The early history of the Hebrews

by A. H. Sayce

And yet there is no certain trace of it on the Egyptian monuments. In the Egyptian texts the south of Palestine is called Khar, perhaps the land of the ‘Horites’; the coast-land is termed Zahi, ‘the dry’; and the whole country is indifferently known as that of the Upper Lotan or Syrians, and of the Fenkhu or Phœnicians. When we come down to the age of the nineteenth dynasty we find the name of Canaan already established in Egyptian literature. Seti I. destroyed the Shasu or Bedâwin from the frontiers of Egypt to ‘the land of Canaan’; and in a papyrus of the same age we hear of Kan’amu or ‘Canaanite slaves’ from the land of Khar. Of any name that resembles that of the Hebrews there is not a trace.

It is equally impossible to discover it in the cuneiform records of Babylonia and Assyria. The Babylonians, from time immemorial, called Palestine ‘the land of the Amorites,’ doubtless because the Amorites were the dominant people there in those early ages when Babylonian armies first made their way to the distant West. The Assyrians called it ‘the land of the Hittites’ for the same reason, while in the letters from the Asiatic correspondents of the Pharaoh found at Tel el-Amarna, and dating from the century before the Exodus, it is termed Kinakhna or Canaan. How then comes Joseph to describe it as ‘the land of the Hebrews,’ and himself as a ‘Hebrew’ slave?

More than one attempt has been made to identify the mysterious name with names met with in hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts. The Egyptian monuments refer to a class of foreigners called ’Apuriu, who were employed in the time of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties to convey the blocks of stone needed for the great buildings of Egypt from the quarries of the eastern desert. We are told how they dragged the great altar of the Sun-god to Memphis for Ramses II.; and how, at a much later date, Ramses IV. was still employing eight hundred men of the same race to transport his stone from the quarries of Hammamât. Chabas and some other Egyptologists have seen in these ’Apuriu the Hebrews of Scripture, and have further identified them with the ’Aperu mentioned on the back of a papyrus, where it is said that one of them acted as a sort of aide-de-camp to the great conqueror of the eighteenth dynasty, Thothmes III.

But there are serious objections to these identifications.[^[1]] There are reasons for believing that the ’Aperu and the ’Apuriu do not represent the same name; and no satisfactory explanation has hitherto been forthcoming as to why we should meet with Hebrews of the Israelitish race still serving as public slaves in Egypt so long after the Exodus as the reigns of Ramses III. and Ramses IV. Moreover, in one text it is stated that the ’Apuriu belonged ‘to the ’Anuti barbarians,’ who inhabited the desert between Egypt and the Red Sea. It is true that some of the Semitic kinsfolk of the Israelites led a nomad life here in the old times, as they still do to-day; nevertheless, ‘the ’Anuti barbarians’ were for the most part of African origin, and the eastern desert of Egypt is not quite the place where we should expect to find the nearest kindred of a Canaanitish people. At present, at all events, the identification of Hebrews and ’Apuriu must be held to be non-proven.

Since the discovery of the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna another attempt has been made to find the name of the Hebrews outside the pages of the Old Testament. Ebed-Tob, the vassal-king of Jerusalem, in his letters to Khu-n-Aten, the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty, speaks of certain enemies whom he terms Khabiri. They were threatening the authority of the Egyptian monarch, and had already captured several of the cities under Ebed-Tob’s jurisdiction. The Egyptian governors in the south of Palestine had been slain, and the territory of Jerusalem was no longer able to defend itself. If the Pharaoh could send no troops at once, all would be lost. The Khabiri, under their leader Elimelech, were already established in the country, and in concert with the Sutê or Bedâwin were wresting it out of the hands of Egypt.[^[2]]

Some scholars, with more haste than discretion, have pronounced the Khabiri of the cuneiform tablets to be the Hebrews of the Old Testament. If that were the case, Hebrew and Israelite could no longer be considered to be synonymous terms. In the age of the Khabiri the Israelites of Scripture were still in Egypt, where the cities of Ramses and Pithom were not as yet built, and their leader to the conquest of Canaan was Joshua, and not Elimelech. When in subsequent centuries Ramses II. and Ramses III. invaded and occupied Palestine, they found no traces there of the children of Israel. They have left us lists of the places they captured; we look in vain among them for the name of Israel or of an Israelitish tribe. We look equally in vain in the Book of Judges for any allusion to Egyptian conquests.

The Khabiri, then, are not the Hebrews of Scripture, nor does the word throw any light on the term ‘Hebrew’ itself. Khabiri is really a descriptive title, meaning ‘Confederates’; it was a word borrowed by Babylonian from the language of Canaan, but is met with in old Babylonian and Assyrian hymns.[^[3]] It may be that Hebron, the city of ‘the Confederacy,’ derived its name from these ‘Confederated’ bands; at all events, the name of Hebron is nowhere mentioned by Ebed-Tob or his brother governors, and it first appears in the Egyptian records in the time of Ramses III. under the form of Khibur.[^[4]]

The Tel el-Amarna tablets, accordingly, give us no help in regard to the name of the Hebrews, nor do any other cuneiform inscriptions with which we are acquainted. Babylonian records do indeed speak of a people called the Khabirâ, but they inhabited the mountains of Elam, on the eastern side of Babylonia, and between them and the Hebrews of Scripture no connection is possible.[^[5]] In an old Babylonian list of foreign countries we read of a country of Khubur, which was situated in northern Mesopotamia in the neighbourhood of Harran; but Khubur is more probably related to the river Khabur than to the kinsfolk of Terah and Laban.[^[6]] Moreover, a part of the mountains of the Amanus, overlooking the Gulf of Antioch, from whence logs of pine were brought to the cities of Chaldæa, was also known as Khabur.[^[7]]

Archæological discovery, therefore, has as yet given us no help. We must still depend upon the Old Testament alone for an answer to our question, Who were the Hebrews? And, unfortunately, the evidence of the Old Testament is by no means clear. We have seen that on one side by the Hebrews are meant the Israelites, and that from time to time the Israelitish descendants of Abraham are characterised by that name. But on the other side there are passages in which a distinction seems to be made between them. Though Joseph is a Hebrew slave, it is because he has been stolen out of ‘the land of the Hebrews.’ Canaan, accordingly, even before its conquest by the Israelites, was inhabited by a Hebrew people. So, too, in the early days of the reign of Saul, the Israelites and the Hebrews appear to be still separate. While ‘the men of Israel’ hide themselves in caves and thickets, ‘the Hebrews’ cross over the Jordan to the lands of Gad and Gilead (1 Sam. xiii. 6, 7). Similarly we are told that in Saul’s first battle with the Philistines ‘the Hebrews’ that were with the enemy deserted to ‘the Israelites’ that were with Saul (1 Sam. xiv. 21).

Perhaps, however, all that is intended in these passages is to emphasise the fact that among the Philistines, as among the Egyptians, the children of Israel were known as ‘Hebrews.’ The difficulty is that such a name is not found in the monumental records of Egypt. When Shishak describes his campaign against Judah and Israel, it is not the Hebrews, but the Fenkhu and the ’Amu whom he tells us he has conquered.