Girgashites are one of the tribes who had invaded the land of
Canaan
CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...
as mentioned in Gen. 15:21; Deut. 7:1; Josh. 3:10; Neh. 9:8. The Girgashites are also known as the fifth ethnic group that descended from Canaan (Gen. 10:16; i Chron. 1:14). Although the Girgashites are not referred to in the narrative of the wars of conquests, and their locality is not stated, they are named by Joshua among the peoples the Israelites dispossessed (24:11).
This apparent inconsistency may be due to their emigrating to North Africa prior to the Israelites entering the land. That contention is further supported by Procopius (Wars 4.10.13-22), stating that the
Phoenician diaspora settled in the western end of the Mediterranean, in the vicinity of later day
Carthage
Carthage was an ancient city in Northern Africa, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classic ...
.
They have been uncertainly identified with the Qaraqisha, allies of the
Hittites
The Hittites () were an Anatolian peoples, Anatolian Proto-Indo-Europeans, Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of the Bronze Age in West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea, they settled in mo ...
in their wars with
Rameses II. If that identification is correct the Girgashites would have been part of the southward migrations from Anatolia of peoples displaced by the fall of the Hittite empire ca. 1200 b.c.e. A personal name ''grgš'' appears in
Ugaritic
Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeology, archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycl ...
, but its connection with this people is unknown.
The sibilant termination of the biblical name suggests a
Hurrian
The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurro-Urartian language, Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria (region) ...
origin.
[{{Cite book, last1=Hastings, first1=James, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J1rQAAAAMAAJ, title=A Dictionary of the Bible: Dealing with Its Language, Literature, and Contents, Including the Biblical Theology, last2=Selbie, first2=John Alexander, last3=Davidson, first3=Andrew Bruce, last4=Driver, first4=Samuel Rolles, last5=Swete, first5=Henry Barclay, date=1899, publisher=T. & T. Clark, language=en]
References
Canaan
Ancient peoples of the Near East