part which is contiguous to Asia, the whole of Lybia is surrounded by the sea. The first person who has proved this was, as far as we are able to judge, Necho, king of Egypt: when he had desisted from his attempt to join, by a canal, the Nile with the Arabian Gulf, he despatched some vessels, under the conduct of Phœnicians, with directions to pass the columns of Hercules, and, after penetrating the Northern Ocean, to return to Egypt.
“These Phœnicians, taking their course from the Red Sea, entered into the Southern Ocean. On the approach of autumn they landed in Lybia, and planted some corn in the place where they happened to find themselves. When this was ripe, and they had cut it down, they again departed.