3d. That their name, still preserved at Tutzis in Kish, was never KuSA, but KeSA
Kish) or Kash.
[Lower Nubia, nearest to Egypt, would seem to have been the residence of the Kish,
or KeSA, anciently; just as we find a similar people, the Bardbera (who present
striking similarities), there now. A curious little fact comes in opportunely to support
this position. The ruins of the ancient town of 'Tutzis, or Tusis, the military
station “ Dodecaschoeni,” are identified in the modern Gerf Hussbyn. A Coptic
papyrus, found there in 1813, established that its former name was Thosh; and the
similarity of this word with “ Ethaush,” the Coptic form of “ Ethiopia,” or Koush
[ubi supra], was long ago pointed out by Wilkinson, who ascertained, moreover, that
the present Nubian name of Tutzis is K is h . ]
4th. That this appellative, KeSh, in hieroglyphics, refers to a special Nubian people,
without the slightest relation, linguistically, geographically, or anthropologically, to
Tirhakd, beyond the fact that, like his pharaonic predecessors, he conquered and ruled
over them [supra) p. 264, Fig. 186.]
5th. That the African KeSA of the hieroglyphics are totally distinct from the Asiatic
KUSA of the Hebrew writers, and are never implied by the latter in this term.
6th. That the confusion, still prevalent on this subject, proceeds from an insufficient
examination of old Hebrew ethnid geography on the one hand, and of. Egyptian
records on the other, after starting with a fundamental error as to the Greek word
“ ¿Ethiopia.”
7th. That KUSA of Xth Genesis denotes Arabia in its widest sense, and Arabian
tribes of dark complexion.
8th. That, except perhaps in two or three doubtful instances, in the later biblical
books, where geographical precision is sacrificed to poetic license, the biblical word
KUSA never crosses the Red Sea into Africa; and, even if it be sometimes coupled by
a conjunction to Phut, and to Lud, it never embraces those races we term Negro —
the context, in every case, being susceptible of more rational exegesis.
9th. That KUSA in Hebrew is radically distinct from the Nubian KeSA of hieroglyphics,
as well as from the Kish of our present day.
10th. That KUSA is not Ztcvdai, Skuth, or Scot! does not include Scythic, Indo-
Germanic, Tartar, Mongolian, or other races outlying the boundary of ancient Hebrew
geography.
11th. - That, excepting as regards its application to. Asiatic tribes of dark complexion,
KUSA cannot be rendered by Aidioma, in the sense in which this Greek word was used
during Ptolemaic times at Alexandria, and by ourselves, without leading to equivoque;
but, if we restore to “ .¿Ethiopia” its old Homeric meaning of “ sxm-burnt-faced-
people,” there is no doubt that the KUSA, mentioned in parallel ages by Hebrew
writers, were sometimes included among the Eastern, i e. Asiatic, ¿Ethiopians of Hesiod,
Homer, and Herodotus.
12th. That, in archaic anthropology, ¿Ethiopian is as vague an adjective (without
specific warning, on the author’s part, of the meaning he attaches to it) as Scythian,
Indian, or Caucasian, and therefore had better be avoided by ethnographers.
13th. That the Coptic KHOUSH, and Thaush, or Ethosh, belong to post-Christian
days, and represent “ Ethiopia ” in the corrupt sense in which the Hebrew name KUSA
was already understood by the Hellenistic Jews called the LXX, and by Josephus.
The former word, meaning dark, was naturally applied by Egyptian (Copts) Jacobites
to African families and localities above the first cataract of the Nile; the latter,
meaning “ the frontier,” and also (through dialectic mutations of K and TA), being a
homonyme of KHOUSA, was a natural transcript of “ Ethiopia; ” a name which, from
similarity of sound as much as from identity, in Coptic days, of association with
Africa above Egypt, had been previously given to the Nubias by Alexandrian writers.
14th. Finally, that, unless < words and names are restricted to the acceptation in
which they were used by each writer in his own age, the natural history of humanity,
greatly dependent as it is upon historical phenomena, can never rise to the level of a
positive science ; and that sublime sentence, «the proper sjudy of mankind is man,"
mouthed by. rote -without perceptions of its lofty import; and still overlaid by theological
clap-trap, will never reach practical realization.
To us, therefore, KUSA of Xth Genesis means Asia geographically, Arabia topographically,
and the dark Arabs ethnologically. We pass on to classify KUSA ean affiliations,
in hopes that they will justify our à priori assumptions.69*
K U SA as A rabian.
We have shown in the foregoing résumé that, amid geographical personifications of
the Hebrews, KUSA was Asiatic generally, no less than Assyrian and Arabian espe-
pecially. In consequence, it seems rational to seek for KUSAeara origins among Arabic
traditions, and Arab localities.
And here it is that the Recherches Nouvelles of Volney take precedence over all those
made during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Volney : “ Un des hommes
les plus pénétrants de ce siècle. . . . Si, parmi nous, Volney a profité des écrits de
Richard Sipion, ce n’est pas parceque Volney était imbu des principes de l’école matérialiste,
mais à cause.,de l’instinct scientifique qu’il possédait profondément et qui,
dans ses écrits, s’est souvent fait jour, en dépit même de ses préjugés philosophiques.”
Orthodoxy can find no fault with the words of Lenormant, whose views are eminently
catholic, even in archæology. We gladly follow his example, when taking departure,
in Arabian inquiries, from Volney. Nevertheless, since the peace of 1815, multitudes
of scientific Europeans, profoundly versed in Arabic lore through arduous studies,
or far more adventurous travels, have given to Arabian researches a propulsion similar
to that received, since 1822, by Egyptian, and, since 1843, by Assyrian. Primus inter
pares among the above, whether in the cabinet or on the road, ranks M. Fulgence
Fresnel. Than his opinion French and German scholarship at this day recognizes
none higher : because, in addition to a mind disciplined by thirty years of devotion to
this speciality, no man, in Arabian investigations, has yet enjoyed M. Fresnel’s facilities
of actual observation. We select him, then, as our standard authority on KUSA,
and Cushites : supporting it by the concurrence of distinguished Orientalists to whom
his publications are familiar.
The arbitrary Ptolemaio repartition of the Peninsula into Happy, Desert, and Pe-
trceari Arabia, has long ago been abandoned by geographers. To the Arabs these
foreign divisions were unknown. Into the varied districts designated by such alien
names, old Arab tradition recognizes the introduction of three races, forming three
distinct nationalities ; whose several origins being lost in the night of time, Mohammedan
writers have appropriated, through the Koràn, Hebrew genealogies in the absence
of history ; so that it is now impossible to separate much of the exotic from the autoc-
thonous. These three divers stocks of primitive Arabian nations, i. e., ARaB, Western
men— according to Ebn-Dihhiyah, followed by Fresnel and Jomard-^ were,
1st. The ARBA, or A r i b a h , Arabs par excellence — subdivided into nine tribes,
claiming descent from I r a m (Aram of Gen. x. 23), son of Shem : from whom the semi-
Egyptian, semi-Hebrew, I s h m a e d is said to have learned Arabic !
2d. The MOUTA’ARIBA, naturalized and not pure Arabs; whose genealogies
ascend to Qa i it à n (Joktan of Gen. x. 25), son of Heber, son of Salah, son of Arphaxad,
son of Shem.
3d. The MOUSTAARIBA, still less pure Arabs ; descendants of I shm a e l , son of
Abraham and Hagar.
These, in general, are reputed to be the surviving Arabs ; in contradistinction to the
lost tribes of A d , T h am o o d , &e. &c., destroyed for their impieties, between the times
of « the prophet H o o d ” (Heber of Gen. x. 24) and Abraham. « Bilt the spirit of that
entire table (Gen. x.), in which names of people, elides, and lands, are personified,
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