The Great Cham:  Person, Place, or Thing?

Being in, or about to be in Sham, a.k.a. Cham, the unofficial name for Damascus, and Greater Sham (or Cham), the unofficial name for the entire Levant, my first Syrian investigation is into the name itself.  

Famous to Shakespeare buffs and second only to Prester John for featuring in Elizabethan tale-tellery, the true identity of "Cham" is quite confused. What does seem clear is that the Elizabethan Cham had nothing to do with Syria.  The Sultan of Tartary, that land between Turkey and Persia whence comes the sauce, was called "Cham" and may have been great but Genghis Khan (Khan-Chan-Cham) in China was probably greater--if wars make one great.  Either of these characters could have had the requisite beard with which Elizabethans, in the Roman tradition, always painted barbararians.

But if we look to a sailor instead of a bearded soldier, we will uncover something of the Sham which is Syria.  The eldest son of Noah was named Shem and his descendents are known as the Semites who  populated what the Romans called the Levant but the Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians call Greater Sham or... Cham.

Noah's second son was Ham.  Making that initial "H" a little harder (as Semites are wont to do) turns him into "Cham" and the resulti ng retroflex vs. dental aspirat e confusion has begun. 

How he breathed his name aside, his children were cursed because he looked in at his father's nakedness one fine evening after pops had been throwing back a few too many land-ho celebration rounds.  These children, known as Chamites (but not Semites), were the Amorites, the Mesrim (Pharonic Egyptians), and Cannanites.

Why Ham/Cham was cursed is another question.  It just may mean he looked into his Dad's tent at the wrong time.  That is all that the words say on their surface.  But, Biblical texts being what they are, Scholars wonder if he actually uncovered the nakedness of Mrs. Noah and it was this Oedipal crime which had to be gouged out over the course of generations of hapless Chamites.

Or perhaps it was one of old Noah's mistresses whom he uncovered that fateful evening.  Understandabl y omitted from the scriptural narrative to avoid the incongrouous image of all the animals monogamously marching up the gangplank in staunch pairs of two as old Noah benevolently looks on and then saunters on up with a harem of ten, nonetheless, scholars wonder whether it wasn't one of these "maidservants" who, in accepting, cursed Ham's seed.  According to Shamite laws, whether Leviticus or Sharia, your father's mistress is no good for you no matter how you cook her.  

In all this confusion, there is one point of scriptural clarity.  None of this would have happened if Ham had been more respectful of his father's indosposed (i.e. sailing his Ark four sheets to the wind) state.  So the undisputed and etymologically clear moral of the story is that God wishes us to accord privacy and respect to the drunken--whether on Cham or Champagne.