1 Chronicles 1:8

8 The sons of Ham: Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan. (NIV)

Taking the information in Genesis 5 and 11 (the genealogies) at face values, the year the Great Flood ended was 2457 BC (1657 years after the creation). Noah's sons began to have their own families after this, and here the writer of Chronicles turns from Japheth in the north to Ham in the south.

The Canaanites were specially cursed by Noah (Genesis 9:25). The Canaanites, Noah prophesied, would become the slaves of both Shem and Japheth (Genesis 9:26-27). The land of Canaan, of course, extended from north of the Sea of Galilee to the Negev south of the Dead Sea. This is the famous region described as “a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.” (Exodus 3:8)

The tribe of Put (the Greek translations pronounce it Phout or Phoud, Φουδ) seems to have settled far west of the Nile; Libya has been suggested as a location. Jeremiah says they were adept with the shield (Jer. 46:9). Nahum calls the people of Put in his time "allies of Thebes" (Nahum 3:9).

Cush was south of Egypt, corresponding to the northern part of modern Sudan. A source of valuable topaz (Job 28:19), it was the farthest land to the south known to the Hebrews. They are described by Isaiah as “a people tall and smooth-skinned, to a people feared far and wide, an aggressive nation of strange speech” (Isaiah 18:2). At various times they dominated Egypt or portions of Egypt (Tirhakah, a Cushite, ruled part of Egypt in Isaiah's time; Isaiah 37:9; 2 Kings 19:9).

Mizraim is simply the Hebrew word for Egypt (מצרים). Since the date for the flood falls after the assumed dates for the earliest kings of Egypt, how can we reconcile the (fairly reliable) evidence of Egyptian archaeology with the text of the Bible? I have never advocated so-called Higher Criticism, which attempts to correct the text based on suppositions. Lower Criticism, which examines the text based on the study of Biblical manuscripts and to a lesser degree quotations of the Bible in other writings such as the early Church Fathers, has a place in our study of Scripture. But Lower Criticism doesn't play much of a role here.

A problem with Egyptian dates from archaeology is that they are educated guesswork. I respect the educated part of that guesswork. The dates become more and more reliable as we farther along in history--the dates of the Eighteenth Dynasty (the Pharaohs of Moses' time) seem to be fairly accurate. If we work backwards from there, we get to the Twelfth Dynasty during the time of Joseph (Sesotris II and Sesostris III would have been the Pharaohs of the fat and lean years). A bit earlier, in the Eleventh Dynasty, we find that Intef II (also called Wahankh) would probably have been the Pharaoh who took a fancy to Sarah in Genesis 12:14-20.

Many of the earlier "dynasties" were only a few decades long, and some of them may have overlapped. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the Pharaohs of the "Old Kingdom" (the Thinnis period and the Age of the Pyramids) were simply the immediate family members of Mizraim himself, the grandson of Ham, when they took up residence on the banks of the Nile in the 25th or 24th Century BC.

When we consider that from Adam to Seth, in 130 years, the world's population went from 2 to 10,000, it is obvious that 3 couples (Shem, Ham and Japheth and their wives) would produce at the very least 30,000 between 2459 (two years after the flood ended, when Shem became the father of Arphaxad, Genesis 11:10) and the 2190's (the end of the Age of Pyramids), there would have been thousands, probably tens of thousands, of people in Egypt for the building of the pyramids.

But for all of their accomplishments, the Egyptians, Cushites, Putites and Canaanites needed the gospel as much as any of the rest of us. Some heard it and rejected it. Some were kept from hearing it by sinfully obstructive leaders or parents. Others heard it and did not reject it, and the Lord put faith in their hearts.

Whatever our accomplishments, we have God to praise and thank for the greatest accomplishment of all: He sent his Son Jesus Christ to rescue us from our sins. And for this we thank, praise, serve and obey him.