The word Khabiri signifies “confederates.” They are probably the people of Hebron, one of the old Amorite cities, and confederated against the alien Egyptian authorities, with their stronghold at Hebron.
In the letters of Ebed-tob to the king of Egypt, he complains of certain officials in the neighboring cities who are conspiring with the Khabiri, the most dangerous foe to the constituted authorities in that part of Palestine.
The preservation of these documents among the archives of the Egyptian king show that these appeals were received. The evidences are that they were sent to Amenophis IV near the close of his reign. Then civil war, which continued for some time after his death, and during the reign of his immediate successors, made it necessary to recall the Egyptian troops abroad, and the strongholds of Egyptian rule in Asia soon surrendered to native and foreign claimants of Syria and Canaan.
It is scarcely possible, in so brief a sketch, to give an estimate of things indicated, or the historical importance of these documents. The most striking of the things indicated is the large range presented of Babylonian influence and culture.
This is not more noticeable in the countries bordering upon the Euphrates valley than it is throughout the region lying along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and the western slopes of Amanus, from northern Syria to the valley of the Nile.
From Tyre and Sidon, Beyrut and Joppa, Gaza and Askalon, Jerusalem, Lachish and other ancient cities of Syria, Palestine and Canaan, letters were addressed to the king of Egypt; not in the language of Egypt, nor yet of Syria or Canaan, but in the language and script of Babylonia.
This is hardly what might have been expected. We might have expected, for instance, the speech of the Semitic people of Syria or Canaan—this older Hebrew—to have assumed Hebraic forms; that older Phœnician script for which scholars are so earnestly searching. Or we might reasonably have supposed that documents from this region and at this time would have been expressed in the written forms of the hieroglyphic system of Egypt; but this was not the case.
The problem of the use at this date of the script and language of Babylonia by the Semitic people of Syria and Canaan, must be referred to the extensive influence of Babylonian culture and power, which had been more or less dominant in Canaan from the period of Sargon I.
Of this, Prof. Sayce says:
“So long had this system of writing been adopted in western Asia, and so long had it had its home there, that each district and nationality had time to form its peculiar hand. We can tell at a glance by merely looking at the forms assumed, whether a particular document came from the south of Palestine, from Phœnicia or from northern Syria.”