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Cush (also Kush, Biblical כּוּשׁ Kûš) was, according to the Bible, the eldest son of Ham, brother of Mizraim (Egypt), Canaan and the father of the Biblical characters Nimrod, and Raamah, mentioned in the "Table of Nations" in the Genesis 10:6 and I Chronicles 1:8. He is traditionally considered the eponymous ancestor of the people of Cush, a dark-skinned people inhabiting the country surrounded by the River Gihon, identified in antiquity with the Nile River and Aethiopia (i.e. all Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly the Upper Nile).

Hebrew Bible

Genesis 10 - Ham's descendants: Cush · Mizraim · Phut · Canaan

A page from Elia Levita's 16th century Yiddish-Hebrew-Latin-German dictionary contains a list of nations, including the word "כושי" Cushite or Cushi, translated to Latin as "Aethiops" and into German as "Mor".

According to Genesis, Cush's other sons were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabtecah.

Ham's descendants

Main article: Hamitic

• Cush, son of Ham. The Empire of Kush to the south of Egypt is known from at least 1970 BC, but this name has also been associated by some with the Kassites who inhabited the Zagros area of Mesopotamia, the Sumerian city of Kish.
  • Seba, son of Cush. Has been connected with both Yemen and Ethiopia, with much confusion with Sheba below. (The Shibboleth-like division amongst the Sabaeans into Sheba and Seba is acknowledged elsewhere, for example in Psalm 72, leading scholars to suspect that this is not a mistaken duplication of the same name, but a genuine historical division. The significance of this division is not yet completely understood, though it may simply reflect which side of the sea each was on.)
  • Havilah, son of Cush. Usually considered to be a part of the Arabian peninsula near the Red Sea.
  • Sabtah, son of Cush. Sometimes connected with Hadhramis (their ancient capital being Saubatha) in eastern Yemen.
  • Raamah, son of Cush. Has been connected with Rhammanitae mentioned by Strabo in the southwest Arabian peninsula, and with an Arabian city of Regmah at the head of Persian Gulf.
    • Sheba, son of Raamah. Has been connected with Sabaeans and peoples on either side of the narrowest part of the Red Sea.
    • Dedan, son of Raamah. Apparently a region of the Tabuk Province of Saudi Arabia.
  • Sabtechah, son of Cush. Possibly Sabaiticum Ostium, Sabaeans living around a Eritrea.
  • Nimrod, son of Cush, also identified as a mighty hunter before God, and the founder of ancient Babel, Akkad, Sumer, and possibly cities in Assyria. The Hebrew wording of Genesis 10:11 has led to some ambiguity as to whether Asshur here is the son of Shem or a city built by Nimrod; either interpretation can be found in various modern versions.
• Mizraim, son of Ham. Mizraim is a name for Upper and Lower Egypt and literally translates as Ta-Wy in Ancient Egyptian ("The Two Lands"). The -aim in Mizraim represents dual number. Arabic-speaking modern Egyptians refer to their country as Miṣr.
  • Ludim, offspring of Mizraim. Sometimes considered a scribal error for Lubim, a reference to the Libu of Eastern Libya.
  • Anamim, offspring of Mizraim. There is a reference in an Assyrian inscription from Sargon II's time to Anami, a tribe located in Cyrene, Libya.
  • Lehabim, offspring of Mizraim. Identification uncertain, possibly Libya.
  • Naphtuhim, offspring of Mizraim. Has been connected with Na-Ptah, the Egyptian form of Memphis.
  • Pathrusim, offspring of Mizraim. Possibly connected with Egyptian word Pa-To-Ris meaning southerners.
  • Casluhim ("out of whom came Philistim").(Genesis 10:14, 1Chronicles 1:12)
  • Caphtorim, offspring of Mizraim, associated with Caphtor in northeast Egypt near Philistia.(Genesis 10:14, 1Chronicles 1:12)
• Phut, son of Ham. Ancient authorities are fairly universal in identifying Phut with the Libyans (Lebu and Pitu), the earliest neighbors of Egypt to the west. (Although more recent theories have tried to connect Phut with Phoenicia, or the currently unidentified Land of Punt.)
• Canaan, son of Ham. This is known to be the name of a nation and people who settled the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean in what is now called Israel and Lebanon and Syria.
  • Sidon, firstborn son of Canaan, and name one of the oldest city-states on the Phoenician coast.
  • Heth, son of Canaan, considered ancestor of "Hittites", a people of Canaan, possibly connected with Hatti, a powerful entity in Anatolia.
  • "the Jebusite", offspring of Canaan, a tribe that lived around Jerusalem, that was formerly known as Jebus according to the Books of Chronicles.(1Chronicles 11:4)
  • "the Amorite", offspring of Canaan, a people living between the Jordan and Euphrates rivers by at least 2000 BC, known as Amurru to the Akkadians and Egyptians.
  • "the Girgasites", offspring of Canaan
  • "the Hivite", offspring of Canaan
  • "the Arkite", offspring of Canaan, probably city-state of Arqa in Phoenicia.
  • "the Sinite", offspring of Canaan, possibly connected with the Wilderness of Sin, or the Sinn river in Syria.
  • "the Arvadite", offspring of Canaan, refers to the Phoenician city-state of Arwad, now; inhabited island in Syria.
  • "the Zemarite", offspring of Canaan, refers to the Phoenician city-state of Zemar.
  • "the Hamathite", offspring of Canaan, refers to Syrian city of Hamath.

Africans were thus anciently understood to be the sons of Ham, particularly his descendant Cush, as Cushites are referred to throughout scripture as being the inhabitants of East Africa, and they and the Yoruba still trace their ancestry through Ham today. Beginning in the 9th century with the Jewish grammarian Judah ibn Quraysh, a relationship between the Semitic and Cushitic languages was seen; modern linguists group these two families, along with the Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, and Omotic language groups into the larger Afro-Asiatic language family. In addition, languages in the southern half of Africa are now seen as belonging to several distinct families independent of the Afro-Asiatic group. Some now discarded Hamitic theories have become viewed as racist; in particular a theory proposed in the 19th century by Speke, that the Tutsi were supposedly Hamitic and thus inherently superior.

The 17th-century Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, thought that the Chinese had also descended from Ham, via Egyptians.

Numbers 12:1 - Zipporah, the wife of Moses, was a Cushite

The wife of Moses was a Cushite, according to the Book of Numbers 12:1. Exagoge 60-65 by Ezekiel the Tragedian (fragments reproduced in Eusebius) has Zipporah describe herself to Moses as a stranger in the land of Midian, and proceeds to describe the inhabitants of her ancestral lands in North Africa:

"Stranger, this land is called Libya. It is inhabited by tribes of various peoples, Ethiopians, dark men. One man is the ruler of the land: he is both king and general. He rules the state, judges the people, and is priest. This man is my father {Jethro} and theirs."

Jeremiah 13:23 - Can the Cushite change his skin?

The rhetorical question "Can the Cushite change his skin?" in Jeremiah 13:23 implies people of a markedly different skin color from the Israelites, most likely a Nubian people;

Septuagint uniformly translates Cush as Aithiopia

also, the Septuagint uniformly translates Cush as Αἰθιοπία "Aithiopia."

Psalm 7 - Another Benjamite person named Cush

Another person named Cush in the Hebrew Bible is a Benjamite who is mentioned only in Psalm 7, and is believed to be a follower of Saul.

Later identifications

Josephus gives an account of the nation of Cush, son of Ham and grandson of Noah: "For of the four sons of Ham, time has not at all hurt the name of Cush; for the Ethiopians, over whom he reigned, are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Cushites." (Antiquities of the Jews 1.6).

In the 5th century AD, the Himyarites in the south of Arabia were styled by Syrian writers as Cushaeans and Ethiopians.

The Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (c. 915) recounts a tradition that the wife of Cush was named Qarnabil, daughter of Batawil, son of Tiras, and that she bore him the "Abyssinians, Sindis and Indians".

The Cushitic-speaking peoples today comprise the Somali, Afar, Oromo and several other tribes, and were considered offspring of Cush in Masudi's Meadows of Gold from 947 AD The Beja people, who also speak a Cushitic language, have specific genealogical traditions of descent from Cush.

Explorer James Bruce, who visited the Ethiopia highlands c. 1770, wrote of "a tradition among the Abyssinians, which they say they have had since time immemorial", that in the days after the Deluge, Cush, the son of Ham, traveled with his family up the Nile until they reached the Atbara plain, then still uninhabited, from where they could see the Ethiopian table-land. There they ascended and built Axum, and sometime later returned to the lowland, building Meroe. He also states that European scholars of his own day had summarily rejected this account on grounds of their established theory, that Cush must have arrived in Africa via Arabia and the Bab el Mandab. Further, the great obelisk of Axum was said to have been erected by Cush in order to mark his allotted territory, and his son Ityopp'is was said to have been buried there, according to the Book of Aksum, which Bruce asserts was revered throughout Abyssinia equally with the Kebre Negest.

David Goldenberg has suggested that the Hebrew name is derived from Kash, the Egyptian name of Lower Nubia and later of the Nubian kingdom at Napata, known as the Kingdom of Kush. The form Kush appears in Egyptian records as early as the reign of Mentuhotep II (21st century BC), in an inscription detailing his campaigns against the Nubian region. At the time of the compilation of the Hebrew Bible, and throughout classical antiquity, the Nubian kingdom was centered at Meroe in the modern-day nation of Sudan.

Scholars like Johann Michaelis and Rosenmuller have pointed out that the name Cush was applied to tracts of country on both sides of the Red Sea in the Arabia (Yemen) and in Africa.

The Hebrew word "Cushi" or "Kushi" (כושי) derived from "Cush", refers to black-skinned people. In present-day Israel it is considered an ethnic slur, much like the word nigger in North American usage.

References

Category:Torah people
Category:Hebrew Bible nations
Category:Kingdom of Kush
Category:Ham (son of Noah)