I. Name
Ham is the second son of Noah, and the brother of Shem and Japheth. His name occurs 17 times in the Bible. He is sometimes said to originally represent a (semi-) divine figure, either because his name is that of a supposed West-Semitic sun-god called Ḥammu (Lewy 1944), or because it is connected to Eg. ḥm, ‘(divine) majesty’ (Gordon 1988).
II. Identity
The evidence adduced by Lewy for a solar deity called Hammu is onomastic: the theophoric element Ḫammu or Ammu (as in Ḫammu-rabi, A…