The name Hamites, as now used among ethnologists, is
restricted more closely than it once was to certain African
races, whose languages are found to be related. The languages
classed as Hamitic are those of the ancient Egyptians and the
modern Copts, most of the Abyssinian tribes, the Gallas and
the Berbers. Some of the older writers, Lenormant, for
example, embraced the Phœnicians and all their Canaanite
neighbors among the Hamites; but this is not now an accepted
view. It was undoubtedly formed under the influence of the
theory from which the name Hamites came, namely that the
people so designated were descendants of Ham; and it sought to
adjust a division of the Hamitic family to four lines of
descent, indicated by the Biblical account of the four sons of
Ham,—Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. This hypothesis
identified the Cushites with the Ethiopians (modern
Abyssinians and Nubians), the descendants of Mizraim with the
Egyptians, those of Phut with the Libyans, and those of Canaan
with the Canaanites, including the Phœnicians. Some held that
the Hamites occupied originally a great part of western and
southern Asia; that they were the primitive inhabitants of
southern Mesopotamia, or Chaldea, southern Persia, and
southern Arabia, and were displaced by the Semites; also that
they once inhabited the most of Asia Minor, and that the
Carians were a surviving remnant of them. But the more
conservative sense in which the term Hamite is now used
restricts it, as stated above, to certain races which are
grouped together by a relationship in their languages. Whether
or not the Hamitic tongues have an affinity to the Semitic
seems still an open question; and, in fact, the whole subject
is in an undetermined state, as may be inferred from the
following extract: "The so-called Hamitic or sub-Semitic
languages of Northern Africa … exhibit resemblances to the
language of ancient Egypt as well as to those of the Semitic
family. In the Libyan dialects we find the same double verbal
form employed with the same double function as in Assyrian,
and throughout the 'Hamitic' languages the causative is
denoted by a prefixed sibilant as it was in the parent Semitic
speech. We cannot argue, however, from language to race, …
and the Libyans have ethnologically no connection with the
Semites or the Egyptians. Moreover, in several instances the
Hamitic' dialects are spoken by tribes of negro or Nubian
origin, while the physiological characteristics of the
Egyptians are very different from those of the Semite."
_A. H. Sayce,
The Races of the Old Testament,
chapter 4._
HAMPDEN, John.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1634-1637; 1640-1641;
1642 (JANUARY), (OCTOBER-DECEMBER);
and 1643 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).