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JAVAN.--Both Sargon (the father of Sennacherib) and Darius use this name for Ionia
and Greece.
TUBAL spread over the south-eastern portion of Cappadocia.
MESHECH, Muski, Muska and Moschaius of the Assyrian tablets were known to be
in the eastern part of the Asia Minor. An opinion, not yet confirmed, is that Meshech is
the ancestor of the Muscovites.
TIRAS.--The Companion Bible gives this man as the ancestor of the Thracians.
Of the sons of Gomer and Javan little can be said.
Prof. Sayce sees in Ashkenaz, the Assyrian Asguza, a district which lay between the
kingdom of Ekbatana and the Minni. The Jews, however, have always applied the name
to Germany.
Max Muller says:--
"There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavs, the
Greeks, the Italians, the Persians and the Hindoos were living together beneath the same
roof, and separate from the Semitic and Turanian races."
The philologist of the 20th century but repeats the witness of Gen. 10:
THE SONS OF HAM are four in number.
CUSH.--The Cushites first lived in South Mesopotamia, and afterwards in Africa; the
Ethiopians. Bunsen once wrote, "An Asiatic Cushite exists only in the imagination of
interpreters, and is the child of their despair". Strabo, the ancient Greek geographer,
describes the Ethiopians as "a two-fold people, lying extended in a long tract from the
rising to the setting sun". Herodotus speaks of "Oriental Ethiopians". The Egyptian
Monuments, "From the time of the twelfth dynasty onwards, a new race makes its
appearance on the Egyptian horizon, viz., the Kashi in Nubia" (see also Jer. 46: 9,
A. 5: margin).
MIZRAIM.--The Egyptians. Isa. 37: 25 records Sennacherib's boast that he had,
"dried up all the rivers of Matsor", that is, the mouths of the Nile. Again, in Isa. 19: 6,
the "brooks of defence" should read, "The Nile-arms of Matsor". While Matsor was the
name of lower Egypt, upper Egypt was called, Pathros (see Isa. 11: 11), the Egyptian
Peto-res or "southern land". A son of Mizraim is Pathrusim (Gen. 10: 14).
PHUT.--Probably Somali-land, the Punt or Put of the Egyptian Monuments.
CANAAN.--The Tel-el-Amarna tablets show that the land of promise was known by
the name of Canaan in the time of Moses. The Hittites were descended from Canaan