The Amarna Habiru
by Walt Baucum
?Egyptologists have long recognized that the appellation Habiru is the equivalent of the term Apiru found in Egyptian texts dating from the Middle and New Kingdoms whilst a number of biblical authorities have concluded that the designation Habiru/Apiru is also one and the same as the biblical term Ibrim (the plural of Ibri=Hebrew which stems from the eponymous ancestor Eber).
?These equations have always presented biblical historians with a rather awkward problem since it is difficult to explain what Hebrews are doing marauding all over Palestine a century before the Exodus.?
In Bronze Age Atlantis (2008), it was well-documented and therefore validated that the Sea Peoples, a confederation of Pelagians (of Peleg, son of Eber) and ?rebel? Israelites who left Egypt a hundred years before Moses, returned and settled after their ignominious defeat by the Egyptians (ca. 1200 BCE) in some of the same lands they had occupied earlier and, in the case of the Israelites, where their later brothers had settled after the Exodus. It was further speculated that certain members of both groups (both being Hebrews) had settled in Philistine country, where Pelagians (Minoans; Cretans) had established trade emporiums centuries earlier.
Concerning the above quote that Hebrews ?were marauding all over Palestine a century before the Exodus,? Rohl corroborates that a large group of Israelites had left Egypt a century before Moses left with the main group in ca. 1446 BCE. He calls these Israelites and their cousin Pelagians, some who had dwelt in Egypt as merchants, traders, and shipbuilders, the Amarna Habiru, from the Amarna Letters found in archaeological digs from the city-state rulers of Palestine and Syria (including Phoenicia).
If the Hebrews were bonded slaves in Egypt during the New Kingdom, he asks, then how could they be roaming around the Promised Land at the same time? ?This was the issue addressed by the great biblical scholar Albrecht Alt, who concluded that the Habiru of the Amarna period were indeed Hebrews, but not the Hebrews of Moses or Joshua. They were an earlier group which had left Egypt several generations prior to the final Exodus under Moses. The conquest of Joshua and the Israelites was rather a secondary incursion into the region already populated by the Hebrew tribes? [italics added].
Rohl cannot be confusing the time of the Exodus, for he shows in A Test of Time that Moses? Exodus occurred in 1446 BCE, two and a half centuries before the ca. 1200 BCE time that some ?scholars? adhere to. Not only were Hebrews of Peleg in Egypt before Joseph entered, but Yair Davidiy also shows in Lost Israelite Identity that some Hebrew Israelites still owned property, replete with caretakers, in Palestine while still in Egypt, and even occasionally visited them.
He cited Yehudah Kiel who, in his commentary on the book of Chronicles, deduced that after coming out of Egypt with Moses, the different tribes were to receive lands which, at least in some cases, had formerly been associated with their tribal forefathers. ?Israel received many possessions from their forefathers in the Land of Canaan. Even though they were in Egypt they were wont to send emissaries to Canaan to prepare fields and vine yards of their own. The descendants of Joseph, apparently of Ephraim [Joseph?s second son], built cities for themselves in Canaan in the area of their future inheritances. They caused their servants to settle in these cities and raise them tribute and tend their inheritances for them. Because of this situation the Egyptians became fearful lest the two bodies [i.e. Israel and their vassalages in Canaan] join together and war against them?the Israelites had received permission from Pharaoh to so act [in tending their Canaanite possessions]. In the book of Chronicles, Sherah [daughter of Ephraim] established cities [in Canaan] and she lived at least 6 generations prior to [the Israelites? conquering the land after coming out of Egypt under the leadership of] Joshua?.?
Another Rabbinical source, quoted by Kiel and ascribed to a student of Saadia Gaon, mentions how Joseph?s grandson, Machir, was the progenitor of Gilead. Yair later confirmed possession of the lands of Gilead east of the Jordan River. While still in Egypt, the surrounding nations in Canaan increased in power and two of them, Geshur and Aram, seized the villages of Yair. ?For this reason the later descendants of Machir [after coming out of Egypt] desired to settle in the land of Gilead. Moses granted them the land which had formerly been held by their forefather and Joshua confirmed this grant. This point should be made quite clear [that] those matters spoken of in the Pentateuch concerning Machir, Nobah, and Yair [having held territory in the land] are speaking of a previous era. Machir, Nobah, and Yair were not alive at the time of the wandering in the wilderness [after coming out of Egypt] and so they received nothing in that period.?
Robbins makes an interesting comment regarding Israelites leaving Egypt at different times. ?In one theory, only the ?Rachel tribes??Manasseh, Ephraim, and Benjamin?participated in the Exodus under Moses. The other tribes were already settled in Canaan, according to this theory, and perhaps had never been in Egypt. In a contrary theory, this same ?Rachel? group is said to have departed Egypt at an early date and settled in Canaan. Moses and Joshua, with the tribe of Levi, came about a century later? [1450 BCE; italics ours].
Raymond Capt also showed continuous migrations of Semitic Hebrews to Greece and other parts of Asia Minor and Europe long before Moses led the Children of Israel out of Egypt. They were called Mycenaeans, Achaeans, and Danaans by Homer. Many of those who later left with Moses and Joshua during the 15th century BCE became aggressive in their relations with Asia. They progressed from being the invaded to becoming the invaders, they overran Palestine and Syria, and they extended their authority to most of Asia west of the Euphrates River and south of the Taurus Mountains. Diodorus noted that a great number of colonies were spread from Egypt all over the inhabited world, including Argos in Greece, the nation of the Colchi in Pontus, and Palestine.
Capt also related that Calcol (1 Ch. 2:6; Chalcol of 1 Kings 4:31) founded the ancient Irish line of kings ca. 1700 BCE, as well as other royal dynasties in Europe. He and his brother Darda, the founder of Troy, had both migrated from Egypt before the Exodus. ?They are sons of Zarah, one of the twin sons of Judah.?
The 1700 BCE date is problematic, but they did leave Egypt long before Moses.
?There were some also who passed over the sea in ships, and inhabited the islands.? This means with much supportive evidence that some sailed to NW Europe and Britain and even across the Atlantic to North America. Peleg (called Phaleg by Josephus, Pholoste by Champollion) was born at the ?dispersion of the nations to their several countries.? It was during his time that ?the world was divided.? ?Islands? could include continents or even coastlines, and many sources show that Peleg (the Pelasgi) became a nautical power.
How ?the world was divided? during Peleg?s day (Gen. 10:25) might very well have been the cartographic efforts of his offspring on their worldwide journeys. Charles Hapgood was convinced that these ancient maritime people had found correct relative longitudes and latitudes across Africa, the Atlantic, and many other continents and seas, showing proof from old maps that had been copied from still more ancient maps.
?It is?important that most of the islands are in?correct longitude. The picture that seems to emerge?is one of a scientific achievement far beyond the capacities of the navigators and mapmakers of the Renaissance, of any period of the Middle Ages, of the Arab geographers, or of the known geographers of ancient times. It appears to demonstrate the survival of a cartographic tradition that could hardly have come to us except through some such people as the Phoenicians [i.e. Israelites] or the Minoans [i.e. Pelagians (also spelled Pelasgians)], the great sea peoples who long preceded the Greeks but passed down to them their maritime lore.?
Rather unlike modern maps? lines of longitude and latitude that are spaced at equal intervals that cross to form grids of different kinds, lines on the old maps seem to radiate from many different centers on the map, like spokes from a wheel. These radiating ?spokes? are spaced exactly like the points of the compass, with 16 lines in some and 32 in others, thus the ?division? of the world.
The Sea Peoples (called Atlanteans by Jürgen Spanuth) brought the Atlantic and Mediterranean world to a new height of affluence. The Middle Period of Crete, the Neopalatial, marked a crucial time for the Pelagians. They built large palaces, shipbuilding facilities, workshops, and ports and towns involved in international trade, and they became the lords of the Bronze Age. That Pelagians and Israelites met in Egypt poses no problem, for both were there at the same time, and both were Hebrews (Habiru).
Pelagians had trading centers in Thebes and Egypt?s Delta, where their Israelite Hyksos brothers settled under Joseph, for Austrian archaeologists found the walls of the royal palace at Avaris, indicating a Pelagian presence, had been covered with ?Minoan-style frescoes of richly-clad court ladies, exotic flowers and naturalistic scenery, labyrinthine patterns, and several bull-leaping scenes.?
Further proof is revealed in frescoes on walls excavated beneath the volcanic ash on Santorini. Minoans/Pelagians also had embassies or trading companies in Gaza. Minoan pottery and other artifacts found in Gaza indicate trade at first, not tenancy, but after their defeat by Egypt it must be assumed that some few returned there to stay. ?A Philistine center in Gaza known as Minoa? does not mean that Gaza was a Minoan city, but only that the Pelagian embassy there could have been named after the Cretan kings.
Trading outposts along the mouths of the Nile River were manned, usually by non-Egyptians, to handle international sea trade; some most likely were Israelites under Joseph, a ruler of Egypt and ?second? only to Pharaoh. Since both Israelites and Pelagians were Hebrews, the Habiru in Egypt would have referred to both. Note also that a ?mixed multitude? went out of Egypt (Ex. 12:38) prior to the Amalekite takeover, meaning that other non-Israelites accompanied them. This could have been Pelagians and other Hebraic peoples, or even Egyptians who had intermarried with Israelites.
The early Pelagians, and later Israelites also after their confederation, would have been in all the major cities of the ancient world. Another proof that Pelagians, in this case, Pelagian Ionians, had at least one and possibly more outposts in Egypt is shown by Nebuchadnezzar who in his 37th year defeated the army of Amasis, the Egyptian monarch, as well as the soldiers of the city of Phut-Yavan, or ?Phut of the Ionians,? Ionians being a Pelasgic people.
Pelagian Ionians and nautical Danites, just a small part of the Atlantean trading empire, are alluded to in Scripture: ?Dan also and Javan going to and fro occupied in thy fairs: bright iron, cassia, and calamus were in thy market? (Ezek. 27:19). Assyrians called Homer?s Greece, which some of the rebel Israelites occupied 100 years before the Exodus, the ?Island of the Ionians.? The Pakistani dialect, Urdu, calls the Greeks Yunani, which is a derivation of the Persian Yauna or Ionian, which in turn derives from the Sanskrit root word Yavana. Ionia, then, is a derivation of Javan. This is important to know because some erroneously take this Javan in Ezekiel to be Japan. Another Javan, son of Japheth, father of the Oriental races, was probably the Japanese, and maybe also the Javan-ese in Indonesia (Gen. 10:2).
The above verse shows not only an association of Dan with Javan (Ionian Pelagians), as well as with Phoenicians (Tyre), but also hints at their vast control of the Bronze Age and its worldwide merchandising empire. The entire 27th chapter of Ezekiel might be referring to this Bronze Age ?Atlantis.? Fine linen for making sails, blue and purple clothing, fir and oak trees for making oars and masts, silver, iron, tin and lead, wheat, honey, and oil, and much more are recorded as trade goods in their fairs.
The word Ionia is traced to the Tetragrammaton YHWH by at least one source, but taken by others, including Strong?s, to derive from Javan. Sayce, too, says that ?Javan? is the Ionian Greek.
Today, most Pelagians live in Eastern Europe. ??The grandfathers of today?s Albanians therefore, that is, the Pelasgians, lived since prehistoric times in most parts of the world then known, developing a very important civilization and building various structures of remarkable value? (The Great Greek Encyclopaedia, Vol. 19, p. 873).?
Starr spoke of internal disintegration in Egypt ca. 1786-1575. The ?mainly Semitic-speaking? Hyksos gained strength enough to control for about a century the Delta from a strongpoint at Avaris. Objects marked by Khayan, a Hyksos king, were found as far apart as southern Egypt, Palestine, Babylonia, and Crete. They also spread use of the light horse-drawn chariot with spoked wheels, which were manned by archers with bows, lances, and new types of bronze swords.
These examples are definite substantiation, with both archaeological and historical evidence to back it, that Israel?s Hebrew kinsmen, the Pelagians of Peleg, were in Egypt prior to a large group of Israelites having left ca. 1567 BCE, a hundred years after Joseph came to power and a hundred more before Moses led the larger group out of bondage.
Other Hebrew peoples, besides the Pelagians and the Israelites, who might also have visited, or even settled there, thereby being part of the ?mixed multitude? that later left with Moses, included tribal members of Reu, Serug, Nahor, and Terah, for all of these were in the lineage of Eber, from which ?Hebrew? is derived. Craig White records that around 1750 BCE, the Babylonians overthrew the Kingdom of Mari (i.e. Aramaeans, the children of Aram, a son of Shem: Gen. 10:22). Some of these, plus other people under their control, migrated westwards and infiltrated Canaan and the Delta of northern Egypt. Egyptians called all Asians Hikau Khasut, or Hyksos, a term that means ?Rulers of Foreign Countries,? or ?Shepherd Kings.? When Joseph and his family came to Egypt, they too were labeled Hyksos.
A chapter entitled ?Kingdom of Israel? in The Epic of Man, p. 129, provides further validation that the Hebrews led from Egypt by Moses were probably only a segment of the people who began to conquer a portion of the land of Canaan sometime after 1400 BCE. Scholars now think that the Hebrews of the Exodus probably linked forces with other Semitic tribesmen already in Syro-Palestine, an opinion we find to be true, for the forces they linked with were their own people who had left Egypt earlier and settled Phoenicia, Greece, and many other areas.
Prior to these Hebraic peoples? entering the land, Egypt had been technologically backward compared to the Near East. The visitors introduced bronze working, a much-improved potters wheel and the vertical loom, hump-backed cattle (zebu) and new vegetable and fruit crops, the horse and chariot, composite bows, and new shapes of the scimitar and other weapons. They also brought in new musical instruments and dances.
Of those Hebrews in the Gaza area during the time of David, Rohl noted a lack of evidence that they were mercenaries prior to his time, and that it was David himself who enlisted them in his small group of marauders while feeling the enmity of King Saul, and in the offering of his services to the Philistine king in Palestine during the Amarna era. ?Indeed, it has been noted by a number of Old Testament scholars that the lifestyle of the Amarna Habiru closely parallels that of the mixed band of Hebrews led by the rebel Israelite commander, David.?
These undoubtedly were contingents of re-settled Sea Peoples after their 1200 BCE Egyptian defeat.
The Hebrews? Break with the Philistines
?And Saul and all the people?assembled themselves, and they came to the battle: and, behold, every man?s sword was against his fellow, and there was a very great discomfiture.
?Moreover the Hebrews that were with the Philistines before that time, which went up with them into the camp from the country round about, even they also turned to be with the Israelites that were with Saul and Jonathan? (1 Sam. 14:20-21 KJV).
One argument being addressed is whether part of the Sea Peoples were Pelagians who settled the land around Gaza in ca. 1200 BCE after their defeat in Egypt, and therefore kinsmen to the Israelites, or whether they were Philistines. The answer deals with two issues, one being that those who turned against the Philistines could not have been fellow Philistines. Therefore, the Sea People Phls could not have been Philistines, but more likely Pelagians. The second point, mentioned above, is that the very use of the word ?Hebrews? rather than just ?Israelites? for those accompanying David shows conclusive evidence that other Hebrew people had settled (or ?re-settled?) in Philistine country prior to this battle.
The early breakaway Israelites who became the Sea Peoples had fought against and then confederated their Pelagian kinsmen in ca. 1567-1450. Pelagians might never fully have forgiven their captors, with an ?uneasy truce? carried with them during the 400 years of their continued control of the Bronze Age (ca. 1600-1200). This latent detestation of their captors might have caused them to side with the Philistines at first. But, and this might be a third point, when push came to shove, only kinsmen of the Israelites would turn against the Philistines and begin to slay them, for, again, the Philistines? own kind would not have done so.
It is well known that Philistines (Biblical Casluhim) were in that very land 800 years before 1200 BCE, when most misinformed historians? say they first came there, for both Abraham and his son Isaac had run-ins with their king (Gen. 20 and 26). These were not Israelite Hebrews, as White says, ??but different Hebrews altogether who descend from Eber, grandson of Arphaxad.?
?Ethnically they were Indo-Europeans of the same stock as the Hittites [an incorrect assumption] and Hurrians [correct, the Hurrians being children of Haran, son of Terah, brother of Abram, and father of Lot (Gen. 11:26, 27)].
?A quite close relation between the palatial civilisation of Crete [i.e. Pelagians of Peleg] and the Egyptian kingdom during the 16th and 15 centuries BC (late Hyksos/Early Dynasty XVII) is shown by the recently made discovery of Minoan frescos in Tell el-Dab?a in Egypt (Bietak 1992, 1995; Marinatos 1995a: 37; Manning 1999).
?The Peoples from the Isles in the Midst of the Sea [Crete] not only came to Egypt but brought with them images of their religious practice, which they painted on walls while in Egypt. With no Minoan pottery associated with the paintings, the mystery of what they were doing there and why the paintings were commissioned remains unsolved. (Morgan 1995: 44)
?These wall paintings in Egypt were probably made by Aegean artists during the period 1630-1580 BC and they really highlight the question of the nature of the interaction and contacts between the Aegean region and Egypt?there is much to suggest that this was a Minoan trading colony, or they could have been painted by a master artisan, given as a gift to the Hyksos ruler in Avaris.
?The Minoan ruling class would have established regular contacts with the Hyksos dynasts, contacts which were then continued by the Egyptian 18th dynasty. We must envision not only an exchange of gifts but perhaps active alliances and trade treaties.?
All the descendants in Eber?s lineage could logically be called Hebrews or Habiru. The Pelagians? (Minoans?) trading proclivities, shipbuilding prowess, well-known presence, and later alliance with breakaway Israelites are explicit indicators that most, if not all, the Hapiru/Habiru in Egypt were the Pelagians and Israelites. The later Amalekites who came in after the Exodus and occupied an Egypt almost depleted of fighting men would have been called Habiru also, as well as Hyksos, since they were the descendants of Esau, Jacob?s (i.e. Israel?s) twin.
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