[77] Held by some to belong to another (Jahvistic) document, but certainly incorporated by the early editor.
6. If we ask what our narrator supposed to be the original or Noachic tongue, we might infer from his three lines of descent, and from the locality of the dispersion and the episode of Nimrod's prehistoric kingdom, that the primitive language of Chaldea would be the original stem; and this we now know from authentic written records to have been an agglutinate language of the type usually known as Turanian, and more closely allied to the Tartar and Chinese tongues than to other kinds of speech. It would follow that what we now call Semitic and Aryan or Japhetic forms of speech must, in the view of our ancient authority, date from the sequelæ of the great 'confusion of tongues.'
These points being premised, we can clear away the fogs which have been gathered around this little luminous spot in the early history of the world, and can trace at least the principal ethnic lines of radiation from it. Though the writer gives us three main branches of affiliation of the children of Noah, he really refers to six principal lines of migration, three of them belonging to that multifarious progeny of Ham, in which he seems to include both the Turanian and Negroid types of our ordinary classifications, as well as some of the brown and yellow races.
One of the lines of affiliation of Ham leads eastward and is not traced; but if the Cushite people, who are said to have gone to the land which in earlier antediluvian times was that of 'gold and bedolach and shoham stone,' that is, along the fertile valley of Susiana, were those primitive people, preceding the Elamites of history, who are said to have spoken an agglutinate language, [78] then we have at least one stage of this migration. A second line leads west to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, to Egypt and to North Africa. A third passes south-westward through Southern Arabia and across the Red Sea into interior Africa. To the sons of Japhet are ascribed two lines of migration, one through Asia Minor and the northern coasts of the Mediterranean; another north-west, around the Black Sea. The Semites would seem to have been a less wandering people at the first, but subsequently to have encroached on and mingled with the Hamites, and especially on that western line of migration leading to the Mediterranean. All this can be gathered from undisputed national names in the several lines of migration above sketched, without touching on the more obscure and doubtful names or referring to tribes which remained near the original centre. We must, however, inquire a little more particularly into the movements bearing on Palestine and Egypt.
[78] Sayce (Hibbert Lectures) and Bagster's Records of the Past. Inscriptions of Cyrus published in the last volume of the latter appear to set at rest the vexed questions relating to early Elam. It would seem that in the earliest times Cushites and Semitic Elamites contended for the fertile plains and the mountains east of the Tigris, and were finally subjugated by Japhetic Medes and Persians. Thus this region first formed a part of the Cushite Nimrodic empire (Genesis ii. 11, x. 8); it then became the seat of a conquering Elamite power (Genesis xiv. 1 to 4); and was finally a central part of the Medo-Persian empire. All this agrees with the Bible and the inscriptions, as well as in the main with Herodotus.
So far as the writer in Genesis is informed, he does not seem to be aware of any sons of Japhet having colonised Palestine or Egypt. It was only in the later reflux of population that the sons of Javan gained a foothold in these regions. They were both colonised primarily by Hamites and subsequently intruded on by Semites.
Here a little prehistoric interlude noted by the writer, or by an author whom he quotes, gives a valuable clue not often attended to. The oldest son of Ham, Cush, begat Nimrod, the mighty hunter and prehistoric conqueror, who organised the first empire in that Euphratean plain which subsequently became the nucleus of the Babylonian and Assyrian power. The site of his kingdom cannot be doubted, for cities well known in historic times, Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, were included in it, as well as probably Nineveh. The first point which I wish to make in this connection is that we cannot suppose this to have been a Semitic empire. Its nucleus must have been composed of Nimrod's tribal connections, who were Hamites and presumably Cushites. He is, indeed, said to have gone into or invaded the land of Ashur, and if by this is meant the Semitic Ashur, he must have been hostile to these people, as indeed the Chaldeans were in later times. The next point to be noted is that the Nimrodic empire must have originated at a time when the Cushites were still strong on the Lower Euphrates, and before that great movement of these people which carried them across Arabia to the Upper Nile, and ultimately caused the name Cush or Kesh to be almost exclusively applied to the Ethiopians of Africa. Now is this history, or mere legend?
