CAMITI. – The “ethnographic table” in Gen. 10, after listing the three sons of Noah, Sem, Cam, and Iapheth, proceeds in reverse order to list the sons born to them after the Flood and their descendants. The C. represent the largest group. Cam (v.) has four sons: Chus, Mesraim, Phuth, Canaan (Gen. 10, 6.20). Chus in turn has five: Saba, Evila, Sabatha, Regma, Sabatacha. Before listing the sons of Mesraim, the “table” announces the descendants of Regma: Saba and Dadan, and then returns to Chus. It continues: “But Chus begot Nemrod,” and goes on at length to narrate his story and that of the kingdom he founded in southern Mesopotamia. Then, passing to Mesraim, it lists his six sons, including Chasluim, from whom it says the Philistines descended, and finally the Caphtorim. No descendants are given for the third son, Phuth. Eleven are listed for the fourth; the principal ones are: Sidone the firstborn, Hetheo, Iebuseo, Amorreo.
Although it is relatively easy to explain the principal names, others present such difficulties that the proposed identifications remain mere hypotheses. Together with the majority of interpreters, Chus is identified with Ethiopia. Indeed, his descendants are found chiefly in southern, western, and eastern Arabia, and important historical and ethnological relations existed between the two countries. Saba (Hebrew Sébhā'), on the other hand, the first of the sons of Chus, is placed by some in Ethiopia, between the White Nile and the Blue Nile; by others in Nubia; while still others identify him with Saba (Hebrew Sébhā'), son of Regma, whose dwelling must certainly be placed in southern Arabia. Different sources, however, would lead one to admit another Saba farther north. Dadan, the second son of Regma, mentioned in South Arabian inscriptions, has been identified with modern el-'Olà, in the land of Midian. EVEMERO (v.) is either only an indirect descendant of the sons of Chus, or the passage concerning him (Gen. 10, 8-12) is a later addition (such is the opinion, for example, of Heinisch).
The dwelling places of the sons of Mesraim are arranged in stages along the Mediterranean coast, from Tripolitania in the west, the Ludim, to the southern shore of Palestine, the Philistines. This mention of the Philistines and the Caphtorim would likewise be, according to Heinisch, a later addition (the third son of Cam, Phuth, is to be located on the western shore of the Red Sea and in Somalia). The identifications of the principal descendants of Canaan present no difficulties (Sidone, Hetheo, and other tribes and peoples known from Palestine or Syria).
The criterion employed by the sacred author in this cataloguing was not exclusively ethnographic, since it would be inexplicable how he could have included the Canaanites, Phoenicians, and Semitic Amorites in the Camitic family, and, still less, the Japhethite Hittites. The geographical position of the peoples and their cultural and political relations must also have played a part. The latter would explain the extension of the C. into the region of the Palestinian Semites. Today ethnology, following the anthropological criterion, regards as Camitic the type represented by non-Black populations of northern and eastern Africa that did not historically immigrate from Arabia or Europe. A Neotic type, similar to the Mediterranean type, and an Ethiopian type, characteristic of East Africa, are distinguished. The various Camitic populations are now distributed 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 Camitic and partly Nilotic or Bantu. Linguistic unity, like ethnographic unity, has been disrupted by various intermixtures.