Genesis 10:6 reads, “And the sons of Ham: Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan.” The descendants of Ham settled primarily in Southwest Asia and Africa. The Bible often refers to Africa as the land of Ham (Psa. 105:23,27; 106:22).
Cush is the Hebrew word for Ethiopia. Without exception, the word Ethiopia in the Bible is always translated from the word Cush. The Ethiopians are descended from this grandson of Noah. Josephus says that the Ethiopians “are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Chusites” (1:vi:2).
From Cush sprang Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabtecah. He was also the father of Nimrod, who founded Babel (Babylon) and the other states of Shinar or Babylonia. Delitzsch has suggested that the reference to the Gihon River in Genesis 2:13 is the Arahtu canal coming from the south and entered Babylon a little to the East of the Euphrates. However, there is no indication that the area was ever called Cush.
The Cush people spoke a Sem language, which was a prehistoric Ge’ez or Ethiopian. The Sem tribes were classed as Hamitic. The form Kush appears in Egyptian records as early as the reign of Mentuhotep II (21st century BC), in an inscription detailing his campaigns against the Nubian region. At the time of the compilation of the Hebrew Bible, and throughout classical antiquity, the Nubian kingdom was centered at Meroë in the modern-day nation of Sudan. Before Meroë, Cush settled in Axum. Axum has a great obelisk erected by Cush in order to mark his allotted territory, and his son Ityopp is was said to have been buried there, according to the Book of Aksum, which was revered throughout Abyssinia. It seems that Cush ascended to this place where they built the town and from there sometime later returned to the lowland, building Meroë.
The Cushitic-speaking peoples today comprise the Agaw, Oromo, Somali, Afar, and several other tribes, and were considered offspring of Cush in Masudi’s Meadows of Gold from 947 AD.[10] The Beja people, who also speak a Cushitic language, have specific genealogical traditions of descent from Cush.