Shem

And the sons of Noah, who came out of the ark, were Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

But Shem and Japheth put a cloak upon their shoulders, and going backward, covered the nakedness of their father: and their faces were turned away, and they saw not their father's nakedness.

And he said: Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, be Canaan his servant.

May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan be his servant.

Since the end of the eighteenth century, the group of peoples who spread, probably from the Arabian peninsula, to Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine around 3000 BCE — and, before 700 BC from southern Arabia to Abyssinia, on the opposite African mainland — have been designated as Semites. They were so called after Shem, who, according to the first Book of Moses, chapter 10, was the eldest son of Noah.

In this manner, Japheth was considered the progenitor of the European nations, while the inhabitants of the greater portion of Asia were looked upon as the descendants of Shem; and those of Africa, of Ham.