Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
GREAT RIVER NILE
"The great river of Egypt is called 'Sihor'..., which means 'black,' and refers poetically, perhaps , as much to the inhabitants of Egypt as to its famous Nile. 'The seeds of Sihor,' (Isa. xxiii.3), 'Sihor which is before Egypt,' (Josh. xiii.3), 'Sihor of Egypt,' (1 Chr. xiii.5), and 'the waters of Sihor,' (Jer.ii.18), are passages that seem to point to color, and too decidedly so to have reference only to the color of water; which, indeed, is not black. Rev. Dr. J. Lempriere calls Nilus, a king of Thebes, who gave his name to the river Nile, which before was called 'Aegyptus', ...This Theban king was a black man, and the Hebrew name of the river, 'Shichor', may well signify 'the Nile of the blacks.' In some other passages of the Scriptures (Isa. xxvii.12; Josh. xv.4; 2 Kings xxiv.7), the Nile is called 'the river of Egypt '...; literally 'the Nile of the Mizraimites.' Now to deny that the Egyptians were Cushites, involves the denial that Mizraim was of the Cushite family; and that, in turn , denies that Ham, the father of Mizraim, was a Cushite, leaving the Negro without any ancestral connection with the Noachan household. Thus, as usual, error may be traced to absurdity."
P. 63, "Color of the Egyptians," THE CUSHITE, OR, THE DESCENDANTS OF HAM: AS FOUND IN THE SACRED SCRIPTURES AND IN THE WRITINGS OF ANCIENT HISTORIANS AND POETS FROM NOAH TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA, by Rufus Lewis Perry, D.D., Ph.D. (1893).