CHAPTER V.

CANAAN the earliest trader; settled first on the southern Euphrates; migrated thence to the coasts of the Mediterranean. - Etymology of the name Canaan.-Speculations of Gesenius and his followers.-The etymology of these early names very uncertain.-Canaan may originally have signified a trader.-Noah's curse on him.

Connexion of Canaanites with Egypt.-The Rebu.-The Cuthim.--Distinction of colour. — Mixed races.-Cuth and Heth. Canaanitish settlements on the Mediterranean.

THERE was another emigrant from the neighbourhood of the Euphrates, round whose name has gathered an amount of interest, second only to that which surrounds the name of Eber. He figures in general history as the Phoenician, but is known in Scripture for the most part by the name of Canaan. His descendants long cherished a recollection of their eastern origin, and for some 2000 years, if we may trust our classical authorities, regarded the districts bordering on the great river as their mother country.

That such international relations should continue to exist between two distant races for so long a period is not what our own experience would lead us to expect. Our emigrants to America or Australia seem to look upon Britain as a foreign country, before the second generation has well passed away. But Justin's statements are clear, and consistent with each other, and not inconsistent with such hints as are met with in Scripture relating to the subject.

We are told in Gen. 10. 15 that Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn; thence we must infer, that the earliest Canaanitish settlements were on the Mediterranean. According to Justin (18. 3), Sidon took its name from its fishery1, and Gesenius suggests the word tsud, to snare (fish), as the root whence the name was derived. The mollusc producing the

1 The name reminds us of Bethsaida, the fisher-town so often mentioned in the Gospels.

purple dye so highly prized by the ancients, is found on the whole line of coast, and towns would of course be wanted for the accommodation of the fishermen. The whole adjacent coast seems to have been known to the Greeks by the name of Sidonia (Od. 13. 285)—that is, the fisheries. Tyre no doubt took its name from the rock (tsur) which lay opposite to it and formed its harbour. At a later period the rock was built upon by refugees from Sidon (Justin 18. 3) and the town so built was called New Tyre. Herodotus, when travelling in Egypt about the year 450 B.C., investigated the history of the Egyptian Hercules, and was informed that his most venerated temple was in Tyre (Herod. 2. 44). To Tyre therefore Herodotus went, and was told that the temple was coeval with the city and had existed 2300 years. According to this computation, Tyre must have been founded some 2700 years B.C.

According to the passage we have quoted from Justin (18. 3) the Phoenicians were alarmed by earthquakes, and dwelt first on the Assyrian lake (stagnum) and afterwards on the sea coast. Hence we are led to infer that they retreated from Shinar to the lagoons on the southern Euphrates, and then crossed the desert to Canaan. The Phoenicians, according to Herodotus (1. 1; 7. 89), first dwelt on the Erythrean Sea, by which he means the Persian Gulf; and this legend was probably floating in the mind of Pliny when he wrote that king Erythra first invented rafts ‘in mari rubro' (7. 57). In the Persian Gulf were two islands, Tyrus and Aradus. They contained temples built after the Phoenician manner, and the inhabitants pretended that the Tyrus and Aradus in the Mediterranean were their colonies (Strabo, 16. 3. 4, p. 766). As the Tyrus in the Mediterranean certainly took its name from the rock (tsur) which lay before it and formed its harbour, it must have been the original Tyre. The Tyrus and Aradus in

1 That is, with Old Tyre, for it was in Old Tyre that the temple stood (Justin, II. 10). New Tyre on the rock was not built till a later period (Ib. 18. 3); according to Josephus (Ant. 8. 3) some 240 years before Solomon's temple.

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ETYMOLOGY OF CANAAN.

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the Persian Gulf were probably factories established in the time of Solomon (1 Kings 10. 22) and named by his Phoenician seamen after the Mediterranean towns whence they came. After the lapse of some thousand years, the mistake alluded to in Strabo might easily have arisen. Confusion between an emigrant people and the mother-race is constantly occurring in early history, and has often led the historian into error.

Etymology has not unfrequently misled the speculator when tracing the history of the early Phoenicians, and some of the ablest of our scholars have forwarded the mischief. Gesenius supposed that Canaan originally signified a low land, and only in a secondary sense a trader; the lowlanders having been generally engaged in traffic. The term milliner may perhaps furnish us with a case not unlike the one he has suggested. It is said that milliner properly meant a native of Milan, and only secondarily a person who followed the occupation once characteristic of that town. Some followers of Gesenius suppose that Canaan was a name given to the low-lying trading district of Tyre and Sidon, in contradistinction to the heights of the neighbouring Lebanon; others, that the name of Canaan distinguished the valley of the Jordan from the mountains of the Amorite (Numb. 13. 29); while another party maintain that the name of Canaan was given generally to the low-lying districts of Palestine, as distinguished from the high table-land that stretched thence to the Euphrates. Every one, I think, must feel how unsatisfactory are these conclusions. Amid such a heap of inconsistent guesses, we may not be ashamed to bring forward a conjecture of

our own.

I cannot help thinking that the etymology which on the authority of Gesenius has obtained so general an acceptance, is an erroneous one. The root from which this scholar deduced his meaning of a lowland, would, I think, just as readily have given him that of a trader or, to speak with more precision, a packman, one that carried

about his bales for traffic. The supposed secondary meaning was, I believe, the primary one. The valleys of the Orontes and the Jordan, the plain of Esdraelon, and the coast-line at the foot of Lebanon, must always have been among the main lines of traffic in Syria; and it is chiefly in connexion with these localities that we find mention made of the Canaanite. The spies sent by Moses (Numb. 13. 29) found the Canaanite by the sea, and by the side of Jordan, and Isaiah asks (23. 8) 'who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers' (in the original, whose Canaanites) are the honourable of the earth,' &c. It is obvious how readily this appellative might under the circumstances become a national name. St. Augustine tells us that if the peasants in the neighbourhood of Carthage were asked what people they were, they would, in reference to their mother-country, answer Canaanites. Of the tribal names mentioned in Genesis 10. 15-18, the only one which apparently belongs to a patriarchal ancestor is that of Heth. We read of the children of Heth, the sons of Heth, and the daughters of Heth, but never of the children of Sidon, the sons of Sidon, &c. Heth appears to have been the name which at the time of the Exodus the Canaanites commonly used to indicate their countrymen; and in Joshua 1. 4 the phrase, all the land of the Hittites,' is used to denote the promised land. But the etymology of the Canaanitish races mentioned in Genesis 10 opens up questions of great difficulty, and requires to be studied from different points of view.

The Canaanite, or trader, seems to have visited the country, which from him took the name of Canaan, not very long after the Deluge, and during the lives of some of the patriarchs who had witnessed that event. This inference follows naturally from the relation of the circumstances which led to Noah's curse on Ham, that is, supposing our etymology of the name of Canaan to be the true one. It is not easy at first sight to say why of all Ham's descendants

V.]

NOAH'S CURSE ON CANAAN.

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Canaan should be selected to bear the punishment his father's irreverence had provoked. The 'trader' was the youngest, and therefore may have been the favourite son of his father; and of all the sons of Ham, it was he whose descendants pushed their settlements nearest to the district which Noah and the three patriarchs had made their home. The allusion to him was therefore not an unnatural one. The prophet probably foresaw that of all Ham's descendants the Canaanites would come most frequently into contact with the children of Shem and Japheth, and he foretold that by each of these races they would sooner or later be humbled and subdued; 'a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.'

From the frequent reference in Scripture to the district of Tyre and Sidon,' it is clear that this portion of the Phoinician coast had in an especial manner fixed the attention of the Jews. The reason was evidently because these towns were the ports through which passed the commerce of Damascus to the western world without. The stream of commerce which passed from the Euphrates south of Palestine must have found an outlet at a more southern port, no doubt at Rhinocorura, the site of which certainly lay near the modern El Arish. My opinion as to the people who occupied this portion of Phoenicia differs so widely from that generally entertained by our Egyptologists, that I must venture to dwell with some little particularity on their history.

In the hieroglyphic inscriptions mention is often made of a people called the Rebu. They are recognized in the Egyptian pictures by the mystical lock, and by being generally mixed up with Egyptians as allies or enemies 1.

1

[For the further treatment of the Rebu, who appear here in connexion with a fragmentary argument, see below, pp. 191, 196-199.] It is probable that the author at one time intended to follow up, in this place, his inquiry into the history of the Ereb of Rhinocorura ; but afterwards determined to take it in what seemed a more natural connexion with the races discussed in the seventh chapter.