Archæological discovery, therefore, has as yet given us no help. We must still depend upon the Old Testament alone for an answer to our question, Who were the Hebrews? And, unfortunately, the evidence of the Old Testament is by no means clear. We have seen that on one side by the Hebrews are meant the Israelites, and that from time to time the Israelitish descendants of Abraham are characterised by that name. But on the other side there are passages in which a distinction seems to be made between them. Though Joseph is a Hebrew slave, it is because he has been stolen out of ‘the land of the Hebrews.’ Canaan, accordingly, even before its conquest by the Israelites, was inhabited by a Hebrew people. So, too, in the early days of the reign of Saul, the Israelites and the Hebrews appear to be still separate. While ‘the men of Israel’ hide themselves in caves and thickets, ‘the Hebrews’ cross over the Jordan to the lands of Gad and Gilead (1 Sam. xiii. 6, 7). Similarly we are told that in Saul’s first battle with the Philistines ‘the Hebrews’ that were with the enemy deserted to ‘the Israelites’ that were with Saul (1 Sam. xiv. 21). Perhaps, however, all that is intended in these passages is to emphasise the fact that among the Philistines, as among the Egyptians, the children of Israel were known as ‘Hebrews.’ The difficulty is that such a name is not found in the monumental records of Egypt. When Shishak describes his campaign against Judah and Israel, it is not the Hebrews, but the Fenkhu and the ’Amu whom he tells us he has conquered. In fact, the Egyptian equivalent of Hebrew is ’Amu. What Joseph calls ‘the land of the Hebrews’ would have been termed ‘the land of the ’Amu’ by an Egyptian scribe. Joseph himself would have been an ’Amu slave. ’Amu signified an Asiatic in a restricted sense. It denoted the Asiatics of Syria and of the desert between Palestine and Egypt. It included also the nomad tribes of Edom and the Sinaitic Peninsula. It was thus larger in its meaning than the Biblical ‘Hebrew’; but, at the same time, it conveyed just the same ideas, and was used in much the same way. The Hyksos conquerors of Egypt were termed ’Amu, and a famous Syrian oculist in the days of the eighteenth dynasty is described as an ’Amu of Gebal. The name is probably derived from the Canaanitish and Hebrew word which signifies ‘a people.’