The Table of Nations part 2

The Nations of Japheth

Japheth  The father of all the Indo-European peoples, it would be surprising indeed if his name had gone unremembered among them.  As it is, we find that the early Greeks worshipped him as Iapetos, or Iapetus, whom they regarded as the son of heaven and earth, the father of many nations.  Likewise, in the ancient Sanskrit Vedas of India he is remembered as Pra-Japati, the sun and ostensible Lord of Creation.  As time went by, his name was further corrupted, being assimilated into the Roman pantheon as Iupater, and eventually Jupiter.  None of these names are of Greek, Indian, or Latin origin, but are merely corruptions of the original name of Japheth.  Both the early Irish Celts and the early Britons traced the descent of their royal houses from Japheth, as did also the early Saxons, who corrupted his name to Sceaf (pronounced shaif).

The sons of Japheth

• Gomer  He was the founder of the Cimmerians who settled originally on the shores of the Caspian Sea.  They were later driven away by the Elamites.  At the time of the Babylonian exile, the Jews knew them as the tribes that dwelt in the ‘uppermost parts of the north’ (Ezekiel 38:6).  The Assyrians referred to them as the Gimirraya.  Esarhaddon (681-668 BC) records his defeat of the Gimirrai; while King Ashurbanipal tell us in his records of the Cimmerian invasion of Lydia in the days of the Lydian King Gugu around 660 BC.
• Magog  His immediate descendants were known as the Magogites, being later known to the Greeks as the Scythians, according to Josephus.  However, given the subsequent history of the peoples of Ashkenaz, who are far more certainly identified as the later Scythians, it is more likely that the early Magogites were assimilated into the peoples of Ashkenaz, thus making up a part of the Scythian hordes.  The early Irish Celts traced their own lineage from Japheth through the line of Magog.
• Madai  His descendants were the Madaeans, who are better known to us as the Medes.  The Assyrians recorded the name as Amada; the Greeks as the Medai; and the Old Persion inscriptions speak of them as the Mada.  The earliest surviving reference to the Medes that is found in secular documents appears in the inscriptions  of Shalmaneser III, king of Assyria from ca 858-824 BC, in which he tells us that he invaded the land of the Medes to plunder them of their fine horses.  Both Strabo and Herodotus conform the fact that the Medes were of Indo-European (Japhetic) origin, and we know also that their language was of this group.  After 631 BC, the Medes joined with the people of the Askuza (or the Ashkenazim) and those of Gomer (the Cimmerians) in an attempt to throw off the Assyrian yoke.
• Javan  The name of Javan’s descendants appears in Assyrian documents as the Iamanu, where we are told that they engaged the Assyrians in a major sea battle during the reign of Sargon II (725-705 BC).  The Archaemenian inscriptions refer to them as the Yauna.  Homer tells us in the Iliad that Iawones (Hebrew Iawan) was the progenitor of the Ionians, while the Hebrews knew the Greeks as the Jevanim (Iewanim).  Pre-Islamic Arab cosmographers gave the name as Yuban.
• Tubal  The descendants of Tubal first come to our notice in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser I, king of Assyria in about 1100 BC.  He refers to them as the Tabali whose original area of settlement (Tabal) was adjacent to that of Tegarama.  Subsequently, Josephus recorded the name of Tubal’s descendants as the Thobelites, who were later known as the Iberes.  Their land, in Josephus’ day, was called by the Romans Iberia, and covered what is now the former Soviet state of Georgia whose capital to this day bears the name of Tubal as Tbilisi.  From here, having crossed the Caucasus mountains, this people migrated due north-east, giving their tribal name to the river Tobol, and hence to the famous city of Tobolsk.
• Meshech  The descendants of Meshech are often spoken of in close association with those of Tubal, the Assyrians mentioning Tabal and Musku, while Herodotus writes of the Tiberanoi and Moschoi.  A very much earlier reference to the peoples of Meshech is an inscription of ca 1200 BC which tells us how they overran the Hittite kingdom; and an inscription of Tiglath-pileser I of Assyria of ca 1100 BC who tells us that the Mus-ka-a-ia were able to put into the field an army of 20,000 men.  The activities of this same people are also subsequently reported by Tukulti-ninurta II, Ashurnasibal II, Sargon, and Shalmaneser III, the last of whom refers to them as the Mushki.  Josephus knew them as the Mosocheni, who were known in his own day as the Cappadocians.  Some later writers have pointed out that the name of Meshech is preserved in the old tribal name of the Muscovites of Russia, after whom Moscow is named.  Such an identification is not at all unlikely, especially when we consider the subsequent history of their historically close associates, the people of Tubal, and the fact that the city is still known today in the Russian tongue as Moskva, very close to the Assyrian form, Musku.
• Tiras  Merenptah of Egypt, who reigned in the 13th century BC, provides us with what is so far our earliest reference to the people of Tiras, recording their name as the Tursha, or Turusha, and referring to them as invaders from the north.  The Greeks later knew them as the Tyrsenoi, a nation of marauding pirates.  Josephus identifies them as the tribe who were known to the Romans as the Thirasians and who we now know as the Thracians.  They were a ‘ruddy and blue-eyed people’, who spent most of their time in state of ‘tipsy excess’, as one authority put it.  Tiras himself was worshipped by his descendants as Thuras (Thor), the god of war.  The river Athyras was named after him, and it is not at all unlikely that the Etruscans, a nation of hitherto mysterious provenance, owe to him both their name and descent.  The ancient city of Troas (Troy) appears to perpetuate his name, as does also the Taurus mountain range.

The sons of Gomer

• Ashkenaz  The descendants of Ashkenaz first settled in what is today Armenia, although in later Jewish writings he was associated, with his father Gomer, with the Germanic races.  Hence, Germanic Jews are still known as Ashkenazim.  More immediately, the Assyrians tell us in their inscriptions of the Askuza, a tribe who allied themselves with the Mannai in a revolt of the 7th century BC, an event that is also mentioned in Jeremiah 51:27.  Indeed, it is in this statement the Jeremiah incidentally confirms the identity of the Ashkenazim with the Askuza.  This name, the Askuza of the Assyrian records, later became the Skythai (Scythians) of Herodotus.  Other early sources confirm their place of settlement to be the areal later known as Pontus and Bythinia, where the peoples of Ashkenaz gave their name to the lake and harbor of Ascanius, and to the land of Ascania.  Josephus tells us that they were subsequently known to the Greeks as the Rheginians.
• Riphath His descendants gave their name to the Riphaean mountains, which early cosmographers thought of as constituting the then northernmost boundary of the earth.  Pliny, Melo, and Solinus record the name of Riphath as that of the Riphaei, Riphaces, and Piphlataei, who were later known to history as the Paphlagonians, the descent and identification of which is confirmed by Josephus.
• Togarmah  His earliest descendants settled in Armenia.  We know from certain Hittite documents that in the 14th century BC, the then region of Tegarama, which lay between Carchemish and Haran, was sacked by the ‘enemy from Isuwa’, that is, the enemy from beyond the Euphrates.  The records of both Sargon II and Sennacherib mention the city of Til-gari-manu, the capital of Kammanu which lay on the border of Tabal.  Til-gari-manu lay some thirty miles due east of present-day Malatya, and was not finally destroyed until 695 BC.  It was after the destruction of this city that the descendants of Togarmah became lost in obscurity.  In line with the Assyrian policy of that time, the survivors were uprooted and transported to other lands in the empire.  Josephus renders the name Thrugramma.

The sons of Javan

• Elishah  He was the ancestor of the Aeolians, his name being frequently referred to in Greek history and mythology.  Two Greek cities were named after him, these being Elis and Elissus.  Likewise, an entire area was named Ellas in his memory.  His name lies behind the origin of the term Hellenic, and there is every reason to believe that his name is also perpetuated in the Greek paradise, the Elysian Fields.  The Armana tablets referred to his descendants as the Alashia, the Hittites knew them as the Alasiya, and the Egyptians as A-ra-sa.  Josephus rendered the name as Elisa.  The name also appears in the Ugaritic inscriptions.
• Tarshish  The father of the peoples of Tarshish, or Tartesis, who are thought by most to have settled in Spain.  The Mediterranean Sea was once known as the Sea of Tarshish, and it is known that the Phoenecians built a class of vessel called a ship of Tarshish.  It was in one of these that Jonah tried to flee from Joppa in the 8th century BC.  Phoenecian inscriptions found on Sardinia, and dating to the 9th century BC, mention Tarshish without providing us with a positive identification of its geographical location.  Josephus records the name as Tharsus, and tells that it used to be the name under which Cilicia was known, the chief and noblest city of which was Tarsus.  However, for various reasons this identification is unlikely, and the matter remains unresolved.
• Kittim  This is a collective name of a people who are spoken of in the Old Phoenician inscriptions as the kt or tky, and who settled on the island of Cyprus.  They were to give their name to the ancient Cypriot city of Kition (modern-day Larnaka).  The Romans preserved the name when they named the city Citium, and Josephus gave the name as Cethimus.
• Dodanim  This also is a collective name of a people descended from Dodan, who were known to the Greeks as the Dardani, and the Dardanians of Asia Minor.  They settled initially around the area of Troy whose coastal regions are known to this day as the Dardanelles.  The founder of this people was deified by his descendants and worshipped under the name of Jupiter Dodonaeus (a mingling of the names of Japheth and Dodan).  The propagators of this cult built the city of Dadona as the chief seat of his worship.  Egyptian records refer to the drdny who were allied to the Hittites at the battle of Kadesh.  The early Britons were to trace their descent from Dardanus.