AFFINITIES OF THE THREE FAMILIES. 39 western Asia form two great families, of which the one is named Indo-European, Indo-Germanic, Aryan or Japhetic, and the other Semitic. The range of the former may be described by a zone, extending S.E. and N. W. from the plain of Northern India across the table-land of Iran, the highlands of Armenia, and at least a part of Asia Minor, into Europe, of which it covers nearly the whole surface. There is little difficulty in referring to parts of this region the races named in Genesis as the posterity of Japheth. This zone leaves on its western margin, for the most part welldefined by dividing mountains, the countries which form the southwestern corner of Asia-namely, the Tigris and Euphrates valley, Syria with the adjacent part of Asia Minor, and the peninsula of Arabia. This region, which is the seat of the Semitic languages, as determined by Comparative Grammar, contains the countries which we know, from the whole tenor of Scripture history, to have been peopled chiefly by the race of Shem. The third race offers more difficulty. Comparative Grammar has not yet established a distinct Hamitic family of languages; but it has proved the difficulty of referring the dialects of Egypt and some neighbouring countries to either of the other families. But the history most indubitably connects Ham with Egypt, his son Canaan with the adjacent district of Palestine, and others of his descendants with Africa on the west, and Arabia on the east, of Egypt. One main source of difficulty, perhaps, arises from a sacrifice of truth to symmetry, in the too eager search for a definite tripartite division of the nations. There seems to have been a much closer connexion (we do not say, affinity) between the races of Shem and Ham, than between them and the race of Japheth. This is already intimated in Noah's prophetic blessing. While Japheth, who seems to have been the elder son, stands apart, "enlarged" with his vast temporal inheritance, Shem, the heir of the spiritual promise, is placed in direct antagonism with Ham, whom he is to reduce to subjection. Accordingly we find a perpetual conflict between the two races, and a perpetual intrusion of the one into millions who speak Arabic [in Africa] is at a minimum ;" and he mentions slavery as a great cause of the intermixture of languages. This must be carefully borne in mind in all speculations on ethnic affinities based on the existing forms of language. But when we are able to ascend to the original speech of a people, we may safely infer their race from their language. In our own islands, for example, the use of English by the Cornish, Welsh, Scotch Highlanders, and Irish, does not tempt us to refer them to the Teutonic race; but our knowledge that their native dialects are Cambrian and Gaelic leads us rightly to class them with the Celtic race. * This form of the word, though originating in a difficulty with the sh, has been so naturalized by use, that the more proper Shemitic seems uncouth. the seats of the other. The very Land of Promise, divinely given to the chosen descendants of Shem, was first possessed by the race of Canaan, the son of Ham. The two races came into conflict on the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf, and in the plains of Babylonia, where Nimrod, the son of the Hamite Cush, set up his throne in a country which afterwards belonged to the Semitic race; and hence arose the double application of the name Cush to Babylonia, as well as to Ethiopia above Egypt, to which it properly refers. More than this according to the Hebrew method of stating geographical facts in a genealogical form, names that are purely local are inserted as if they had an ethnical meaning. Thus in Arabia, where certain districts were occupied at one time by a Semitic race, at another by an Hamitic, the very same names appear in both genealogies, indicating the intrusion of the one family into the possessions of the other; the Cushite races of Sheba and Havilah appear as descendants of the Shemite Joktan in Arabia. The general conclusion is, that we must not expect to find the same marked distinction between the races and languages of Shem and Ham, as between them and the race of Japheth. We may probably view the ancient Egyptians as nearest to the pure type of a Hamite race. That this type is to be found in the negro is a prejudice as unfounded as the attempt to wrest Noah's prophecy of the subjection of the Canaanites to Israel into an argument for negro slavery. Confining our attention within the probable limits of the knowledge of the time when the list was composed, the settlements of the three sons of Noah may be roughly described as forming three parallel zones;-Japheth, stretching from the highlands of Armenia, to the south-east, into the table-land of Iran, and to the west into. Thrace and the Grecian peninsula and islands; Shem, occupying the middle belt, from the south-eastern part of Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf, and most, if not all, of the peninsula of Arabia; and Ham, Egypt and Ethiopia, with the adjacent parts of Africa, as well as Palestine and the country round the head of the Red Sea. * The names of the tribes belonging to each of the three races are the following: I. The sons of JAPHETH. 1. GOMER; and his sons Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah. These are supposed to belong to the primeval seats of the race, in The Semitic and Aryan races were much mingled in this peninsula. general sense, the River Halys may be named as a boundary between them. In a very THE JAPHETIC RACES. 41 the highlands of Armenia, and the centre of Asia Minor. Togarmah appears to be identified in Scripture with Armenia. As these are probably the races which ultimately spread north-westward over Europe, we cannot tell how far we have to look for them among existing nations; and a wide range is left open to speculation. The name of Gomer resembles that of the great Cimmerian or Cymric race, which is found both on the shores of the Euxine, where the Crimea still preserves its name, and in the extreme west of Europe. In Ash-kenaz some of the best authorities find the name of Asia, which was at first localized on the shores of the Euxine and in Asia Minor.* The extension of the name to the whole continent has no ethnical meaning; but the race, spreading to the north-west, is regarded by the authorities just referred to as the original of the Teutonic nations. Riphath has not been satisfactorily explained; Josephus says that the Paphlagonians were called of old Rhiphæans. 2. MAGOG is a name which occurs again in Scripture, with that of Gog, for some great and wild tribe, who fought on horseback with the bow, and came from a country adjacent to Togarmah, that is, Armenia (Ezekiel xxxviii. xxxix.). Ezekiel's description, as well as some ancient traditions preserved by the Arabians, point to the tribes north of the Caucasus, who were included by the Greeks under the general name of Scythians. But here great difficulties arise, partly from the very wide and indefinite range given by the classical writers to this name of Scythians, and partly from the movements of the tribes which have at various times displaced one another over the northern parts of Europe and Asia. Thus the name has come to denote two very distinct races; the one Japhetic, the other belonging to that great Turanian family of which we have still to speak. The former seem to be the Magog of Scripture, as they certainly are the Scythians of Herodotus and the other earlier Greek writers. They are the family whose chief branch, settled in the east and south-east of Europe, along the northern sides of the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Caspian, obtained the name of Sarmatians from one of their lesser tribes, when that of Scythians was transferred to the Turanian races of Northern and North-eastern Asia. Upon the whole, however, where ethnical affinities are so obscure, it may be safer to regard the name as merely geographical, which is certainly the case with some others in the list. According to a probable etymology, Ma-gog signifies the People of Gog, Gog being the prophetic name of a supposed prince of these tribes. * See the article Asia in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. 3. MADAI almost certainly represents the Medes, whom ethnical science has proved to be a branch of the Indo-European race. 4. JAVAN, with his sons Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim, peopled the "Isles of the Gentiles," a term which always seems to signify, in Scriptural geography, the western shores of Asia Minor and the countries on the European coasts of the Mediterranean. The name of Jacan, stripped of the vowel points, is the same as the Greek ION, and Milton adopts the identification when he speaks of "The Ionian gods of Javan's issue." Nay, the very name of Japheth himself reappears in the Titan deity Iapetus, whose son Prometheus, "Japheth's wiser son," is, in the oldest Greek mythology, the benefactor and preserver, nay, even the creator of the human race. The identification of Elishah with the Eolians, and of Dodanim with the Dardanians of Asia Minor (a people undoubtedly akin to the Greeks), and the placing of the Kittim in the island of Cyprus, are questions too minute to be more than barely mentioned. But the name of Tarshish is of wider interest. It often occurs in Scripture as that of a distant land, the commerce with which gave a name to the largest class of merchant vessels, like our "Indiamen;" and it is generally believed to denote either the lands in the western part of the Mediterranean in general, or in particular Spain, where the great maritime city of Tartessus was famous in the earliest times. It may, however, be doubted whether so distant a region would be within the writer's knowledge. 5. TUBAL has been placed in Pontus, on account of the resemblance of the name to the Tibareni. 6. MESHECH has been identified, for a similar reason, with the Moschi in Pontus. 7. TIRAS seems to represent the great nation of the Thracians. In looking at the subject from the historical point of view, in the light of the earliest authentic documents, we cannot enter on the wider field of scientific enquiry into the origin and affinities of the ancient and existing nations of the world. But it may be well to indicate the results obtained by the modern science of Comparative Philology. The nations, ancient and modern, comprised in the great zone which has already been mentioned as extending from Northern India on the south-east to the western shores of Europe, are classified, according to their languages, in the following order : |