[7] The form Kush appears in Egyptian records as early as the reign of Mentuhotep II (21st century BC), in an inscription detailing his campaigns against the Nubian region.

[7] Biblical scholar Kevin Burrell argues that Cush in the Table of Nations should be identified with Meluhha, a placename originally referring to a region east of Mesopotamia but which starting from the mid-2nd millennium BC onwards became equated with the territory of Kush in Nubia.

According to Burrell, this explains both Cush's Mesopotamian connections in the biblical narrative through his son Nimrod and the fact that his name derives from a Nubian kingdom.

[10] The Persian historian al-Tabari (c. 915) recounts a tradition that the wife of Cush was named Qarnabil, daughter of Batawil, son of Tiras, and that she bore him the "Abyssinians, Sindis and Indians".

[12] Further, the great obelisk of Axum was said to have been erected by Cush in order to mark his allotted territory, and his son Ityopp'is was said to have been buried there, according to the Book of Aksum, which Bruce asserts was revered throughout Abyssinia equally with the Kebra Nagast.

Scholars like Johann Michaelis and Rosenmuller have pointed out that the name Cush was applied to tracts of country on both sides of the Red Sea, in the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen) and Northeast Africa.