tlie pristine monosyllable of KAaMaTH is KAM ; identical with KAeM the name of
Egypt; and also with KAaM the son of Noah, personified symbol of all Hamitic families.
We have traced the Philistines to a Barbaresque source, although history dawns upon
them in Palestine. The writer of Xth Genesis, whose authority has been found so
unexceptionably safe hitherto, makes a KAaM-zie citizen on the frontier of Palestine
descend from KNAÔN ; the figurative son of KUSA who was the figurative son of
KAaM. The Hamitic article T is suffixed to the primitive biliteral name of a city, whose
existence is carried back on Egyptian monuments to Mosaic epochas. There is no
historical limit definable for thé foundation of the city ; none, most assuredly, for the
antiquity of its name. But, archæology may draw, from other data, inferences that
appear satisfactory : before considering which, justice to the memory of human greatness
suggests a citation : —
“ The man who has anticipated by a century the movements of mind towards modern
sciences; who has raised up questions which, down to him, were considered to be
resolved or to be insoluble ; who has carried the investigations of a criticism the most
intrepid into documents by all antiquity respected ; who never bent himself before established
prejudice ; who has accomplished the double enterprise of destroying and of
reconstructing universal history ; who has treated upon all the sciences without being
acquainted precisely with any one, and who bequeathed to each of them some fecund
teaching ; the man who has almost divined all the discoveries of the nineteenth century
; who, appertaining to an age [1722] and to a country [Naples] wherein thought
was never free, seemed to ignore that the saying of every thing to every body, was to
expose himself to be comprehended by nobody ; the man whose genius recalls the
mighty intellects of Plato and of Aristotle, deserves to be followed step by step in the
development of his glorious intelligence and in the vicissitudes of his long and
unhappy life.” That man was Yico. In “ establishing the Principles ” of historical
criticism, he laid down, for the 107th rule : “ the commencements of nations preceded
the commencements of cities.” A hagiographer smiles at its infantine simplicity —
let us raise a laugh at his.
We have seen that, Sidon, Ibus, Arha, Sin, Aradus, Simyra, and Hamath, were cities.
We know that the. terminal letter I, iod, to six of these seven names, produces, in
Semitic idioms, exactly the same effect that our addition of an English “ ian ” changes
them into a Sidon-idm, an Ibus-zan, an Ark-ian, a Sin-mw, an Arad-ian, a Simyr-ttm,
and a Hamath-zaw. Ergo, these people derive their appellatives from cities ; built, of
course, before men could hail from them. What now— let us turn round and ask the
smiling querist, as his face augments its longitude while diminishing its risible latitude,
what now becomes of your fables about those m e n called Sidon, Ibus, Arha,
Sin, Aradus, Simyra, or Hamath, whom your schools have dared to find in Xth Genesis,
as sons, forsooth [!], of another fabulous human being your philologers spell “ Canaan” ?
But, there is yet another deduction which the reader will draw at once from these
premises, viz. : — that, inasmuch as a man could not be a Hamathian before the city
of Hamath was built, the fact that the writer of Xth Genesis speaks of a KAaMaTH,
or Hamathian, proves that the document called “ Xth Genesis” was written after, probably
long after, this city had existed ; and, therefore, that he (the writer aforesaid)
never dreamed that modern logopoeists would metamorphose his pities into so many
human beings.
The age of the foundation of all these cities receding beyond historical chronology,
we have said enough on the Hamathian and his compeers: but, while taking leave of
the cities included in the terrestrial area called KNAâN, we likewise bid farewell to
e v e r y commentator who perpetuates rabbinical superstitions about “ Canaan ” and his
gigantic progeny. “ These,” says the chorographer of Xth Genesis, on closing his
Hamiiic list —- “ These are the affiliations of KAaM [i. e., the swarthy], after their
families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations.” (Gen. x. 20.)
Nothing can be plainer, nor more scientifically concise. In our journey from Babylon
through Southern Arabia* and round by the shores of the Erythraean (red), Edomite
or Red Sea, the dark Himyarites (red) have accompanied us, over the Suez Isthmus,
into Egypt — the true “ land of KAàM” (dark) ; its ancient name preserved in Chem-
mia.— abode of the red people, “ par excellence.” Thence, towards the west along
Barbary we see the prolongations of the same Hamitic (dark) families, “ gentes sub-
fusci coloris,” stretching between the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean, as far as
Mauritania : whilst, towards the east, through Palestine, we behold the wrecks of an
aboriginal population, linked by traditions and primitive speech to .Egypt and to Barbary,
“ tinged with the red of Gsetulian blood,” and Hamitic under every aspect.629
We next take up the “ Affiliations of S h em . ”
“And unto SAeM (there was) issue.” (Gfen. x . 2 1—Hebrew Text.)
46. □'b’# — AdILM — ‘ Elam.’
Preceding generations have bent their intelligencies towards the elucidation of
Shemitish subjects with more zeal, and therefore with more success, than towards that
of Japethic or of Hamitic problems.
Owing partly to the fortuitous preservation of this family’s chronicles in greater
completeness than those of any people except the Chinese ; still more, to the absence,
until this century, of those immortal discoveries epitomized in two names, “ C h a m -
p o l l io n and R aw lin s o n ” ; and, beyond any other stimulant of research, to doctrinal
biases in favor of a select line that, under the name of Hebrews and Arabs, traces its
pedigree backwards to a biliteral SjVI — owing, we.repeat, to these historical accidents,
we happen to know a little more about some of SM’s posterity, their annals, habitats,
and associations, than we do concerning other less respectable, because unrecorded,
“ Types of Mankind.”
According to Ainsworth, geologist to the Euphrates Expedition, Elymdis, country of
the Elymcei (the capital city of which was also called Elymais when classical history
first dawns upon its geography), was a Persian province, situate to the south of Media,
between the river Tigris and the Persian Appenines, sloping downwards into Susiana
and to the Persian Gulf. Tradition, through Polybius and Strabo, ascribes tp its Ely-
meean inhabitants a northern origin; and Josephus calls them “ the founders of the
$ Persians” : with whom they are often confounded in later Hebrew annals; for Persia
and Persepolis are both called Elam (1 Maccab. vi. 12 ; 2 id. ix. 2). They were, however,
in the days of Abraham, already occupiers of a kingdom called Elam ( Gen. xiv.
1, 9) ; so that when, morè than a thousand years later, the compiler of Xth Genesis
registered A^ILM on his ethnic chart, he naturally meant the country which had been
so called from times immemorial before him.
This country (generally, if improperly, included in the sections of territory comprehended
by the term Susiana), is full of ancient cuneiform remains ; both of the Persian
and of the older Assyrian period: but, in 1846, one class of the cuneatic inscriptions
there discovered, owing to “ the number of new characters which they exhibit —
characters for which no conjectural equivalent can be found either in the Babylonian
or the Assyrian alphabet ” — was denominated Elymc&an by Rawlinson, being monuments
distinct from their neighbors.
Under these circumstances, until Rawlinson or his emulous competitors shall
breathe upon these “ dry bones” of Elymais, “ and say]unto them, 0 ye dry bones,
hear ! ” it is best not to hazard opinions on the unknown, which the next mail from
Europe may perhaps render clear as day. We therefore merely indicate a discrepancy
at present evident between modern philological and historical results and the Semitish
genealogy of A^ILM-aw, in Xth Genesis. According to the latter, the A^ILM-z'ies
should have spoken a dialect of thè Aramaean class of languages : but, according to the
former, as interpreted by Lenormant, Quatremère, Movers, and others, the affinities of