Sabtah

From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science

Sabtah (Hebrew: סבתּא, Sabtâh) was a son of Cush mentioned in Genesis 10:7. Josephus records the name of his (Sabtah's) descendants as the Sabateni. Ptolemy knew them as the Stabaei, and Pliny called them the Messabathi. They settled on the eastern side of the Arabian peninsula. Sabtah's name is also preserved in the ancient city of Shabwat, the capital of the Hadramaut.

Josephus said:

“

Sabathes [Sabtah] founded the Sibathens; they are now called by the Greeks, Astaborians.

”

One thing Josephus shows is that they kept their name, A - stab - orians. There was a river called Astasobas in Ethiopia, according to Rawlinson. Sabtah may have founded Shabna (also spelt Sabota), the ancient capital of Hadramaut. There was also the province of Saba of southern Arabia and were undoubtedly related to the Sabaeans of Yemen. Ptolemy's map mentions a place in the Sudan, along the southern parts of the White Nile as "Sube", a likely derivation from Saba as does Strabo. He places "Ethiopia" in northern Sudan where the Cushites lived for a time. It is this region in northern Sudan which was known as Kush to the Egyptians of old.

Nearby lies the land of the Somalis. To this day, the two main nations comprising Somalia are the Somaili and the Sab. The Sab also dwell in Northern Ethiopia. Perhaps the tribes that left for Asia took the name "Asta" from "Astaborians" with them as a town called Asta existed in the Indian archipelago of old. There was also a tribe of people by the name of Astacorni in India according to Strabo, and a district of Borneo is still known as Sabah. These are all linguistically akin to Sabtah or his brother, Sabteca.