CASLUHIM:
According to Gen. x. 14 (= I Chron. i. 12), the Casluhim are sons of Mizraim; i.e., a part or dependency of the Egyptians. Bochart ("Geographia Sacra," iv. 31) knew no better identification than the Colchians in the eastern corner of the Black Sea, because, according to a strange and utterly improbable statement of Herodotus (ii. 104), repeated by Diodorus Siculus (i. 28, 55), Strabo, and others, these were Egyptians who had emigrated. Knobel ("Völkertafel"), after Forster, suggested their identity with the Casiotis between Pelusium and Rinocolura, a tract of desert coast before the Sirbonis lake, which is almost uninhabitable. Ebers, "Ägypten und die Bücher Moses" (p. 120), tried to support this view by an alleged Coptic etymology, "kaslokh" (arid mountain), which is impossible in every respect (the correct Egyptian form would be "tasrokḥ"). It is not possible to say anything on the name "Casluhim," the more so because the LXX. reads differently. Whether the latter's Xασμωνιείμ (!) has anything to do with the "Nitriotes nomos," or Natron valley, west of Egypt ("ḥesmen"; Egyptian, "Natron"; compare Ebers, l.c.), is very questionable.
