Ham
Ham names 5 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Ham the third son of Noah
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the third son of Noah. According to tradition Ham had four sons, Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. Canaan became the ancestor of the tribes of Phoenicia and Palestine. The other three sons, grandsons of Noah, migrated southward and peopled the African continent. As is well known, North Africa is peopled by tribes of dark complexion, but white blood. They are known as a Hamitic group. The more important are the Berbers and the Egyptians, including the Copts. Other tribes are so intermixed with negro blood that it is difficult to say whether they are white or colored. However widespread the custom, it is not correct to speak of a negro as a "son of Ham." It has been suggested that Ammon, the deity chiefly worshiped in North Africa, is a corruption of Ham, their great ancestor. See Ammonite
Ham WEST is used as a state prison
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WEST is used as a state prison. It is memorable as the place of confinement of Joan of Arc, Moncey, and others; of Polignac, Peyronnet, and Guernon de Ranville from 1831 to 1836; of Louis Napoleon from 1840 till 1846; and after the coup d'état, of the republican generals Cavaignac, Lamoricière, Changarnier, etc.
Ham WEST, a suburb of East London
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WEST, a suburb of East London, and a parliamentary and county borough of Essex, England, on the Thames, opposite Greenwich. Pop. 133, 500. It is a busy industrial parish, and has silk printing, ship-building, dis distilling, and chemical manufactures.
Ham a town in France
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a town in France, department of Somme, on the river of that name, 12 miles S. W. of St. Quentin. Its ancient fortress or castle was rebuilt by the Comte de Saint Pol in 1470, and now
Ham A Norwegian storm-fiend in the shape of an eagle with black wings
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
A Norwegian storm-fiend in the shape of an eagle with black wings, sent by Helgi to engulf Frithjof as he sailed for the island of Yarl Angantyr in the Saga of Grettir.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The biggest change is to Aiton's 1910 entry: the "Hamitic group" it describes as dark-skinned people with "white blood" is no longer a category in linguistics or anthropology. Egyptian, Berber and Cushitic tongues are now grouped with Semitic in the Afroasiatic family, a classification popularised by Joseph Greenberg in the 1950s, and the older "Hamitic hypothesis" is studied chiefly as a piece of colonial race theory. The two Collier's places have also moved on: the castle at Ham in the Somme, which the entry says "is used as a state prison" and once held Louis Napoleon, was blown up by retreating German troops in 1917 and survives only as ruins, while West Ham lost its separate existence in 1965, absorbed with East Ham into the London Borough of Newham — the borough that hosted the 2012 Olympic Games at Stratford. The Norwegian storm-fiend needs only a footnote: Ham belongs to Friðþjófs saga, not, as the 1920 occultism volume has it, to the saga of Grettir.
Written for this edition, 2026.