Over 2,700 years ago, the Assyrians exiled the ten tribes of the Kingdom of Israel. "In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and he carried them away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of Medes." In the years 722-721 BC (over 2700 years ago), the Ten Tribes who comprised the northern Kingdom of Israel disappeared. Conquered by the Assyrian King Shalmaneser V, they were exiled to upper Mesopotamia and Medes, today modern Syria and Iraq. The Ten Tribes of Israel have never been seen since. Or have they?

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Tudor Parfitt, the protagonist of the NOVA documentary "Lost Tribes of Israel," made a journey through southern Africa to study the unusual traditions of a black African tribe called the Lemba. This Bantu-speaking group claimed Jewish ancestry and observed many Semitic traditions such as kosher-like dietary restrictions and slaughter practices, male circumcision rites, strict rules against intermarriage, and Semitic-sounding clan names.

Once described as "a sort of British Indiana Jones," Parfitt spent many months with the Lemba, meeting their tribal and religious leaders and observing some of their most sacred rituals. He came to the conclusion that the origin of many of the Lemba traditions was indeed Semitic, not African. But whether these traditions came from Islamic or Jewish sources was impossible to discern from the historical and anthropological evidence available. It would take Y-chromosome studies to delve deeper into this question of origin.

A few years after his travels, Parfitt teamed up with a group from The Center for Genetic Anthropology at University College London to look for a genetic counterpart to the Lemba's oral tradition of Jewish descent. Using a relatively new technique in genetic studies, the team identified a particular series of genetic markers on the Y chromosome of Lemba males. They then compared these markers to other groups with whom the Lemba might have shared a common ancestor long ago. 

B L A C K       B L O O D       I N       I S R A E L?

 * Genesis 12:16 – Not only Hagar, but many of Abraham’s servants were gifts from 
    Pharaoh and in this period it is fairly likely that many were Nubians. (approx. 1921 BC) 
 * Genesis 13: 6-8 – Abraham had a large number of herdsmen and 318 male servants who 
    were born into his house. 
 * Genesis 25 – Isaac, Abraham’s son and then Jacob inherited everything. 
 * Genesis41:50 – Joseph fathered two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, by an Egyptian wife, 
    automatically making Israel nearly 10 percent Egyptian. Joshua was from one of these 
    half-African tribes, Ephraim; in later years this tribe became so dominant that the 
    northern tribes of Israel were sometimes simply called “Ephraim”. When the Israelites 
    were subjected to slavery under the Egyptians, they and their former servants were now 
    all defined as Israel together; this means that much intermarriage must have taken   
    place. 
 * Exodus 12:38 – After 400 years, a “mixed multitude” left Egypt during the Exodus. 

M O R E   R E S O U R C E S:
The Lemba: The Black Jews of Southern Africa
Table of Nations--Ham, Shem and Japheth
Badagry, Nigeria -- Slave Trade History
Historical Timeline of Ancient Egypt
The Mitochondrial "Eve" Theory
Joseph, Egypt & The Hyksos
Tutankhamen & Akhenaton
Ancient Egyptian Religions
The Colonization of Africa
Map of Ancient Africa
Text on Rosetta Stone
The Pyramid Puzzle
Rosetta Stone
Ancient Nubia