Noah's Sons and Their Descendants

Alice C. Linsley

Genesis tells us that Noah had 3 sons: Ham, Shem and Japheth. To these sons and their wives were born diverse peoples who we call "Afro-Asiatics." At the point in history of Noah's sons, they are more African than Asiatic, as is evident by the name given to Ham's son "Kush" (Gen. 10:6), the ancestral head of the ancient Kushites or Nubians who ruled the Upper Nile region. Ham is also the ancestral head of peoples identified with ancient Egypt, Ethiopia and Canaan.

It was the custom of these rulers to have 2 wives in separate households on a north-south axis. This made it easier for the rulers to control and tax commerical traffic moving through their territories. Remembering that Noah and his sons lived in the part of Africa through which the Nile flowed northward from its headlands in Nigeria, we can understand the practicality of this custom. In Canaan the commercial traffic moved in a north-south direction also.

In Genesis, 3 sons represent a tribal unity and there are many such units listed. Consider these 3-clan confederations:

Jubal, Jabal and Tubal-Kain
Ham, Shem and Japheth
Haran, Nahor and Abraham
Yisbak, Esau and Jacob
Og, Magog and Gog
Uz, Buz and Huz

Within these confederations three priest lines consistently intermarried. So the lines of Ham and Shem intermarried and the lines of Nahor and Abraham intermarried. It appears that Japheth's descendants moved out of the Upper Nile area into Europe and the Near East.

Ham
Ham was the father of great kingdom-builders whose territories spread from Nigeria to southern India.  Kush was one of Ham's sons and Kush fathered the rulers Raamah and Nimrod by 2 different wives. Nimrod build a vast kingdom in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley and Raamah's kingdom stretched from Tyre and Sidon to the cities of the Dead Sea Plain.  Raamah's sons were Sheba and Dedan, who intermarried with the people of Shem.  Genesis 10 tells us that Nimrod's son by his patrilineal cousin was Asshur, but this son technically belonged to the House of Shem. Likely Arpachshad was Nimrod's son by his half-sister wife.

Shem
Shem's descendants intermarried with the descendants of Ham. Rulers of Shem's house include Asshur, Arpachshad, Selah, and Eber. Eber's two sons were Peleg and Joktan (see diagram). These were born of different wives and the Bible tells us that a "division" took place in this generation (Gen. 10:25).  One of Joktan's sons was Sheba, the grandson of Sheba the Elder, the grandson of Kush, the son of Ham.  Sheba the elder's brother was Dedan.  The Dedanites were the first to use Old Arabic script. The Asshurites and the Elamites used a different script so it is clear that there was a division linguistically.

Japheth
The descendants of Japheth are found in Europe, Turkey, Pakistan, Mongolia and the Upper Nile. This explains the linguistic similarity between some Afro-Asiatic names and some Turkish, Pashtun and Mongolian names,  including Jochi, Beri, Malik and Khan. Khan was originally a title meaning king. Today it is a common surname in Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Mongolia. It is equivalent to the Afro-Asiatic Kain or Kayan. Some of the Pashtun tribes adopted Malik as the ruler's title instead of Khan. Malik is equivalent to the Afro-Asiatic Melek, meaning king or ruler.

Genghis Khan married a woman of the Olkut’Hun, or Ogur Hun meaning the Hun clan/community. The word ogur means clan/community and appears to be equivalent to the Pashto orkut, meaning community. So ogur, orkut and olkut are cognates and likely related to the Kandahar dialect, which has Tir-hari as a principal dialect. Tir is a form of the name Tiras, mentioned in Genesis 10 and hari is a form of the word for Horite. So Genghis Khan married into a community which had connections to Abraham's Horite people, probably through the ruler Nimrod.

In the Hungarian origin stories, Nimrod had two sons: Magor and Hunor. Magor is the equivalent of the Afro-Asiatic name Magog and the Hungarian word Magyar. Magyar is the name for the Hungarian people. Some Magyar still live in the Upper Nile area where they are called the Magyar-ab, the Magyar tribe.