abstract
| - Phut or Put (Hebrew: פוט pûṭ; Septuagint Greek Φουδ Phoud) is the third son of Ham (one of the sons of Noah), in the biblical Table of Nations (Genesis 10:6; cf. 1 Chronicles 1:8). Put (or Phut) is associated with Ancient Libya by many early writers. Josephus writes: "Phut also was the founder of Libya, and called the inhabitants Phutites (Phoutes), from himself: there is also a river in the country of Moors which bears that name; whence it is that we may see the greatest part of the Grecian historiographers mention that river and the adjoining country by the appellation of Phut (Phoute): but the name it has now has been by change given it from one of the sons of Mezraim, who was called Lybyos." (AotJ Book 1:6/2). Pliny the Elder Nat. Hist. 5.1 and Ptolemy Geog. iv.1.3 both place the river Phuth on the west side of Mauretania (modern Morocco). Ptolemy also mentions a city Putea in Libya (iv.3.39). A Libyan connection has likewise been inferred from Nahum 3:9, where it is said that "Put and Lubim" were the helpers of Egypt. Other biblical verses consistently refer to the descendants of Put as warriors. In Jeremiah 46:9, they are again described as being supporters of Egypt. Ezekiel mentions them three times - in 27:10, as supporters of Tyre (Phoenicia), in 30:5 again as supporting Egypt, and in 38:5, as supporters of Gog. The Septuagint Greek (LXX) substitutes Libues in Ezekiel where the Hebrew Bible refers to Put. However, the LXX reads Put in Isaiah 66:19, in place of Pul in the Hebrew. The Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (c. 915) recounts a tradition that the wife of Put was named Bakht, a daughter of Batawil son of Tiras, and that she bore him the "Copts". The Libyan tribe of pỉdw shows up in Egyptian records by the 22nd dynasty, while a Ptolemaic text from Edfu refers to the t3 n n3 pỉt.w "the land of the Pitu". The word was later written in Demotic as Pỉt, and as Phaiat in Coptic, a name for Libya Aegypti, northwestern Egypt. A fragment of Nebuchadnezzar II's annals mentions his campaign in 567 in Egypt, and defeating the soldiers of Putu Yavan, ie. Greek Libya (Cyrene). A multilingual stele from al-Kabrīt, dating to the reign of Darius I refers to the Put as the province of Putiya (Old Persian) and Puṭa (Neo-Babylonian), where the equivalent text written in Egyptian has t3 ṯmḥw "Libya".
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