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This T and O map, which abstracts that society's known world to a cross inscribed within an orb, remakes geography in the service of Christian iconography and identifies the three known continents as populated by descendents of Shem (Sem), Ham (Cham) and Japheth (Iafeth)

The Table of Nations is an extensive list of descendants of Noah appearing within the Torah at Genesis 10, representing an ethnology from an Iron Age Levantine perspective. There are disputes as to how much of the peoples of the earth it was intended to cover, or how accurate or inaccurate it is. Image File history File links Stop_hand. ... Image File history File links Please see the file description page for further information. ... Image File history File links Please see the file description page for further information. ... earliest printed example of a classical T and O map (by Guntherus Ziner, Augsburg, 1472), illustrating the first page of chapter XIV of the Etymologiae. ... Iconography is the study and interpretation of images in art. ... Torah (תורה) is a Hebrew word meaning teaching, instruction, or law. ... This article is about Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). ... Ethnology (greek ethnos: (non-greek, barbarian) people) is a genre of anthropological study, involving the systematic comparison of the folklore, beliefs and practices of different societies. ... Iron Age Axe found on Gotland This article is about the archaeological period known as the Iron Age, for the mythological Iron Age see Iron Age (mythology). ... The Levant is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in Southwest Asia south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and in the east, the north Arabian Desert and Mesopotamia. ...

The table

The table begins by listing Noah's immediate children:

• Ham, son of Noah, ancestor of the southern peoples (focused on Egypt and the south of the Arabian peninsula)
• Shem, ancestor of the central peoples (focused on the Fertile Crescent region of Asia)
• Japheth, ancestor of the northern peoples (focused on central Anatolia, and the Black Sea)

It then proceeds to detail their descendants. Ham (חָם, Standard Hebrew Ḥam, Tiberian Hebrew Ḥām, Ḫām, Geez ካም Kam: possibly warm; hot), according to the Genealogies of Genesis, was a son of Noah and the father of Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. ... The Fertile Crescent is a region in the Middle East incorporating present-day Israel, West Bank, and Lebanon and parts of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and south-eastern Turkey. ... Map of the Black Sea. ...

The first generation

The first generation of descendants are given as:

Phrygian can refer to: A person from Phrygia The Phrygian language This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Sea Peoples is the term used in ancient Egyptian records of a race of ship-faring raiders who drifted into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and attempted to enter Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty, and especially year 5 of Rameses III of the 20th Dynasty. ... Thrace (Greek Θρᾴκη ThrákÄ“, Bulgarian Тракия Trakija, Turkish Trakya) is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe spread over southern Bulgaria, northeastern Greece, and European Turkey. ... Today Nubia is the region in the south of Egypt, along the Nile and in northern Sudan, but in ancient times it was an independent kingdom. ... Map of Upper and Lower Egypt Ancient Egypt was divided into two kingdoms, known as Upper and Lower Egypt. ... Map of Upper and Lower Egypt Ancient Egypt was divided into two kingdoms, known as Upper and Lower Egypt. ... phut has more than one meaning:- The historian Josephuss name for a country on the shore of the Mediterranean: see Poenit. ... The Land of Punt, whom 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. ... Phoenicia was an ancient civilization in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal plains of what are now Lebanon and Syria. ... Canaan or Knáan (Arabic کنعان, Hebrew כְּנַעַן, Septuagint Greek Χανααν) is an ancient term for a region roughly corresponding to present-day Israel/Palestine including the West Bank, western Jordan, southern and coastal Syria and Lebanon continuing up until the border of modern Turkey. ... Map of the British Mandate of Palestine. ... Elamite is an extinct language, which was spoken in the ancient Elamite Empire. ... External links Official website of Khuzestan Governorship Categories: Iran geography stubs | Provinces of Iran ... Assyria in earliest historical times referred to a region on the Upper Tigris river, named for its original capital, the ancient city of Ashur. ... Sumerian list of gods in cuneiform script, ca. ... The Kassites were a Near Eastern mountain tribe of obscure origins, who spoke a non-Indo-European, non-Semitic language. ... Ur (or Urim) was an ancient city in Mesopotamia, originally located near the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers on the Persian Gulf and close to Eridu. ... Lydia (disambiguation) Lydia is a historic region of western Anatolia, congruent with Turkeys modern provinces of Ä°zmir and Manisa. ... The Arameans or Aramaeans (also called Syriacs) were a Semitic, nomadic people who dwelt in Aram-Naharaim or Aram of the two rivers, also known as Mesopotamia a region including modern Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Iran that is mentioned six times in the Hebrew Bible. ... The Amarna letters is the name popularly given to an archive of correspondence, mostly diplomatic, found at Amarna, the modern name for the capital of the Egyptian New Kingdom primarily from the reign of pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known as Akhenaten (1369 - 1353 BCE). ...

The second generation

The identification of several of the first generation is aided by the inclusion of the second, although several of their identifications are less certain. (The copy of the table in Chronicles has occasional variations in the second generation, most likely caused by the similarity of Hebrew letters such as R and D):

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. Scythia was an area in Eurasia inhabited in ancient times by an Indo-Aryans known as the Scythians. ... Paphlagonia was an ancient area on the Black Sea coast of north central Anatolia, situated between Bithynia and Pontus, and separated from Phrygia (later, Galatia) by a prolongation to the east of the Bithynian Olympus. ... Map of the Black Sea. ... The Entholinguistic patchwork of the modern Caucasus - CIA map The Caucasus, a region bordering Asia Minor, is located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea which includes the Caucasus Mountains and surrounding lowlands. ... Urartu map Urartu (a. ... Elis, or Eleia (Greek, Modern: Ήλιδα Ilida, Ancient/Katharevousa: Ήλις, also Ilis, Doric: Άλις) is an ancient district within the modern prefecture of Ilia. ... This article or section should include material from Greeks According to Thucydides, Hellenes were the people of Hellas. ... Peloponnesos (Greek: Πελοπόννησος, Pelops Island, sometime Latinized as Peloponnesus or Anglicized as The Peloponnese) is a large peninsula in Greece, forming the part of the country south of the Isthmus of Corinth. ... Phthia (Greek: Φθίη transliterations:, modern: Fthii, ancient: PhthiÄ“) is an ancient region of Greece, at the southern part of Magnesia, on the both sides of Othrys mountain. ... Sicilian disambiguates here; see also Sicilian language or Sicilian Defence. ... The Sabaeans were a people who lived in what is today Yemen in the final millennium BCE. They may be the same nation as the biblical Sheba. ... Hadhramaut or Hadramawt (Arabic: حضرموت [Ḥaḍramawt]) is a governorate of the Republic of Yemen and a wider historical region of the south Arabian peninsula along the Gulf of Aden in the Arabian Sea, extending eastwards from Yemen (proper) to the Dhofar region of Oman. ... The Berbers (also called Imazighen, free men, singular Amazigh) are an ethnic group indigenous to Northwest Africa, speaking the Berber languages of the Afroasiatic family. ... Cyrene can refer to: The USS Cyrene (AGP-13), a motor torpedo boat tender] Cyrene, a figure from Greek mythology Cyrene, a Greek colony in Libya (north Africa) 133 Cyrene, an asteroid Cyrene, fictional character who is the mother of Xena in the series Xena: Warrior Princess See also: Cyrenaica... Noph or Moph was the Hebrew name for the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, which stood on the Nile near the site of modern-day Cairo. ... Memphis was the ancient capital of the first nome of Lower Egypt, and of the Old Kingdom of Egypt from its foundation until around 1300 BC. Its Ancient Egyptian name was Ineb Hedj (The White Walls). The name Memphis is the Greek deformation of the Egyptian name of Pepi I... Two important places in antiquity were called Thebes: Thebes, Greece – Thebes of the Seven Gates; one-time capital of Boeotia. ... The historic Philistines (פלשתים) (see other uses below) were a people who inhabited the southern coast of Canaan around the time of the arrival of the Israelites, their territory being named Philistia in later contexts. ... Caphtor is the land of the Biblical Caphtorim (Egyptian Keftiu, Mari Kaptara), said in Gen. ... Greece and Crete Crete (Greek Κρήτη / Kriti, in Turkish: Girit) is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean Sea. ... Phoenician can mean: The Phoenician ancient civilization The Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician languages This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Sidon, Zidon or Saida, (Arabic صيدا á¹¢aydā is the third-largest city in Lebanon. ... Hittites, Hethites or Children of Heth are English terms used for a people mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament, Tanakh), who some believe lived in or near Canaan from the time of Abraham (presumably between 2000 BC and 1500 BC) to the time of Ezra after the... The Hattians were an ancient people who inhabited the land of Hatti in Asia Minor in the 3rd to 2nd millennia BC. They spoke a non-Indo-European language of uncertain affiliation called Hattic (now believed by some to be related to the Northwest Caucasian language group). ... Relief of Suppiluliuma II, last known king of the Hittite Empire “Hittites” is the conventional English-language term for an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European language and established a kingdom centered in Hattusa (Hittite Hattushash) where today is the village of BoÄŸazköy in north-central Turkey... Emblem of the Municipality of Jerusalem Jerusalem and the Old City. ... Amorite (Hebrew ’emōrî, Egyptian Amar, Akkadian Amurrū (corresponding to Sumerian MAR.TU or Martu) refers to a Semitic people who occupied the middle Euphrates area from the second half of the third millennium BC and also appear in the Tanakh. ... Sinai Peninsula, Gulf of Suez (west), Gulf of Aqaba (east) from Space Shuttle STS-40 The Sinai Peninsula (in Arabic, Shibh Jazirat Sina) is a triangle-shaped peninsula lying between the Mediterranean Sea (to the north) and Red Sea (to the south). ... Sumer (or Shumer, Egyptian Sangar, Bib. ... Hama is a province of Syria with currently approximately 350,000 inhabitants. ... Job is a term used to identify a means of daily work used in acquiring funds for living. ... The Sea of Galilee with the Jordan River flowing out of it to the south and into the Dead Sea Kineret redirects here; for the Amgen drug having this tradename, see Anakinra The Sea of Galilee is Israels largest freshwater lake, approximately 53 kilometers (33 miles) in circumference, about... The Mashu is a great mountain which Gilgamesh passes through (via a tunnel) on his journey after leaving the cedar land, a forest of ten thousand leagues. ... Phoenician can mean: The Phoenician ancient civilization The Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician languages This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... This article is about the ancient Middle Eastern city of Nineveh. ... Look up Shibboleth in Wiktionary, the free dictionary For the Internet2 research project, see Shibboleth (Internet2). ... Psalms (Tehilim תהילים, in Hebrew) is a book of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, and of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. ...

In a rare descriptive section, the table also identifies Nimrod as a son of Cush, a mighty hunter before God, and the founder of ancient Babel, Akkad, Sumer, and possibly cities in Assyria. The Hebrew wording of this passage (Genesis 10:11) has led to some confusion with the position of Asshur the son of Shem. For other uses, see the disambiguation page Nimrod. ... This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain. ... Akkad (or Agade) was a city and its region of northern Mesopotamia, situated on the left bank of the Euphrates, between Sippar and Kish (located in present-day Iraq, ca. ...

Arpaxad's family

The table proceeds to list a genealogy from Arpaxad to a man named Eber and his sons, who is implicitly indicated as the eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews: An eponym is a person, whether real or fictitious, whose name has (or is thought to have) given rise to the name of a particular place, tribe, discovery, or other item. ... Hebrews (syns. ...

• Arpaxad
  • Salah
    • Eber
      • Peleg
      • Joktan

Of these names, Salah is usually considered to be completely unidentified, Joktan is generally identified with Jectan, an ancient town near Mecca, and Peleg is generally connected to Phalgu, an ancient town located where the Euphrates and Chaboras meet. In the table, it is said that the earth was divided in the days of Peleg, often considered a reference to the incident involving the Tower of Babel. Peleg is later indicated to be a distant ancestor of Abraham. This article is about the city in Saudi Arabia. ... The Euphrates (the traditional Greek name for the river, which is in Old Persian Ufrat, Aramaic Prâth/Frot, in Arabic Al-Furat الفرات, in Turkish Fırat and in ancient Assyrian language Pu-rat-tu) is the westernmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia (Bethnahrin in Aramaic), the... ... The Confusion of Tongues by Gustave Doré According to the narrative in Genesis Chapter 11 of the Bible, the Tower of Babel was a tower built by a united humanity in order to reach the heavens. ... Abraham (אַבְרָהָם Father/Leader of many, (circa 1700 BCE) Standard Hebrew Avraham, Tiberian Hebrew ; Arabic ابراهيم ; Geez አብርሃም ) is regarded as a patriarch of Israelite religion, recognized by Judaism and later Christianity, and a very important prophet in Islam. ...

The sons of Joktan

The table ends by listing the sons of Joktan:

Sanaá (Arabic صنعاء, romanized as , and also known as Sana or Sanaa), population 1,303,000 (2000), is the capital of Yemen. ... Tigris River in Mosul, Iraq The Tigris (Old Persian: Tigrā-, Pahlavi: Tigr, Syriac: ܕܩܠܬ; Deqlath, Arabic: دجلة; Dijla, Turkish: Dicle, Hebrew: חדקל; ḥiddeqel) is the eastern member of the pair of great rivers that define Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates, which flows from the mountains of Anatolia through Iraq. ... Transliteration in a narrow sense is a mapping from one system of writing into another. ... This article is about the city in Saudi Arabia. ...

The table and its geographical context

The near universal view of the table is that each of the names within is intended to represent a group of peoples, nation, or tribe. Thus several criticisms concerning its accuracy in reflecting the ethnological relationship between identifiable peoples, have been raised by anthropologists, archaeologists, linguists, and others:

• Elam is listed as a son of Shem, but while the Elamite language is not Indo-European, and thus has little connection with the Japheth groups, it is also the case that the Elamites were not Semitic.
• Rather than being more closely related to the Egyptians, who according to the table were brothers with the Canaanites, the Canaanites were, excepting religious belief, virtually identical to the Hebrews, and were thus Semitic.
• Lud is listed as a son of Shem, but the Lydian language was completely Indo-European, like the other groups of western Anatolia, not Semitic.
• There is almost no support among historians and archaeologists, for any theory of ultimately Nubian origin for the cities said to be have been founded by Nimrod.

In addition, several of the groups involved in the table do not appear in known historical records until the first millennium BC. The table is thus seen by critical scholarship as dating from the 7th century BC, and representing the beliefs of its authors concerning the interrelatedness of the nations known to them. The relation between Nimrod and Cush is seen simply as a mistake caused by conflating the African nation of Cush with unrelated Mesopotamian Kassites (Cush-ites). The identification of Elamites as Semitic is similarly regarded as an error, based on its closer superficial similarity to Semitic than to Indo-European languages. The identification of the Lydians as Semitic is also regarded as odd; so it may be the case that the generally agreed interpretation that Lud is a reference to Lydia, is simply wrong.^{[citation needed]} Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies Indo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. ... Semitic is a linguistic term referring to a subdivision of largely Middle Eastern Afro-Asiatic languages, the Semitic languages, as well as their speakers corresponding cultures, and ethnicities. ... The Kassites were a Near Eastern mountain tribe of obscure origins, who spoke a non-Indo-European, non-Semitic language. ...

The table and the wider world

One of the most noticeable features of the table is that it does not describe nations beyond the immediate world of the west Arabian peninsula, straying only as far as Nubia, Egypt, Anatolia and the Caucus. While some Mediterranean trading nations are mentioned, it is not the homeland groups but sea merchants who are mentioned. The table implies that all nations have descended from those it lists, since all other possible lines of descent were apparently wiped out in a great flood; thus this region is traditionally seen, in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought, as the cradle of civilisation. The traditional view is that, for example, French, Zulus, and Australian Aborigines are all descended from one or another of the people or nations named within the table. Cradle of Civilization is a title claimed by many regions of the world, but is most often applied to the ancient city states of Mesopotamia. ... The Zulu are an African ethnic group of about 11 million people who live mainly in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. ... Australian Aborigines are the main indigenous people of Australia. ...

Africans are 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, some have claimed Semitic to be a sibling to Cushitic languages, rather than an uncle, not becoming isolated from the other groups before those groups had first split, at least a nephew rather than brother to their ancestor. In addition, the southern half of Africa is now seen as being part of a distinct language family independent of the Afro-Asiatic languages. 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 non-Hamitic and thus inherently superior, is regarded by some as having ultimately led to the Rwandan Genocide. The Yoruba (native name Yorùbá) are the largest single ethnic group in Nigeria. ... The Cushitic languages are a subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages phylum, named after the Biblical figure Cush by analogy with Semitic. ... Map showing the distribution of Afro-Asiatic languages The Afro-Asiatic languages are a language family of about 240 languages and 285 million people widespread throughout North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia. ... The term Hamitic refers to peoples traditionally believed to have been descended from Ham, one of Noahs sons. ... The skulls of victims show gashes and signs of violence The Rwandan Genocide was the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus mostly done by two extremist Hutu militia, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi, during a period of 100 days in 1994. ...

Japheth is traditionally seen as the ancestor of the Europeans, as well as more eastern nations; thus Japhetic has been used as a synonym for Caucasians. Caucasian itself derives in part from the assumption that the tribe of Japheth developed its distinctive racial characteristics in the Caucasus, where Mount Ararat is located. The term Japhetic was also applied by the Grimms, William Jones, Rasmus C. Rask and other early linguists to what later became known as the Indo-European language group, on the assumption that, if descended from Japheth, the principal languages of Europe would have a common origin, which apart from Finno-Ugric, Kartvelian, Pontic, Nakh, Dagestan, Hattic, and Basque, appears to be the case. In a conflicting sense, the term was also used by the Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr in his Japhetic theory intended to demonstrate that the languages of the Caucasus formed part of a once-widespread pre-Indo-European language group. Caucasian may mean: Look up Caucasian on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Of or relating to the Caucasus region A member of the contested anthropological Caucasian race (generically, in the United States it is often used to refer to members of the white ethnic group) Caucasoid, a designation in physical anthropology... The Entholinguistic patchwork of the modern Caucasus - CIA map The Caucasus, a region bordering Asia Minor, is located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea which includes the Caucasus Mountains and surrounding lowlands. ... Mount Ararat (Turkish Ağrı Dağı; Armenian Արարատ; Kurdish Çîyayê Agirî; Persian آرارات Ararat; Hebrew אררט, Standard Hebrew Ararat, Tiberian Hebrew ), the tallest peak in modern Turkey, is a snow-capped dormant volcanic cone, located in the far northeast of Turkey, 16 km west of Iran and 32 km south of Armenia. ... Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm The Brothers Grimm (Gebrüder Grimm) are Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, German professors best known for publishing collections of authentic folk tales and fairy tales. ... William Jones is a common name, especially in Wales, and there have been several well-known individuals of this name, including: William Jones (judge) (1566-1640) William Jones (Great Britain statesman), Attorney General for England and Wales during the 17th century Sir William Jones (mathematician) (~1675-1749), father of Sir... Rasmus Christian Rask Rasmus Christian Rask (November 22, 1787 - November 14, 1832), Danish scholar and philologist, was born at Brandekilde in the island of Funen or Fyn in Denmark. ... The following is a list of linguists, those who study linguistics. ... Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies Indo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. ... Geographical distribution of Finno-Ugric (Finno-Permic in blue, Ugric in green). ... The South Caucasian languages, also called the Kartvelian languages, are spoken primarily in Georgia, with smaller groups of speakers in Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine and other countries. ... The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called Pontic or Abkhaz-Adyg/Circassian, are a group of languages spoken in Caucasian Russia, Turkey, Jordan, Kabardino-Balkaria (an autonomous republic in Russia) and Abkhazia ( de facto independent formally an autonomous republic in Georgia). ... The North Central Caucasian languages (also Nakh languages or Vaynakh languages) are a family of languages spoken mostly in Russia (Chechnya and Ingushetia) and Georgia. ... The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Caspian, or Dagestan, are a family of languages spoken mostly in Dagestan, Northern Azerbaijan and Georgia. ... Hattic was a non-Indo-European language spoken in Asia Minor between the 3rd and the 2nd millennia BC, before the appearance of the Hittites. ... Basque (in Basque: Euskara) is the language spoken by the Basque people who inhabit the Pyrenees in North-Central Spain and the adjoining region of South-Western France. ... Soviet redirects here. ... Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr (1864-1934) was a controversial Soviet scholar whose monogenetic theory of language constituted the officially approved ideology of Soviet linguists until 1950, when Joseph Stalin personally slammed it as anti-scientific. ... Japhetic theory is a term used to describe a linguistic theory developed by the Soviet linguist Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr (1864-1934). ...

In classical times, and amongst biblical literalists, arguments have been proposed that Jupiter was actually a deified Japheth, and that the Greeks knew him as 'Iapetos', the Indian Sanskrit as 'Pra-Japati', and the Romans as 'Iu-Pater', a hypothesised antecedent to 'Jupiter'. However, scholars of linguistics disagree, for while they agree on a shared origin for many Indo-European gods, etymology indicates that these gods derive from Dyeus, sometimes referred to as Dyeus Pater ("sky father"). Linguistically, Dyeus became Jupiter to the Romans, as well as the word Deus meaning simply God, Zeus to the Greeks, Dyaus Pita to the pre-Hindu Vedic religion, Dia in Slavic mythology, and Tiwaz in Germanic and Scandinavian mythology, who later became Tyr, and Tiw, from whom we get the name of Tuesday. The general opinion of linguists is that it is significantly more plausible for Japheth to ultimately derived (as a linguistic corruption) from Dyeus Pater than it is for the reverse. Furthermore linguists assert that there is no linguistic connection between 'Pra-Japati', which translates as Lord of Creatures, and either Iapetos, Iu-Pater, meaning father Iu, a corruption of Dyeus Pater, or with Japheth, meaning beauty, and attempts to connect these deities with Japheth are regarded as poor scholarship and folk etymology. Biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible, as the inspired Word of God, is without error. ... In Greek mythology Iapetus, or Iapetos, was a Titan, the son of Uranus and Gaia, and father (by an Oceanid named Clymene or Asia) of Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius and through Prometheus and Epimetheus and Atlas an ancestor of the human race. ... Sanskrit ( संस्कृतम्) is a classical language of India and a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. ... Image:Pashupatiseal. ... Roman mythology, the mythological beliefs of the people of Ancient Rome, can be considered as having two parts. ... Jupiter et Thétis - by Jean Ingres, 1811. ... *Dyēus is the reconstructed chief god of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon. ... Statue of Zeus Phidias created the 12-m (40-ft) tall statue of Zeus at Olympia about 435 BC. The statue was perhaps the most famous sculpture in ancient Greece, imagined here in a 16th-century engraving. ... In vedic religion, Dyaus Pita is the Sky Father, husband of Prthivi and father of Agni and Indra (RV 4. ... A Hindu (archaic Hindoo) is an adherent of philosophies and scriptures of Hinduism, also known as Sanatan (सनातन) Dharma or Vedic Dharma. ... The adjective Vedic may refer to The Vedas, the oldest preserved Indo-Aryan texts. ... Rod, sometimes referred to simply as god (Div, Diy; in the Veda Slovena Diy or Dia), is probably the most ancient deity in the Slavic pantheon. ... This article is about Tyr, the god. ... Tuesday is considered either the second or the third day of the week, between Monday and Wednesday. ... Folk etymology (or popular etymology) is a linguistic term for a category of false etymology which has grown up in popular lore, as opposed to one which arose in scholarly usage. ...

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Biblical statement that God shall enlarge Japheth (Genesis 9:27) was used by some Christians as a justification for the "enlargement" of European territories through Imperialism, interpreted as part of God's plan for the world. However, rather than being a prediction, the statement appears, in the eyes of scholars, to be a pun on Japheth's name meaning beauty, since the statement literally translates as God shall beautify Japheth. Imperialism is a policy of extending control or authority over foreign entities as a means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires, either through direct territorial conquest or through indirect methods of exerting control on the politics and/or economy of other countries. ...

Religious Jews and Arabs consider themselves sons of Shem (thus, Semites), although they dispute whether Isaac or Ishmael was the legitimate son of Abraham. Nevertheless, though the term Semitic has come to be attached to their language group including Hebrew and Arabic, in the opposing term anti-Semitic it is generally regarded as referring solely to the Jews. While, apart from Lydia and Elam, the groups usually associated with Shem are also identified as having a shared origin, the groups of Japheth and Ham are not always agreed to, and most secular and religious scholars have abandoned all claims of accuracy for the table. An angel prevents Abraham from sacrificing Isaac in this illumation from a 14th century Icelandic manuscript. ... Ishmael or Yishmael (יִשְׁמָעֵאל God hears or obeys, Standard Hebrew Yišmaʿel, Tiberian Hebrew Yišmāʿêl, Arabic إسماعيل) is Abrahams eldest son, born by his servant Hagar. ...

Nethertheless, a small minority, predominantly young earth creationists, retain a belief in the applicability of the table to the entire peoples of earth, owing to holding the traditional reading of the bible to be immutably true. Disregarding the completely independant etymologies believed to be involved by an overwhelming majority of linguists, some of these groups have proposed ^{[citation needed]} identifications based on the similarity percieved, by an English speaker, of the names of modern nations and places to those in the tables, such as Young Earth creationism is the belief that the Earth and life on Earth were created by a direct action of God a relatively short time ago. ... Biblical inerrancy is the view that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is in every detail infallible and without error. ... Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ...

• Javan to Japan (the Japanese name for Japan is Nippon/Nihon, translating as sunrise, the English name, Japan actually derives from Cipangu, the transcription by Marco Polo of the Mandarin pronunciation of the kanji for Nippon/Nihon)
• Gomer to Germany (the German name for Germany is Deutschland, and it was actually given its now English name by Tacitus in AD 98 - Germanen is Latin for real ones, in the sense of gritty realism)
• Asshur to Austria (which is historically recorded to actually derive from Österreich, meaning simply eastern realm)
• Meshech to Massachusetts (which was actually named after the local Massachusett tribe, whose name actually means at the great hill/at the place of large hills/at the range of hills, referring to a specific hill in the area - Big Blue Hill)
• Magog to Magyar (who are generally regarded as Finno-Ugric, and quite independant of the Indo-Europeans, as well as most likely to have originated around the Ural Mountains)

Marco Polo (September 15, 1254, Venice, Italy; or Curzola, Venetian Dalmatia - now Korčula, Croatia — January 8, 1324, Venice) was a Venetian trader and explorer who, together with his father Niccolò and his uncle Maffeo, was one of the first Westerners to travel the Silk Road to China (which he... Mandarin has a number of meanings: mandarin, a bureaucrat of Imperial China, and in the United Kingdom and Canada, by analogy, any government bureaucrat Mandarin, a group of dialects of spoken Chinese, or more specifically, its standardized dialect, Standard Mandarin Mandarin Airlines, a subsidiary of China Airlines mandarin duck, Aix... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Category Kanji ( â–¶(?), literally Han characters) is the name of Chinese characters in the Japanese language. ... Gaius Cornelius Tacitus Publius or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus (ca. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Realism is commonly defined as a concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary. ... Official language(s) English Capital Boston Largest city Boston Area  - Total  - Width  - Length  - % water  - Latitude  - Longitude Ranked 44th 27,360 km² 305 km 80 km 25. ... Magyar may refer to: The Magyar language The Magyar people This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Geographical distribution of Finno-Ugric (Finno-Permic in blue, Ugric in green). ... Map of Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains (Russian: Уральские горы = Урал) also known simply as the Urals and as the Riphean Mountains in Greco-Roman antiquity, is a mountain range that runs roughly north and south through western Russia. ...

Doublets

There are some apparent doublets in the table, such as two separate lines of descent covering groups in Yemen and the surrounding region -- one indicating descent via Cush, and hence Ham; the other via Joktan, and hence Shem. Groups such as the Sabaeans (under Sheba), Huwaila (under Havilah), and Hadhramaut (under Hazarmaveth, or Sabtah, a name representing its capital), appear to be in both lineages. Gen 10:11, translated in the KJV as "Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Niniveh, etc...", is taken by some interpretations of the Hebrew word-order to mean Asshur was listed as one of the cities that Nimrod built, causing another apparent 'doublet' with regard to confusion between Asshur (descendant of Shem) and Nimrod (descendant of Cush). Categories: Stub ...

In the documentary hypothesis, such doublets are seen as signs of multiple authorship; thus this theory identifies hypothetical Jahwist (J) and Priestly (P) sources as having two quite different genealogies later combined into the present table. It must be remembered that these hypothetical sources have never been archaeologically or otherwise attested, and are only reconstructions according to this theory. These sources are seen as originating some 150-300 years apart, with the later source, the Priestly, rewriting the Jahwist's account to reflect their own view concerning ethnology. While both sources are considered to have divided the groups into Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the descent beyond these is reconstructed as quite different. To the Jahwist are ascribed by such experts, the account of Nimrod and his cities, as well as the descendants of Joktan, Canaan, and Mizraim, while to the Priestly source are ascribed the account of the descendants of Cush and Japheth. The documentary hypothesis is a hypothesis proposed by many historians and academics in the field of linguistics and source criticism that the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) are in fact a combination of documents from different sources rather than authored by one individual. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Jehovist. ... The Priestly Source (P) is one of the sources of the Torah postulated by the documentary hypothesis. ...

The Yahwist (J) would thus exhibit a worldview concerned heavily with Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Arab tribes viewed to have originated from around Mecca (a holy site even in ancient times), and Canaan. Rather than a table, the Yahwist is reconstructed as presenting a more narrative structure. Preceded by the tale of the curse of Ham, the Yahwist reconstruction proceeds to describes his son fathering Nimrod, who is subsequently described as going on to found the great cities of Mesopotamia, then details the sons of Canaan and Mizraim. 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. ...

A more genealogical line is given by the Yahwist reconstruction for Shem, going down the generations in a straight line until Joktan is reached, and, like elsewhere in the Yahwist text, though Joktan is not on the line himself, as the son of Eber, a major Patriarch on the line (the eponymous founder of the Hebrews - Eberu), Joktan's own descendants are described. The name of Joktan's purported brother, Peleg is etymologically related to the word Pulukku in Akkadian, meaning divided by boundaries, and by borders, and Palgu in Assyrian, meaning divided by canals, and by irrigation systems. While Peleg is believed by some to be present in the narrative to indicate origin via the city of Phalgu, the comment after his name, that in his day the earth was divided, is thought in critical circles to simply be a convenient pun in order to insert the story of the Tower of Babel into the Yahwist's narrative. In the Yahwist reconstruction, Japheth has previously been described, within the tale of Ham's curse, as going on to dwell in the tents of Shem, and hence is not indicated as having any children of his own. An eponym is a person, whether real or fictitious, whose name has (or is thought to have) given rise to the name of a particular place, tribe, discovery, or other item. ... The Confusion of Tongues by Gustave Doré According to the narrative in Genesis Chapter 11 of the Bible, the Tower of Babel was a tower built by a united humanity in order to reach the heavens. ...

Over the years between the Yahwist and Priestly sources, according to the dates given by the large majority of scholars, the areas of the Mediterranean and the Caucasus had become much more developed, and the Egyptians had become much more unified (having largely recovered from the Third Intermediate Period). Thus, while the reconstructed Priestly source does not include the subdivisions within Egypt, it does include details of groups in the eastern Mediterranean (Javan, Tubal, Meschech, Tiras) and Caucasus (Gomer, Madai), attaching them to Japheth, perhaps since his descendants are not identified by the Yahwist. Mesopotamia retained its importance, and the Priestly source, a text reconstructed with a favouritism for long dry lists, extends the detail concerning its genealogy given by the Yahwist, presenting a more complicated ethnological tree. The Arab groups of the Yemen area also seem to have been viewed as retaining importance, as the hypothetical Priestly source considered them still worth detailing, though presenting an origin for them in the more significant Nubia (via Cush), rather than from around Mecca. There is little narrative quality in the text usually ascribed to the priestly source; essentially it resembles simply a raw list of names, with the occasional indication of familial relationship. The Third Intermediate Period is a phrase used to refer the period of the history of Ancient Egypt from the death of pharaoh Rameses XI in 1070 BC to the foundation of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty by Psamtik I, following the expulsion of the Nubian rulers of the Twenty-fifth...

See also

• Wives aboard the Ark
• Nuwaubianism
• Genealogy
• Ethnography
• Comparative linguistics
• Mesopotamia
• Ancient Egypt

Although Genesis tells us next to nothing about the four women aboard the Ark, who had witnessed the days before the Flood, there exist substantial extra-biblical traditions regarding these women and their names. ... Nuwaubian flag as designed by Malachi Z. York Nuwaubian doctrine is given in hundreds of books, or “scrolls,” written by Malachi Z. York Nuwaubianismis a term that cannot exist. ... Genealogy the study and tracing of family pedigrees. ... Ethnography (from the Greek ethnos = nation and graphein = writing) refers to the qualitative description of human social phenomena, based on fieldwork. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. ... Sumerian list of gods in cuneiform script, ca. ... Map of Ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt was a civilization along the Lower Nile, reaching from the Nile Delta in the north as far south as Jebel Barkal at the time of its greatest extension (15th century BC). ...

References

• Dillmann, A., Genesis: Critically and Exegetically Expounded, Vol. 1, Edinburgh, UK, T. and T. Clark, 1897, 314.
• Kautzsch, E.F.: quoted by James Orr, "The Early Narratives of Genesis," in The Fundamentals, Vol. 1, Los Angeles, CA, Biola Press, 1917.

External links

• Latin Vulgate and English Douay-Rheims
• English Septuagint
• King James Version and Revised Standard Version
• Jewish Encyclopedia: Genealogy; the balanced scholarly modern view in 1901/6, (the early days of comparative linguistics and the documentary hypothesis).
• The connection of modern nations to the table according to a creationist source (with Europe as descended from the tribes of Israel, and the UK and USA from Joseph (but by different sons)).
• Custance, Arthur C., The Roots of the Nations.