It is time to clarify for BAR readers the widely discussed relationship between the habiru, who are well documented in Egyptian and Near Eastern inscriptions, and the Hebrews of the Bible. There is absolutely no relationship!

The first appearance of the term habiru (also ‘apiru¹) surfaced in the late 19th century in the cuneiform archive from Egypt known as the Amarna Letters. Seven of the letters in the archive are letters of Abdi-Heba, king of Canaanite Jerusalem, to his overlord, the pharaoh (king) of Egypt.² “I fall at the feet of my lord, the king, seven times and seven times,” Abdi-Heba’s letters often begin. A frequent complaint is that “habiru have plundered all the lands of the king.” And again: “the habiru have taken the very cities of the king.” If Pharaoh does not send archers, “the land of the king will desert to the habiru.”

Abdi-Heba complains that the pharaoh is not sufficiently helpful to him: “I am treated like a habiru.”

It was not long before some scholars suggested a relationship between “habiru” and the similar-sounding “Hebrew.”

Since then, we have literally hundreds of references to habiru (‘apiru) from Egypt, Nuzi (beyond the Tigris), Syria and Canaan. Most recently an 8.5-inch-high square cuneiform prism was recovered from Anatolia that lists 438 names of habiru.^a We now have a plethora of references to habiru from over a 600-year period, from the 18th to 12th centuries B.C.E.

It is clear from these references, however, that habiru is not an ethnic designation. The habiru are a social element. It is likewise clear from the personal names of individual habiru that they are not from a single linguistic group.

There seem to have been several kinds of habiru—but always of inferior status. The term itself has a negative connotation. The word is sometimes used as a synonym for mutineer or pauper. Sometimes habiru are individuals and sometimes members of a group. Some are servants or slaves. Others are members of robber bands who attack and plunder, especially in times of disintegrating rule. Elsewhere they seem to have become a ruler’s militia. In other instances, individual habiru are recruited as mercenaries into a militia. Sometimes as a benefice, they were given lands and estates.

But they are never mentioned as pastoralists (as are the Hebrews). And they are never referred to as belonging to tribes.

Moreover, as I have shown elsewhere in a discussion too technical for BAR, there is absolutely no linguistic relationship between habiru and Hebrew (‘ivri).³ I have described the effort of some scholars to relate the two as nothing short of “silly” and “absurd mental gymnastics” by “wishful thinkers who tend to ignore the reality of linguistics.”⁴

But another term may indeed have something to do with the early Israelites, not linguistically but socially: namely the shasu who are often found in Egyptian texts and inscriptions of the Late Bronze Age. The Egyptians probably learned the term from West Semites of the Levant. Whether the original meaning of the term was “pastoralist” or “plunderer” is uncertain. What is clear, however, is that the shasu were pastoralists (nomads) who lived in symbiosis with sedentary populations but were prone to violence in times of distress.

The term first appears in the 15th century B.C.E. in Egypt. One inscription refers to “shasu country.” Several different shasu lands appear in Egyptian topographical lists. The shasu are also known from the Amarna Letters referred to above. There the language is Akkadian; the Akkadian form of the term applied to the pastoralist, nomadic element in Canaanite society is sutu. The sutu appear to be Egyptian mercenaries in the Lebanese Beqa‘ near Damascus, where we read of a place called ‘Ain-Shasu.

A text in the hypostyle hall at Karnak that can be dated quite precisely to 1291 B.C.E. (to the reign of Seti I) tells of shasu pastoralists on the mountain ridges of Canaan. They have no regard for the laws of the Egyptian palace. A similar text locates a clash with shasu in northern Sinai or the western Negev.