Cush (Bible)
Cush | |
|---|---|
| Personal | |
| Children | Nimrod,Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Sabtechah |
| Parent |
|
CushorKush(/kʊʃ,kʌʃ/Hebrew:כּוּשׁKūš;Ge'ez:ኩሽ), according to theHebrew Bible,was the oldest son ofHamand a grandson ofNoah.He was the brother ofMizraim,Phut,andCanaan.Cush was the father ofNimrod.[1][2]
Cush is traditionally considered the ancestor of the "Land of Cush", an ancient territory believed to have been located near theRed Sea.Cush is identified in theBiblewith theKingdom of Kushor ancientAethiopia.[3]TheCushitic languagesare named after Cush.
Identification[edit]
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| kꜣš[4] inhieroglyphs | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Era:1st Intermediate Period (2181–2055 BC) | |||
| ||||
| kš[4][5] inhieroglyphs | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Era:Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BC) | ||||
Cush is a Hebrew name that is possibly derived fromKash,the Egyptian name ofUpper Nubiaand later of the Nubian kingdom atNapata,known as theKingdom of Kush.Alternatively the biblical name may be a mistranslation of theMesopotamiancity ofKish.[6]
The formKushappears in Egyptian records as early as the reign ofMentuhotep II(21st century BC), in an inscription detailing his campaigns against the Nubian region.[7]At the time of the compilation of theHebrew Bible,and throughout classical antiquity, the Nubian kingdom was centered atMeroëin the modern-day nation ofSudan.[6]
References in Bible[edit]
Cush's sons wereNimrod,Seba,Havilah,Sabtah,Raamah,andSabtechah.[2]
Traditional identifications[edit]
Josephusgives an account of the nation of Cush, son of Ham and grandson ofNoah:"For of the four sons of Ham, time has not at all hurt the name of Cush; for theEthiopians,over whom he reigned, are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, calledCushites"(Antiquities of the Jews1.6).
TheBook of Numbers12:1 calls a wife ofMoses"a Cushite woman", whereas Moses's wifeZipporahis usually described as hailing fromMidian.Ezekiel the Tragedian'sExagoge60-65 (fragments reproduced inEusebius) hasZipporahdescribe herself as a stranger in Midian, and proceeds to describe the inhabitants of her ancestral lands in North Africa:
"Stranger, this land is calledLibya.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 and theirs. "
During the 5th century AD,ArameannandAssyrianChristian writers sometimes described theHimyaritesofSouth ArabiaasCushaeansandEthiopians.[3]
Gregory of Toursclaimed that Cush was the same person as thePersianZoroasterand that he was the inventor of magic and idolatry.[8]
ThePersianhistorianal-Tabari(c. 915) recounts a tradition that the wife of Cush was named Qarnabil, daughter of Batawil, son ofTiras,and that she bore him the "Abyssinians,SindisandIndians".[9]
ExplorerJames Bruce,who visited theEthiopian Highlandsc. 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 theAtbaraplain, then still uninhabited, from where they could see the Ethiopian table-land. There they ascended and builtAxum,and sometime later returned to the lowland, buildingMeroë.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 viaArabiaand theBab-el-Mandeb,astraitlocated betweenYemenon the Arabian Peninsula, andDjiboutiandEritreaon theHorn of Africa.[10]Further, the greatobeliskof Axum was said to have been erected by Cush in order to mark his allotted territory, and his sonItyopp'iswas said to have been buried there, according to theBook of Aksum,which Bruce asserts was revered throughout Abyssinia equally with theKebra Nagast.
Scholars likeJohann Michaelisand Rosenmuller have pointed out that the nameCushwas applied to tracts of country on both sides of theRed Sea,in theArabian Peninsula(Yemen) and Northeast Africa.
Professor Francis Brown suggested that the Cushites referred to both African and Asiatic peoples, with the latter being identified as theKassites.Brown believes that the Cushites in the Book of Genesis, such asNimrod,were Asiatics based on contextual information.[11]The Asiatic theory has been supported by archaeologists such asJuris Zarins.[12]
References[edit]
- ^Williams, Frank (2008-11-27).The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: Book I: (Sects 1-46) Second Edition, Revised and Expanded.BRILL. p. 18.ISBN978-90-474-4198-4.
- ^ab"Genesis 10:8-12".Bible(New Living Translation ed.). Tyndale House. 2006.ISBN978-1414309477.
- ^abThe Kingdoms of Kush.National geographic society. 2018. Archived fromthe originalon 2020-05-05.Retrieved2022-02-19.
- ^abGauthier, Henri (1928).Dictionnaire des Noms Géographiques Contenus dans les Textes Hiéroglyphiques Vol. 5.pp. 193–194.
- ^Wallis Budge, E. A. (1920).An Egyptian hieroglyphic dictionary: with an index of English words, king list and geological list with indexes, list of hieroglyphic characters, coptic and semitic alphabets, etc. Vol II.John Murray.p.1048.
- ^abDavid M. Goldenberg (2003),The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,p. 18.
- ^Richard A. Lobban Jr. (2003).Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia,p. 254.
- ^A history of the Franks, Gregory of Tours, Pantianos Classics, 1916
- ^Al-Tabari (circa 1915).Prophets and Patriarchs
- ^James Bruce (1768-73),Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile,p. 305
- ^Brown, Francis (1884)."A Recent Theory of the Garden of Eden".The University of Chicago Press: Journals.4(1): 1–12.
- ^Hamblin, Dora Jane (May 1987)."Has the Garden of Eden been located at last?"(PDF).Smithsonian Magazine.18(2). Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 9 January 2014.Retrieved8 January2014.