Hamites

“ A less controversial problem is presented by the Eastern Hamites, who form a continuous chain of dark Caucasic peoples from the Mediterranean to the equator, and whose ethnical unity is now established by Sergi on anatomical grounds [1142] . Bordering on Upper Egypt, and extending thence to the foot of the Abyssinian plateau, is the Beja section, whose chief divisions—Ababdeh, Hadendoa, Bisharin, Beni Amer—have from the earliest times occupied the whole region between the Nile and the Red Sea. ”

“ Between the Nile and the east coast the domain of the Hamites stretches from the equator northwards to Egypt and the Mediterranean.
It appears therefore that Egypt, occupied for many thousands of years by an admittedly Hamitic people, might have been reached either from the west by the Mediterranean route, or down the Nile, or, lastly, it maybe suggested that the Hamites were specialised in the Nile valley itself. ”

“ This hypothesis identified the Cushites with the Ethiopians (modern Abyssinians and Nubians) , the descendants of Mizraim with the Egyptians, those of Phut with the Libyans, and those of Canaan with the Canaanites, including the Phœnicians. Some held that the Hamites occupied originally a great part of western and southern Asia; that they were the primitive inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia, or Chaldea, southern Persia, and southern Arabia, and were displaced by the Semites; also that they once inhabited the most of Asia Minor, and that the Carians were a surviving remnant of them. ”

“ The history of civilization discloses to us the land of the Hamites, as the cradle from whence sprang all learning, literature and arts, but man's heart still being deceitful, proud and wicked, continued to wander away from the true God; and, notwithstanding his acquired knowledge, and the very high state of civilization to which he had attained, he forgot God, and was allowed to drift into pagan darkness and superstition. ”

“ Frequent attempts to detach Egyptian from Hamitic and to attribute it to a Semitic immigration later than that of the other Hamites cannot be proved. Egyptian is, in many respects, more remote from Semitic than the Libyan-Cushitic division, being more agglutinative than the better types of its sister branch, having lost the most characteristic verbal flection (the Hamito-Semitic imperfect) , forming the nominal plural in its own peculiar fashion, &c. ”

“ Had any other division of the human family been subjected to the influences of the same depressing climate, for an equal length of time, as were the Hamites, and surrounded by the same degrading circumstances, having no light without the assistance of divine counsel, their degeneration would have been equally as great as these descendants of Ham, when first began their involuntary migration into this country. ”

“ This Libyan race is distinctively a white race, with dark curly hair; the Eastern Hamites are equally distinctively a brown people with frizzy hair. If, as Sergi believes, these brown people are themselves a race, and not a cross between white and black in varying proportions, they are found in their greatest purity among the Somali and Galla, and mixed with Bantu blood among the Ba-Hima (Wahuma) and Watussi. The Masai seem to be as much Nilotic Negro as Hamite. ”

“ There are broadly speaking two schools: the African, whose fundamental views are thus briefly set forth, and the Asiatic, which brings the Egyptians with all their works from the neighbouring continent. But, seeing that the Egyptians are now admitted to be Hamites, that there are no Hamites to speak of (let it be frankly said, none at all) in Asia, and that they have for untold ages occupied large tracts of Africa, there are several members of the Asiatic school who allow that, not the people themselves, but their culture only came from western Asia (Mesopotamia) . ”

“ Moreover, the Arabians, who are popularly classed as Semites, or sons of Shem, admit in their traditions that they are descended from "Ad, the son of Ham;" and the tenth chapter of Genesis classes them among the descendants of Ham, calling them Seba, Havilah, Raamah, etc. If the two great so-called Semitic stocks—the Phœnicians and Arabians—are Hamites, surely the third member of the group belongs to the same "sunburnt" race. ”

“ The Hottentot, Bantu, Negro, and Fulah, though distinct, have each of them the agglutinative forms of speech. The Hamites are found along the valley of the Nile, in Abyssinia, and portions of the Sudan. The Shemitic tribes occupy the larger part of the Sudan, bounded on the east by the Nile, and on the north by the Mediterranean and North Atlantic.
About one-half of the population are Negroes proper, one-fourth Bantu, one-fourth Shemites and Hamites, a few Nuba Fulahs and Hottentots. The Negroes and Bantu are Pagans ”

“ Of the tracts excepted, Abyssinia is inhabited mainly by Semito-Hamites (though a fairly strong negroid element can be found) , and Somali and Galla-lands by Hamites. North of the Sahara in Algeria and Morocco are the Libyans (Berbers, q.v.) , a distinctively white people, who have in certain respects (e.g. religion) fallen under Arab influence. In the north-east the brown-skinned Hamite and the Semite mingle in varied proportions. ”

“ In time they occupied the whole of Greece and Thessaly. Before 200 B.C. they established themselves in Italy. Thus do we get a conception of a vast Hamitic empire existing in prehistoric times, whose several nationalities were centered in Mesopotamia, Canaan, Egypt, Northwestern Africa, Iberia, Greece, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Central Europe—an intellectual ethnic family, the first of the Adamites to emerge into historic light, but with the records of its achievements buried in gloom [Pg 336] almost as dense as that which covers the ruder populations that the Hamites everywhere displaced. ”

“ They are no longer negroes. Most of them lead a pastoral life and, divided into something like clans, tend their flocks on the wide strip of half-desert pasture-land which stretches from Cape Gardafui to Cape Verde. They are intelligent, warlike, independent, given to pillage, and full of scorn for inferior races; they are bad neighbours, but have great influence wherever they may be. From the Hamites we pass, by a natural transition, to the Berbers, who have held northern Africa for many centuries. ”

“ The blue-eyed, light-haired Germanic people may have arisen as a modern variation of the mixed peoples produced by the mingling of Asiatic and African elements. The last word on this development has not yet been said, and there is still much to learn and explain; but it is certainly proved to-day beyond doubt that the so-called Hamites of Africa, the brown and black curly and frizzly-haired inhabitants of North and East Africa, are not "white" men if we draw the line between white and black in any logical way. ”

“ The situation of Babylonia, and its proximity to that mountain region where man must have first “increased and multiplied” after the Flood, are in favor of its being the original centre from which the other Cushite races were derived. The Biblical genealogy of the sons of Ham points, however, the other way; for it derives Nimrod from Cush, not Cush from Nimrod. Indeed this document seems to follow the Hamites from Africa—emphatically “the land of Ham”—in one line along Southern Arabia to Shinar or Babylonia, in another from Egypt through Canaan into Syria. ”

“ They are not pure Hamites, and their physical characteristics vary considerably, showing signs of interbreeding with Galla, Afar, Arabs, Abyssinians, Bantus and Negroes. They are a race of magnificent physique, tall, active and robust, with fairly regular features, but showing Negro blood in their frequently black complexion and still more in their kinky and even woolly hair. Their colour varies from the Arab hue to black, and curiously enough the most regular features are to be found among the darkest groups. ”

“ Over population and increasing drought may have caused them to migrate across the Red Sea in search of another home; or their migration may have been partly impelled by the Semitic hordes from the north, whom we can imagine at this period—some 9000 to 10,000 years ago—pressing southwards into Arabia and conquering or fusing with the preceding Hamites; just as these latter, no doubt, at an earlier day, had wrested Arabia from the domain of the Negroid and Dravidian" (p. 382) .
Proto-Egyptian Type. ”

“ Hamah (45) , the Hamath of the Bible, an ancient city of Syria, on the Orontes, 110 m. NE. of Damascus; manufactures silk, cotton, and woollen fabrics; is one of the oldest cities of the world; has some trade with the Bedouins in woollen stuffs; during the Macedonian dynasty it was known as Epiphania; in 1812 Burckhardt discovered stones in it with Hittite inscriptions.
Haman, an enemy of the Jews in Persia, who persuaded the king to decree the destruction of them against a particular day, but whose purpose was defeated by the reversal of the sentence of doom. ”

“ The primitive Hamite fears representations of the human and animal, from magic. Later the plastic representations have, however, penetrated the Hamitic boundaries, and reached the Nile. The peoples of Lesser and North Africa do not recognize what is on the rocks. The Negro is not gifted in this sense. The Hamite who does not readily see a drawing or picture, and never seems to have produced plastic art, draws well, realistically or ornamentally. The Negro is a good carver but draws very badly. Even those Negroes who recognize every photograph and carve excellently cannot draw. ”

“ Hamath had already fallen. A portion of its population had been transported to the north, and their places filled with settlers from Babylonia. Its king had become an Assyrian vassal, who along with the other subject princes of Asia attended the court held by Tiglath-pileser at Damascus after its capture, there to pay homage to the conqueror and swell his triumph. A few years later, on the accession of Sargon, Hamath made a final effort to recover its freedom. But the [pg 140] effort was ruthlessly crushed, and henceforward the last of the Aramæan kingdoms was made an Assyrian province. ”

“ If we concede that the Jews were also a branch of the Hamitic stock, then we have, firstly, a Semitic stock, the Turanian, embracing the Etruscans, the Finns, the Tartars, the Mongols, the Chinese, and Japanese; secondly, a Hamitic family, "the sunburnt" race—a red race—including the Cushites, Phœnicians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Berbers, etc.; and, thirdly, a Japhetic or whiter stock, embracing the Greeks, Italians, Celts, Goths, and the men who wrote Sanscrit—in other words, the entire Aryan family. ”

“ Further north is Restan, strongly placed at a bend of the river on a steep and naturally defended knoll. Further again is Hamath, where the main road and the river separate, the latter turning westward to seek its green bed below the mountains, and the former holding on directly towards Aleppo across the plains. Here, at Hamath, were found the hieroglyphic inscriptions which first gave rise to systematic Hittite studies. Here, too, types of people are found strongly reminiscent of the past, like living models of the ancient sculptures. ”

“ There was probably also more or less of an eastern dispersal, but we cannot consider the problem of these Oriental Caucasic remnants and traces. The great body went westward. The Hamitic peoples distributed themselves along the southern shore of the Mediterranean, and many may well have occupied a large part of the Sahara region, then a land of watercourses capable of supporting a large population. Behind them came the Semitic folk. Judging from their languages the Hamitic and Semitic peoples seem to have been in contact over a wide area, and for a long space of time. ”

“ They had taken Upper Galilee from the Hebrews, and subsequently Perasa, as far as the Jabbok, and held in check Israel and the smaller states, Amnion and Moab, which followed in its wake. They exacted tribute from Hamath, the Phoenician Arvad, the lower valley of the Orontes, and from a portion of the Hittites, and demanded contingents from their princes in time of war. Their power was still in its infancy, and its elements were not firmly welded together, but the surrounding peoples were in such a state of weakness and disunion that they might be left out of account as formidable enemies. ”

“ We know from the Egyptian records that the Hittites could write, and that a class of scribes existed among them, and, since Hamath lay close to the borders of the Hittite kingdoms, it seemed reasonable to suppose that the unknown form of script discovered on its site was Hittite rather than Hamathite. The conjecture was confirmed almost immediately afterwards by the discovery of the site of Carchemish, the great Hittite capital, and of inscriptions there in the same system of writing as that found on the stones of Hamah. ”

“ He ceased to wonder at the indifference, the passivity, the fatalism, of these mysterious men amongst whom he lived; for he felt something of that fatalism invading himself.
He continued his search, northwards from the Atlas, escaping here a band of robbers, there struggling in the whirl of a swollen stream, listening at night to the cries of the jackals, and yielding to the witchery of a monotonous Arab flute into which one servant blew a few yards away, while Hamet, in a high strident voice, chanted a no less monotonous song. ”

“ The Hittite occupation of Hamath seems to have lasted for a short time only. Its king, who appears on the Assyrian monuments as the contemporary of Ahab, has the Semitic name of Irkhulena, 'the moon-god belongs to us'; and his successors were equally of Semitic origin. ”