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157 plained. Why was Canaan accursed if it was his father who had accidentally transgressed? Why was his punishment to be a slave of Shem and to the god of Shem? And how were the gods involved in the crime and its punishment? As one reads the sup- plemental information in the ex-biblical Book of Jubilees, it be- comes clear that the real offense was the illegal occupation of Shem's territory. After mankind was dispersed and its various clans allotted their lands, the Book of Jubilees relates, '"Ham and his sons went to the land which he was to occupy, [the land] which he acquired as his portion in the country of the south." But then, journeying from where Noah had been saved to his allotted land in Africa, "Canaan saw the land of Lebanon [all the way down] to the river of Egypt, that it was very good." And so he changed his mind: "He went not into the land of his inheritance to the west of the sea [west of the Red Sea); he dwelt [instead] in the land of Lebanon, eastward and westward of the Jordan." His father and his brothers tried to dissuade Canaan from such an illegal act: "And Ham his father, and Cush and Mizra'‘im his brothers, said unto him: "Thou hast settled in a land which is not thine, and which did not fall to us by lot; do not do so; for if thou dost do so, thou and thy sons will be fallen in the land and be ac- cursed through sedition; for by sedition ye have settled, and by se- dition will thy children fall, and thou shall be rooted out forever. Dwell not in the dwelling of Shem; for to Shem and his sons did it come by their lot.'" Were he to illegally occupy the territory assigned to Shem, they pointed out, "Cursed art thou and cursed shalt thou be beyond the sons of Noah, by the curse which we bound ourselves by an oath in the presence of the Holy Judge and in the presence of Noah our fa- ther.... "But Canaan did not hearken unto them, and dwelt in the land of Lebanon from Hamath to the entering of Egypt, he and his sons until this day. For this reason is that land named Ca- naan." Behind the biblical and pseudoepigraphical tale of a territo- rial usurpation by a descendant of Ham must lie a tale of a simi- lar usurpation by a descendant of the God of Egypt. We must bear in mind that at the time the allotment of lands and _territo- ries was not among the peoples but among the gods; the gods, not the people, were the landlords. A people could only settle a territory allotted to their god and could occupy another's terri- The Pyramid Wars