Ham (חָם, Standard Hebrew Ḥam, Tiberian Hebrew Ḥām, Ḫām, Ge'ez Kam), according to the Genealogies of Genesis, was a son of Noah and the father of Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. David Rohl has identified this nation with the Poeni of Punt. The Modern Hebrew language is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. ... Tiberian Hebrew is an oral tradition of pronunciation for ancient forms of Hebrew, especially the Hebrew of the Bible, that was given written form by masoretic scholars in the Jewish community at Tiberias in the early middle ages, beginning in the 8th century. ... Geez (also transliterated Giiz, , and pronounced IPA: ; ISO 639-2 gez) is an ancient South Semitic language that had developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa, as the language of the peasantry. ... The genealogies of Genesis record the descendents of Adam and Eve as given in the first book of the Bible, Genesis. ... Noahs Ark, Französischer Meister (The French Master), Magyar Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest. ... Cush (כּוּשׁ Black, Standard Hebrew Kuš, Tiberian Hebrew Kûš) was the eldest son of Ham, brother of Canaan and the father of Nimrod, mentioned in the table of nations in the Book of Genesis (x. ... Mizraim (Hebrew מצרים Mitzráyim or Miá¹£rāyim/Miá¹£ráyim; cf. ... Phut or phut can mean:- The sound of a slight explosion, sometimes used as a spelling for such noises as the exhaust noise of a petrol or diesel engine with a slow rotation speed. ... For other uses, see Canaan (disambiguation). ... David M. Rohl is a British Egyptologist and historian who has put forth several controversial theories concerning the chronology of Ancient Egypt and Palestine. ... Puntite, Punt, Pont, Phunt, Poenit, Poenite, Phut, and Put were all terms given by near eastern civilizations to one or other of two nations which were involved in much ancient trade. ... The Land of Punt, which the Ancient Egyptians called Ta Netjeru, meaning Land of the Gods, was a fabled and exotic site in eastern Africa, which carried on extensive trade with Ancient Egypt, China and Arabia. ...

Ham in the Bible

Traditionally, it is held that Ham was one of the sons of Noah who moved southwest into Africa and parts of the near Middle East, and was the forefather of the nations there. The Bible refers to Egypt as "the land of Ham" in (Psalms 78:51; 105:23,27; 106:22; 1Ch 4:40). The Hebrew word for Egypt was Mizraim (probably literally meaning the two lands), and was the name of one of Ham's sons. The Egyptian word for Egypt was Khem, plausibly the origin of the name Ham, or vice versa, according to sound change between languages. The names of Ham's other children correspond to regions within Egyptian influence - Kush, Canaan, and Phut (probably identical with the Pitu, a Libyan tribe, though often confused with Punt, an ancient name for Benadir). The sons of Noah are named in Genesis 10 as Shem, Ham, and Japheth. ... A world map showing the continent of Africa. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ... For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation). ... Psalms (Hebrew: Tehilim, תהילים) is a book of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh. ... Mizraim (Hebrew מצרים Mitzráyim or Miṣrāyim/Miṣráyim; cf. ... Map of Upper and Lower Egypt Ancient Egypt was divided into two kingdoms, known as Upper and Lower Egypt. ... Khem (also spelt Chem) is the Egyptian word for black, and was usually used to describe the fertile soil surrounding the Nile, which was notably blackened. ... Sound change or phonetic change is a historical process of language change consisting in the replacement of one speech sound or, more generally, one phonetic feature by another in a given phonological environment. ... Aerial view of the pyramids at Meroë Kush or Cush was a civilization centered in the North African region of Nubia, located in what is today northern Sudan. ... For other uses, see Canaan (disambiguation). ... Phut or phut can mean:- The sound of a slight explosion, sometimes used as a spelling for such noises as the exhaust noise of a petrol or diesel engine with a slow rotation speed. ... The Land of Punt, which the Ancient Egyptians called Ta Netjeru, meaning Land of the Gods, was a fabled and exotic site in eastern Africa, which carried on extensive trade with Ancient Egypt, China and Arabia. ... Benadir is a coastal region of Somalia. ...

According to Genesis 9:20–25, Noah began to raise grapes after the flood, and became drunk one day. While drunk, he lay naked in his tent. Ham saw his father naked, and told his brothers Shem and Japheth about it. Shem and Japheth went into the tent with their faces away from him, and covered him. When Noah awoke, he realized what had had been done to him, and cursed Canaan, son of Ham, to be the servants of Shem and Japheth.[1] Species Vitis acerifolia Vitis aestivalis Vitis amurensis Vitis arizonica Vitis x bourquina Vitis californica Vitis x champinii Vitis cinerea Vitis x doaniana Vitis girdiana Vitis labrusca Vitis x labruscana Vitis monticola Vitis mustangensis Vitis x novae-angliae Vitis palmata Vitis riparia Vitis rotundifolia Vitis rupestris Vitis shuttleworthii Vitis tiliifolia Vitis... The Deluge by Gustave Doré. The story of a Great Flood sent by God or the gods to destroy civilization as an act of divine retribution is a widespread theme in myths. ... A tent is a shelter, consisting of sheets of fabric or other material draped over or attached to a frame of poles and/or ropes. ... Shem (שֵׁם renown; prosperity; name, Standard Hebrew Å em, Tiberian Hebrew Å Ä“m; Greek Σημ, SÄ“m) was one of the sons of Noah in the Bible. ... Japheth (יֶפֶת / יָפֶת enlarge, Standard Hebrew Yéfet / Yáfet, Tiberian Hebrew / ) is one of the sons of Noah in the Bible. ...

The extent of the significance of this passage is debated, but the simplest interpretation considers uncovering the nakedness of his father to be a great taboo, and the inaction of Ham (who chose instead to publicize and perhaps make light of the situation) to be what led Noah to deem Ham's judgement inferior to that of his more modest brothers. The statement by Noah "Cursed be Canaan" is thus interpreted by some as presaging a fatefully undesirable trait of immodesty that destined Ham's heir Canaan to be held low in society. Nudity is a common subject both in fine arts and popular culture. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Taking into account other uses of the phrase "...the nakedness of..." in Hebrew writings, and the fact that Noah knew what had been done to him - apparently something highly noticeable-- suggests it to be euphemistic innuendo, a reference to a sexual act. Thus the act of "uncovering the nakedness" of the patriarch, performed without consent, constituted a great crime. Some interpreters add to this that Canaan, not Ham, was the object of the curse, since the curse was a result of Ham's sexual activity that had also resulted in the birth of Canaan, his youngest son. Look up Innuendo in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

The Talmud deduces two possible explanations (attributed to Rab and Rabbi Samuel) for what Ham did to Noah to warrant the curse. (B. Talmud Sanhedrin 70a.) According to one explanation, Ham castrated Noah, while the other says that Ham sexually abused Noah. The textual argument for castration goes this way: Since Noah cursed Ham by his fourth son Canaan, Ham must have injured Noah with respect to a fourth son, by emasculating him, thus depriving Noah of the possibility of a fourth son. The argument for abuse from the text draws an analogy between “and he saw” written in two places in the Bible: With regard to Ham and Noah, it is written, “And Ham the father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father (Noah)”; while in Genesis 34:2, it is written, “And when Shechem the son of Hamor saw her (Dinah), he took her and lay with her and defiled her.” Thus this explanation deduces that similar abuse must have happened each time that the Bible uses the same language. (See also Genesis Rabbah 36:7; Leviticus Rabbah 17:5.) The first page of the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berachot, folio 2a The Talmud (תלמוד) is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs and history. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Dinah (דִּינָה Judged; vindicated, Standard Hebrew Dina, Tiberian Hebrew Dînāh), mentioned in the Book of Genesis as the daughter of Jacob and Leah. ... Genesis Rabba, (Breshit Rabba in Hebrew), is a religious text holy to classical Judaism. ...

This curse was likely connected to the conquest of Canaan by Israel. From a Judaeo-Christian standpoint, the conquest of Canaan is an instance of fulfilled prophecy. From a secular point of view, it is considered an example of later Hebrew writers attempting to justify the conquest of Canaan by retroactively cursing their progenitor. The curse of Ham (also called the curse of Canaan) refers to the curse that Noah placed upon Canaan (the son of Ham) after Ham had done something to Noah while Noah was naked and unconscious because of drunkenness in his tent. ... Judeo-Christian tradition (also spelled Judaeo-Christian) is the body of concepts and values held in common by Christianity and Judaism. ...

Some argue that the curse parallels the blessing God grants to Abraham and his descendants, in that the promised land to be delivered to the descendants of Abraham's grandson Jacob, was to be taken away from the descendants of Ham's son Canaan. Tomb of Abraham Abraham (Hebrew: אברהם, Standard Avraham Ashkenazi Avrohom or Avruhom Tiberian  ; Arabic: ابراهيم,  ; Geez: አብርሃም,  ; Father/Leader of many) in Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditon is regarded as the founding patriarch of the Israelites whom God chose to bless, and to make into a blessing for all peoples on Earth. ... It has been suggested that Yaqub be merged into this article or section. ...

The conquest of Canaan and the curse, according to the Book of Jubilees, are attributed, rather, to Canaan's steadfast refusal to join his elder brothers in Ham's allotment beyond the Nile, and instead "squatting" in the inheritance of Shem, on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, in the region later promised to Abraham. The Book of Jubilees (ספר היובלים), sometimes called the Lesser Genesis (Leptogenesis), is an ancient Jewish religious work. ... The Nile (Arabic: النيل an-nīl, Ancient Egyptian iteru) is a river in Africa, often regarded as the longest river on Earth, although some sources claim the Amazon in South America is longer. ... The Mediterranean Sea is an intercontinental sea positioned between Europe to the north, Africa to the south and Asia to the east, covering an approximate area of 2. ...

A few have used the curse of Canaan to justify slavery, and later discrimination against blacks, arguing that Ham was the one who actually committed the sin, and that since he is the father of the black race, all of his descendants (not just those of his son Canaan) were cursed. The curse of Ham (also called the curse of Canaan) refers to the curse that Noah placed upon Canaan (the son of Ham) after Ham had done something to Noah while Noah was naked and unconscious because of drunkenness in his tent. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The word discrimination comes from the Latin discriminare, which means to distinguish between. To discriminate socially is to make a distinction between people on the basis of class or category without regard to individual merit. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

It has also been argued that the curse of Ham from Gen. 9:22, the passage in which he sees the nakedness of his father, means that Ham had actually had sexual intercourse with Noah's wife. There is evidence for this in a parallel passage in Leviticus 20:11 The man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness. This may explain, some argue, why Noah cursed Canaan, the yet to be offspring from Ham and Noah's wife before it was ever born.

The existence of Ham

Creationist scholars of mythology hold that some early civilizations came to worship humans deified as gods in the generations after the flood, perhaps owing to the extraordinary longevity of the first few generations after leaving the ark. Minimalist scholarship holds a parallel view, that many (but not all) early gods (or deified humans, e.g. Herakles) are representative of personified archetypes of races, i.e., their family trees being codified descriptions of the inter-relatedness of each race and tribe (with some of the older/earlier generations being more speculative). Both of these distinct viewpoints agree that there is a connection between the family tree of the characters (whether gods or men) and that of tribes and races (although the extent of that connection varies, both amongst the characters in question, and amongst the scholars). For the son of Alexander the Great, see Heracles (Macedon). ... An archetype is a generic, idealized model of a person, object or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned or emulated. ...

In the minimalist view, the early tribal name either became seen by later generations as the name of the "old ones", and thus gradually evolved into that of a god, or else was deliberately transformed into the name of a god, demi-god or hero, for the purpose of making it easier to tell the tale of a tribe representatively. However, minimalists generally prefer to avoid giving any credence to accounts of tribes being named for eponymous ancestors.

Counter arguments are often put forward that the connection is only between the Egyptian word and the typical modern pronunciation of Hebrew ח as /χ/ ("kh") rather than /ḥ/ (as was the case with biblical Hebrew, and suggest that the appearance is lessened with the original Hebrew חם Ḥam considered as Northwest Semitic /ḥ/ (such as in Hebrew, Phoenician, and Syriac). Further, Kam, the version of the name in Ge'ez—a South Semitic language—is seemingly borrowed from Biblical Hebrew via the Hebrew Bible and perhaps does not reflect a native derivation of the word. However, the conversion between Khem and Ham corresponds with the widely occurring phonological sound change of Kh into X, the voiceless velar fricative (the ch in loch rather than the X in exam), that often happens over time, or during transcription from one language into another (e.g. Xerxes is the ancient Greek attempt at spelling the name Khshayārsha). Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... This article describes the Biblical dialects of Hebrew. ... 14th century BC diplomatic letter in Akkadian, found in Tell Amarna. ... Phoenician was a language originally spoken in the coastal region of what is now Lebanon. ... Syriac ( Suryāyā) is an Eastern Aramaic language that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. ... Geez (also transliterated Giiz, , and pronounced IPA: ; ISO 639-2 gez) is an ancient South Semitic language that had developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa, as the language of the peasantry. ... 11th century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible with Targum This article discusses usage of the term Hebrew Bible. For the article on the Hebrew Bible itself, see Tanakh. ... The vowels of modern (Standard) Arabic and (Israeli) Hebrew from the phonological point of view. ... Sound change or phonetic change is a historical process of language change consisting in the replacement of one speech sound or, more generally, one phonetic feature by another in a given phonological environment. ... The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. ... View across Loch Lomond, towards Ben Lomond. ... In education, certification, counselling, and many other fields, a test or exam (short for examination) is a tool or technique intended to measure students expression of knowledge, skills and/or abilities. ... Xerxes (the Greek form of the Persian Khshayārsha) is the name of two Persian kings of the Achaemenid dynasty: Xerxes I, reigned 485–465 BC. Xerxes II, reigned 424 BC. Xerxes may also refer to: Xerxes, an Armenian king, killed about 212 BC by Antiochus III the Great. ...

In the 19th century, there was an erroneous transcription of the Egyptian for Min as ḫm ("khem"), purely by coincidence. Since this Khem was worshipped most significantly in Akhmim, the separate identity of Khem was reinforced, Akhmim being understood as simply a corruption of Khem. However, Akhmim is a corruption of ḫm-mnw, meaning Shrine of Min, via the demotic form šmn. The existence of a god named Khem was later understood as a faulty reading, but unfortunately it had already been enshrined in books written by E. A. Wallis Budge—now out of copyright and widely reprinted. Thus this error still finds a home among some Egyptologists,^{[verification needed]} who often use it to identify Ham with the god Khem or Chem, in addition to the identification of Ham by the Greeks as the Titan Cronos. (See the article Min (god) for more details.) Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Transcription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken language source, such as the proceedings of a court hearing. ... Min (sometimes incorrectly transcribed as Chem) was a god and the patron of traveling caravans, in Egyptian mythology, known since the Predynastic Period, and even worshipped by the Scorpion King. ... Akhmim, or Ekhmim, ia a town of Upper Egypt, on the right bank of the Nile, 67 mi by river south of Assiut, and 4 mi above Suhag, on the opposite side of the river where there is railway communication with Cairo and Assuan. ... Demotic (disambiguation) The term Demotic can refer to: The Demotic Greek dialect of the Greek language. ... Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge; (July 27, 1857–November 23, 1934) was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and Philologist. ... This articles section called History of Copyright does not cite its references or sources. ... In Greek mythology, the Titans (Greek Τιτάν, plural Τιτάνες) were a race of powerful deities that ruled during the legendary Golden Age. ... Rhea tricking Cronus with a wrapped stone. ... Min (sometimes incorrectly transcribed as Chem) was a god and the patron of traveling caravans, in Egyptian mythology, known since the Predynastic Period, and even worshipped by the Scorpion King. ...

Nethertheless, since Khem (meaning black) was normally used to described the fertile soils by the Nile, it was sometimes used as an epithet for Min, as the god of fertility. Since Khem was also an Egyptian name for Egypt (precisely because it described the soil of the Nile valley), there is also an association with Ham, who represented the forefather of the north-east African nations including Egypt. Ham could plausibly be a name derived from Khem (Egypt), or vice versa, via sound change, due to the change in language between Egyptian and Hebrew, corresponding to the well known phonological change of /k/ into /kh/ into /x/ (voiceless velar fricative) into /h/.

See also

• Sons of Noah
• Curse of Ham
• Wives aboard the Ark
• Noach (parsha)