the first hebrews appear in the amarna letters of the kings of egypt, the phoenician king of tyre wrote that they were confederates bandits called habiru of the rebelling amorites and that pharaoh needed to send him more archers, and they were also doing some shit around the jordan river under a warlord named labaya (saul) and dadua (david). the amorites rebelled against egypt using the habiru and joined the hittite empire. by 1200 bc the ramessids had re-established control over israel, but by 1000 bc the syrians were the main power in the region and the amorites were gone. merenptah referred to the destruction of israel in a stele commemorating his defeat of the sea people and libyans. the assyrians broke the syrians and the hebrews touched up the myths the amorites stole from the sumerians and added in a bunch of fables about how they beat the ramessids who barely fucking knew they existed. the amorites were also habiru. the egyptians called them shasu, which comes from shutu, suteans, as they were called by assyrians, but which the sumerians called tidanu, the people of didanu/ditanu, the king of the rephaim and ancestor of the amorites. > as pointed out by moore and kelle, while the apiru/habiru may be related to the biblical hebrews, they also appear to be composed of many different peoples, including nomadic shasu/shutu, the biblical amorites, midianites, edomites, kenites, and amalekites, as well as displaced peasants and pastoralists > on the habiru and their relations with the hebrews, see the summary of research and recent bibliography in r. de vaux, histoire ancienne d'israel, pp. 202-8 ("habiru-capiru was an ethnic term designating one of the semitic groups of the west, 'amorites' or 'proto-aramaeans,' with whom we have connected the patriarchs," p. 208). see also albright, from the stone age, pp. 238 if.; albright, yahweh and the gods of canaan, pp. 75 if.; fohrer, history of israelite religion, p. 30 (notes 8-10 contain bibliographies)
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