In 1887 more than 390 BabylonIan cuneiform letters, written in the Akkadian language, were discovered by an Egyptian woman digging mud-brick on the east bank of the Nile River, about 190 miles south of Cairo. This was on the site of Pharoah Akhenaten's capital. He was perhaps the world's first monotheist.

Known as the Amarna Letters, these tablets are diplomatic correspondences from Byblos, Tyre, Gezer, Hebron, Shechem (Nablus), Ashkelon, Megiddo, and Jerusalem, to Egyptian authorities. They opened up in detail events that occurred as Egypt was losing its grip on its Asiatic Empire of the Late Bronze Age, about the 1400sBC, to a people known as the Habiru. These were a powerful Egyptian enemy in the Palestine-Syria region.

Three main significant factors pertain to the Amarna Letters, the Habirus, and the conquering Hebrews under Joshua's command in the Old Testament of the Bible. The biggest still unanswered question is do the Amarna Letters confirm the biblical account?

-the resemblance of the etymology of the names Habiru and Hebrew (All Hebrews were Habirus, but not all Habirus were descended from Jacob)

-the chronological relationship between the events of the Habirus of the Amarna Letters and those of the Israelites

-the locations in Canaan of the Habirus to those of the Hebrews in Joshua's time

In the Scriptures, the name "Hebrew" is a gentilic designation for ethnic Israelites. The "Habiru" of the Amarna Letters is used in a sociological sense. The Habirus were bent on destroying the Canaanite feudal society. The Habiru may have been indigenous to Canaan.

The unresolved question as to whether the Habirus and the Hebrews were the same people is were the Hebrews an active presence in Canaan during the Amarna Age of the 14th Century BC? There may be proof of that in the Beth-shan Stela of Seti I.

This commemorates a military campaign in which Pharoah's forces encountered warriors described as "Apirus," the Egyptian equivalent of Habirus, which in turn would place Hebrews in Canaan in the 12th Century BC.

The Hebrew homeland was Yarmuta, a Galilean hill the Bible calls Yarmuth Heights. Yarmuta was in the Hebrew territory of the tribe of Issacher, off the shores of southern Lebanon, and north of Tyre. This was an important center of wood for Egypt. The tribe of Issacher reached from the Jordan River to Mount Carmel, and included the Esdraelon plain between Lower Galilee and Sumaria (Joshua 21:29).

Perhaps the most telling convergence between the Biblical Conquest and the Amarna Letters concerns Labayu, the ruler of Shechem, who gave Shechem to the Habirus. Joshua 8:32-35 describes how the Hebrews moved safely from Gilgal, in the plains of Jericho, to Shechem.

Biblical history (1 Kings 6:1 and Judges 11:16) details that one of Egypt's Pharoah's (of the 18th Dynasty, based on recorded history, Amenhotep II, drowned in the Red Sea (Exodus 15:4-5). After his demise, Pharoahs Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III, ruled Egypt a combined 41 years after Israel's exodus from Egypt (the same time the Hebrews took over Shechem).

Genesis 10:21 says, "all the [Hebrews were] descendents of Eber." This ethnic designation included Abraham. The Bible's use of the word "Hebrew" became narrower in later use to mean Jacob's descendents. And, Genesis 39:14 calls Joseph a "Hebrew who came from the land of the Hebrews."

Sources:

Bible
Journal of the Adventist Theological Society
bibleodyssey.org
worldhistory.org
britannica.com
metmuseum.org


Next Time: Sea Of Galilee #23: The Amarna Letter From Urusalim (Jerusalem)