The Historians' History of the World 02

Let us go a step further. From the treaty of peace between Ramses II (father of Meneptah) and the king of the Kheta or Hittites (about 1300 B.C.) we seem to gather that the south of Palestine was at that time garrisoned by Egyptian troops. Only the south was Egyptian; the north continued to be under the control of the Hittites. Even Seti I (father of Ramses II), who had a course of unbroken success in northern Arabia and southern Palestine, could occupy permanently no fortress in Canaan to the north of Megiddo. From these facts we may conclude that one section of Israelites may perhaps have penetrated from Kadesh into southern Palestine before the reign of the Pharaoh Seti I, during the period of the decline of the Egyptian authority in Asia. And it so happens that we have in the famous Tel-el-Amarna correspondence unimpeachable statements of the trouble caused in southern Palestine in the century preceding Ramses II by certain people called Khabiri, whom some have identified with the Israelites; and it is Abd-khiba, king or at least governor of Urusalim or Jerusalem, who complains to his liege lord the king of Egypt that the king’s dominion is being lost to the Khabiri.

These Khabiri were apparently plundering nomad tribes, which were on the way to adopt a settled mode of life. It is not improbable that the name is equivalent to Ibrim (Hebrews); only if we adopt this equation, we must not confine the application of the term “Hebrews” to the Israelites, but extend it to “all the sons of Eber” (Genesis x. 24), a Biblical phrase which shows that the Israelites themselves were by no means narrow in the use of the term. Sooner than identify the Khabiri with the Israelites, who probably became to a large extent agriculturists in the Negeb, one would suppose the chieftain of Jerusalem to refer to those whom we know as the Amalekites. Still one cannot deny the bare possibility that the people in southern Canaan called “Israel” by the Pharaoh Meneptah may have been partly derived from some of the plundering clans called Khabiri.

The facts of importance for the history of Israel to be gained from the Tel-el-Amarna letters are these:

1. The continuance of the Babylonian language and the cuneiform characters—a proof of the intensity of the early Babylonian influence over Syria and Palestine.

2. The semi-independence of the cities—a consequence of the disintegration of the Egyptian empire in Asia.

3. The existence of names (Milkili, Abd-Milki) pointing to a Jerahmeelite element in the settled population of Palestine.

4. The name Urusalim (Jerusalem), and the importance of the city so-called.

5. The name Khabiri, possibly connected with Ibrim, “Hebrews.”

6. The importance of the Hittites in northern Palestine (including the later kingdom of Israel).

7. The restless activity of warlike nomads, some of whom entered the service of kings and chiefs.

8. The favour shown to natives of Palestine at the Egyptian court, reminding us of the story of Joseph.

We cannot pause to comment on each of these facts, but may point out that the story of Joseph, as it now stands, certainly has a more historical appearance than any other of the early Hebrew legends. The Egyptian functionary who superintends the magazines of grain in the land of Yarimuta, according to the Amarna tablets, reminds us of Joseph in a similar office; and the question arises whether at the root of the story of Joseph there may not be a tradition of some gifted member of one of the clans of Jacob or Israel who found favour and employment at the court of Amenhotep IV (one of the Pharaohs of the Amarna tablets).

Still, the story of Joseph may, like the other ancient Hebrew legends, have had an earlier form, in which the scene of the events was in the wide region to the south of Palestine, and the king spoken of was a North Arabian. And though there may have been an “Israel” in South Palestine in the thirteenth century B.C., yet the same authority which appears to state this as a fact also says that the victorious Egyptian king laid Israel waste, leaving no fruits of the field, and the context suggests that the male population had been carried captive, or slain.

SAUL AND DAVID