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The Myth: And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. (Gen. 9:18)

The Reality: Canaan was originally the god Re in the Hermopolitan Creation myth and he was the son of all four males on the ark.

According to the Hermopolitan Creation myth, the four males and four females collectively gave birth to the god Re, the Hermopolitan Creator deity and a solar deity. In the story of Noah, we also seem to have a sole child born during the flood period. He was named Canaan and the biblical writer is adamant about identifying his parentage.

First the text says, “And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.” The passage implies that Canaan came off the ark also but doesn’t quite say so. Only three verses later, the author reminds us again of Canaan’s parentage, “And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without” (Gen. 9:22).

These are the first two mentions of Canaan in the Bible and on both occasions the verse implies the birth of Canaan has taken place but doesn’t explicitly say at what point in the story it has occurred. Yet , it twice says that Ham is the father. Immediately afterwards follows an enigmatic passage:

And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. (Gen . 9:23–27)

In the above scenario, Ham had previously seen his father naked and told his two other brothers what he saw. The other two brothers then covered their father. But, when Noah awoke he cursed “his younger son,” Canaan, not Ham, who had seen him naked. Since this occurs shortly after Noah and his family came off the ark, where did this Canaan come from and how could he be old enough to cause such mischief unless he had also been on the ark?

Lest there be any confusion that the author mistakenly substituted Ham for Canaan as the youngest child, we should note that on all the occasions when the Bible mentions Noah’s three sons together, Ham’s name appears in second place. This would have been a literary formula intended to convey to the reader that Ham was the middle son, not the youngest.

Who fathered Canaan: Noah or Ham? Some confusion must have surrounded this issue because somewhere along the way at least one biblical editor felt it necessary to repeatedly stress that Ham was the father. The confusion stemmed from the fact that in the Hermopolitan tradition all four males on the ark were the fathers of the same child and this didn’t make sense to the monotheistic Hebrews in later times. The question of parentage had to be re-examined.

The identification of Ham as father of Canaan would have been a late development, well into the period of Hebrew monarchy (see Myth #45). It originated from the idea that the land of Egypt (i.e., Ham) fathered the land of Canaan, a belief reflected in Genesis 10, which purports to trace the origins of nations after the flood.

This suggests that Canaan originally had a different name, one that reflected his connection to the solar god Re in his form as a child. (Re had many different names. One litany lists at least seventy-five.) That would explain why Noah cursed Canaan instead of Ham. Canaan originally represented the god Re, the Hermopolitan Creator deity, and Hebrew priests needed to diminish the influence of the Egyptian Re on the beliefs of the early Hebrew refugees from Egypt.