Ham, son of Noah

Ham (חם, Standard Hebrew Ḥam, Tiberian Hebrew Ḥām, Ge'ez ካም (Kam): possibly "Warm; hot"), according to the Genealogies of Genesis, was a son of Noah and the father of Put, Mizraim, Canaan and Cush. David Rohl has identified his nation with the Poeni of Punt.

Ham in the Bible

Traditionally, it is held that Ham was the son of Noah who moved southwest into Africa. 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, one of Ham's sons.

According to Genesis 9:20–25, Noah began to raise grapes after the flood, and got 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 happened, and cursed Canaan, son of Ham, to be the servants of Shem and Japheth.[1]

The overall significance of this passage is unclear, but the simplest interpretation considers uncovering the nakedness of the patriarch to be a great taboo, and the inaction of Ham (who chose instead to publicize and perhaps make light of the situation) 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.

Taking into account other uses of the phrase "...the nakedness of..." in Hebrew writings, suggests it to be euphemistic innuendo; thus the act of "uncovering the nakedness" of his father, performed without consent, constituted a great crime. One interpretation holds that it was necessary for the curse to fall upon Canaan, because the act was similar to that from which Canaan originated.

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.

Some argue that the curse parallels the blessing God grants to Abraham and his decendants, in that the promised land to be delivered to the decendants of Abraham's grandson Jacob, was to be taken away from the decendants of Ham's son Canaan.

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.

A few have used the curse of Canaan to justify 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 decendants (not just those of his son Canaan) were cursed.

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).

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.

Proponents of the idea that Ham once lived, however, point out that the common ancient Egyptian name of the country is kmt ("Kemet"), literally meaning "black" (in reference to the black alluvial soil of the Nile valley). Because of the connection between Egyptian kmt (meaning "black") and Hebrew חם Ḥam (the supposed ancestor of blacks), and the typical modern pronunciation of Hebrew ח as /χ/ ("kh") rather than /ḥ/ (as was the case with biblical Hebrew), it is thought that the two names are somehow related. However, this may be a case of what linguists call a "folk etymology." There is no known linguistic connection between "Ham" and "Kemet", and the supposed appearance is lessened with the original Hebrew חם Ḥam is considered as Northwest Semitic /ḥ/ (such as in Hebrew, Phoenician, Syriac) does not correspond under recognised linguistic rules with ancient Egyptian /k/. (Kam, the version of the name in Ge'ez—a South Semitic language—is borrowed from biblical Hebrew via the Hebrew Bible and does not reflect a native derivation of the word any more than English "Jehovah" represents the original pronunciation of Yahweh.) The fact that the two words have a superficial relation to the concept "black" (though only in the sense of "black colour" and "black people") is not linguistic in nature and does not reflect any sort of underlaying relationship.

Besides the Greek god Cronos, Ham has likewise been associated with the Egyptian deity Chem (Khem), purported to exist in various 19th century Egyptological publications. However, contemporary Egyptologists contend that Chem is merely an erroneous 19th century transcription of the name of the Egyptian deity Min, and that there is therefore no connection with biblical Ham whatsoever. See the article Chem for more detail.

See also:

• Sons of Noah