More than one attempt has been made to identify the mysterious name with names met with in hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts. The Egyptian monuments refer to a class of foreigners called ’Apuriu, who were employed in the time of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties to convey the blocks of stone needed for the great buildings of Egypt from the quarries of the eastern desert. We are told how they dragged the great altar of the Sun-god to Memphis for Ramses II.; and how, at a much later date, Ramses IV. was still employing eight hundred men of the same race to transport his stone from the quarries of Hammamât. Chabas and some other Egyptologists have seen in these ’Apuriu the Hebrews of Scripture, and have further identified them with the ’Aperu mentioned on the back of a papyrus, where it is said that one of them acted as a sort of aide-de-camp to the great conqueror of the eighteenth dynasty, Thothmes III. But there are serious objections to these identifications.[1] There are reasons for believing that the ’Aperu and the ’Apuriu do not represent the same name; and no satisfactory explanation has hitherto been forthcoming as to why we should meet with Hebrews of the Israelitish race still serving as public slaves in Egypt so long after the Exodus as the reigns of Ramses III. and Ramses IV. Moreover, in one text it is stated that the ’Apuriu belonged ‘to the ’Anuti barbarians,’ who inhabited the desert between Egypt and the Red Sea. It is true that some of the Semitic kinsfolk of the Israelites led a nomad life here in the old times, as they still do to-day; nevertheless, ‘the ’Anuti barbarians’ were for the most part of African origin, and the eastern desert of Egypt is not quite the place where we should expect to find the nearest kindred of a Canaanitish people. At present, at all events, the identification of Hebrews and ’Apuriu must be held to be non-proven. Since the discovery of the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna another attempt has been made to find the name of the Hebrews outside the pages of the Old Testament. Ebed-Tob, the vassal-king of Jerusalem, in his letters to Khu-n-Aten, the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty, speaks of certain enemies whom he terms Khabiri. They were threatening the authority of the Egyptian monarch, and had already captured several of the cities under Ebed-Tob’s jurisdiction. The Egyptian governors in the south of Palestine had been slain, and the territory of Jerusalem was no longer able to defend itself. If the Pharaoh could send no troops at once, all would be lost. The Khabiri, under their leader Elimelech, were already established in the country, and in concert with the Sutê or Bedâwin were wresting it out of the hands of Egypt.[2]