Habiru: Encyclopedia II - Habiru - The sources

Habiru - The sources

Habiru - Sumerian records

Sumerian documents from the reign of Shulgi of Ur (around 2150 BC) describe a class of "unclothed people, who travel in dead silence, who destroy everything, whose menfolk go where they will — they establish their tents and their camps — they spend their time in the countryside without observing the decrees of my king".

Those people are designated by a two-character cuneiform logogram of unknown pronunciation, which is conventionally transcribed as SA.GAZ. Although the logogram occurs in Sumerian literature, the two symbols have no separate meaning in Sumerian. Some scholars have proposed that the logogram was pronounced GUB.IRU in Sumerian.

The SA.GAZ logogram has been identified in some documents with the Akkadian word habbatu which means a "brigand" or "highway robber".

Habiru - Early Mesopotamian sources

The Sumerian logogram SA.GAZ appears in texts from Southern Mesopotamia, dated from about 1850 BC, where it is applied to small bands of soldiers, apparently mercenaries at the services of local city-states and being supplied with food or sheep. One of those texts uses the Akkadian cuneiform word Hapiri instead of the logogram; another described them as "soldiers from the West".

The Tikunani Prism, dated from around 1550 BC, lists the names of 438 Habiru soldiers or servants of king Tunpi-Teššub of Tikunani, a small city-state in central Mesopotamia. The majority of these names are typically Hurrian, the rest is Semitic, one is Kassite.

Another text from around 1500 BC describes the Hapiru as soldiers or laborers, organized into bands of various sizes commanded by SA.GAZ leaders: one band from Tapduwa has 15 soldiers, another from Sarkuhe has 29, and another has 1,436.

Habiru - Canaanite sources

The most significant ancient sources that mention the "Habiru" are some letters sent to pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, around 1340 BC) from vassal kings in Palestine, found in the royal archives known as the Amarna letters. These letters, written by Canaanite scribes in Akkadian language and cuneiform script, complain about attacks by tribes that appear to have been nomads or semi-nomads, and which formed shifting allegiances with one or another kingdom in local wars.

Those people are identified by the Sumerian logogram SA.GAZ in some letters, and by the Akkadian name Hapiru in others. They appear to be active on a broad area including Syria (at Upe near Damascus), Phoenicia (Sumur, Batrun and Byblos), and to the south as far as Jerusalem [1].

Habiru - Egyptian sources

Several Egyptian sources, both before and after the Amarna letters, mention a people called `PR.W in the consonant-only Egyptian script, where .W is the plural marker. The pronuciation of this word has been reconstructed as apiru. From similarity of context and description, it is believed that the Egyptian `PR.W are equivalent to the Akkadian Habiru/Hapiru.

In his account of the conquest of Joppa, General Toth of pharaoh Thutmose III of Egypt (around 1440 BC) asks at some point that his horses be taken inside the city, lest they be stolen by a passing Apir.

On two stelae at Memphis and Karnak, Thutmose III's son Amenhotep II boasts of having made 89,600 prisoners in his campaign in Palestine (around 1420 BC), including "127 princes and 179 nobles(?) of Retenu, 3600 Apiru, 15,200 Bedouin, 36,600 Horites," etc..

A stela from the reign of Seti I (around 1300 BC) tells that the pharaoh sent an expedition into Syria or Palestine, in response to an attack of "the apiru from Mount Yarmuta" upon a local town. An unspecified number of the apiru were captured and brought back to Egypt as slaves. (His son Ramses II is traditionally equated with "the pharaoh" of Exodus, Moses's adversary.)

A list of goods bequeathed to several temples by pharaoh Ramses III (around 1160 BC) includes many serfs, Egyptian and foreign: 86,486 to Thebes (2607 foreigners), 12,364 to Heliopolis (2093 foreign), and 3079 to Memphis (205 foreign). The foreign serfs are described as "maryanu (soldiers), apiru, and people already settled in the temple estate".

Habiru - Hittite sources

The SA.GAZ are mentioned in at least a dozen documents from the Hittite kingdom, starting from 1500 BC or earlier. Several documents contain the phrase "the troops from Hatti and the SA.GAZ troops", Hatti being the core region of the Hittite kingdom. Two oaths from the reigns of Suppiluliuma (probably Suppiluliuma I, reigned ca. 1358 BC – 1323 BC) and Mursilis II (around 1300 BC) invoke, among a long list of deities, "...the Lulahhi gods (and) the Hapiri gods, Ereskigal, the gods and goddesses of the Hatti land, the gods and goddesses of Amurru land, ...".

Another mention occurs in a treaty between kings Duppi-Teshub of Amurru and Tudhaliyas of Carchemish, arbitrated by Mursilis II. The Hittite monarch recalls how he had restored king Abiradda to the throne of Jaruwatta, a town in the land of Barga, which had been captured by the Hurrians and given to "the grandfather of Tette, the SA.GAZ".

Habiru - Mitanni sources

An inscription on a statue found at Alalakh in southwestern Anatolia [2], the Mitanni prince Idrimi of Aleppo (who lived from about 1500 BC to 1450 BC), tells that, after his family had been forced to flee to Emar, he left them and joined the "Hapiru people" in "Ammija in the land of Canaan". The Hapiru recognized him as the "son of their overlord" and "gathered around him;" they are said to include "natives of Halab, of the country of Mushki, of the country Nihi and also warriors from the country Amae." After living among them for seven years, he led his Habiru warriors in a successful attack by sea on the city-state of Alalakh, where he became king.

Habiru - Ugarit

In the port town of Ugarit in northern Syria, a cuneiform tablet that was still being baked when the city was destroyed (around 1200 BC) mentions the PRM (which are assumed to be the Hapiru, -M being the Ugaritic plural suffix).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The sources", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki