CAMITI. - The "ethnographic table" in Gen. 10, after listing the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, in reverse order lists the sons born to them after the flood and their descendants. The C. represent the largest group. Ham (v.) has four sons: Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan (Gen. 10:6, 20). Cush in turn has five sons: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca. Before listing the sons of Mizraim, the "table" announces the descendants of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan, then returns to Cush. Then it continues: "Cush also begot Nimrod," and elaborates on him and the kingdom he founded in southern Mesopotamia. Then, moving on to Mizraim, it lists his six sons, among whom is Casluhim, from whom the Philistines are said to have descended, and finally the Caphtorim. No descendants are given for the third son, Put. For the fourth son, eleven are listed; the principal ones are: Sidon the firstborn, Heth, Jebusite, Amorite.
While it is relatively easy to explain the principal names, for others such difficulties arise that the proposed identifications remain mere hypotheses. With the majority of interpreters, Cush is identified with Ethiopia. Indeed, its descendants are rather widespread in southern, western, and eastern Arabia, and there were important historical-ethnological relations between the two regions. Seba (Hebrew Sēbha'), however, the first of Cush's sons, is placed by some in Ethiopia, between the White Nile and the Blue Nile, by others in Nubia, and still others identify it with Seba (Hebrew Sēbha'), son of Raamah, whose seat is certainly to be located in southern Arabia; but different sources would admit another Seba further north. Dedan, Raamah's second son, mentioned in South Arabian inscriptions, has been identified with modern el-'Ula, in the land of Midian. Nimrod (v.) is either a purely legendary descendant of Cush's sons, or what concerns him (Gen. 10:8-12) is a later addition (so, for example, Heinisch opines).
The seats of Mizraim's sons are scattered along the Mediterranean coast, from Tripolitania in the west, the Ludim, to the southern shore of Palestine, the Philistines. Even this mention of the Philistines and the Caphtorim would, according to Heinisch, be a later addition (the third son of Ham, Put, is to be located on the western shore of the Red Sea and Somalia). The identifications of the principal descendants of Canaan present no difficulties (Sidon, Heth, other known tribes and peoples of Palestine or Syria).
The criterion used by the sacred author in this cataloging was not solely ethnographic, since it would not explain how he included the Canaanites, Phoenicians, and Semitic Amorites, and still less the Hittites, who were Japhethites, in the Hamitic family. Geographic position of the peoples and their cultural and political relations must also have influenced this. The latter would explain the encroachment of the C. into the zone of the Semitic peoples of Palestine. Today ethnology, following the anthropological criterion, considers the Hamitic type to be represented by non-black populations of North and East Africa not historically immigrated from Arabia or Europe. A Nordic type, similar to the Mediterranean type, and an Ethiopian type, characteristic of East Africa, are distinguished. The various Hamitic populations are now divided into two branches: northern (Berbers, Tibbu, Hausa)
and eastern (Egyptians, Beja east of the Nile, Abyssinians, Danakil, Somalis, Galla). The languages spoken by these populations are partly Hamitic, partly Nilotic or Bantu. Linguistic unity, like ethnographic unity, has been broken by various crossings.