HABIRU. - In numerous documents of the ancient Near East, varying in age and provenance, mention is made of groups and of persons called H.
In the time of Hammurabi (v.), they are found at Larsa as mercenary soldiers, at Babylon likewise as mercenaries, in the texts of Mari as bands of nomadic robbers, at Alishar as prisoners. Later, in the Hittite inscriptions, they are still seen enlisted as mercenaries; in the tablets of Nuzi they appear as a class of individuals who do not possess all civil rights and perform their labor as servants. In the texts of el-Amarna the H. figure as bands that operate both as hirelings in the service of princes and on their own account. They are also found in certain Assyrian and Babylonian texts of the 13th and 11th centuries B.C.
Furthermore, Egyptian documents from the age of the Ramesses (19th dynasty) speak of 'pr (cf. E. A. Speiser [v. bibl.], p. 38, note 93), and recently discovered Ugaritic texts likewise bear the name 'pr.
From this it follows that H. are encountered from Asia Minor as far as Egypt and the Persian Gulf in a period extending from the 18th to the 11th century B.C. The common characteristics are the following: everywhere they appear as foreigners who readily form bands of mercenaries in the service of the State, or else perform service for private individuals, as at Nuzi. Wherever authority makes itself less felt, they act as brigands, or as independent warriors. For the most part the H. come from the frontiers of the country where sedentary peoples and nomads meet and mingle; and if they do not belong to the type of the great nomads, they belong at least to the semi-nomads, capable of serving as auxiliary troops, or for their own advantage, in the capacity of laborers, skilled also in organizing plunder. In their ranks are adventurers from every quarter, fugitives undesirable in their lands of origin.
The designation H. has taken on different meanings. At first it was a simple appellation, which on the one hand meant the semi-nomads, on the other the bodies of troops, or the bands of either the Gum or the Rezzu type, of which these semi-nomads were the principal element. The name thus came to connote the social status of these peoples, until the Ḥ. more or less settled in the great States; but not assimilated to the citizens, living a life more or less similar to that of the Cossacks, or in the manner of colonial laborers grouped together in the metropolises of today, lending their services, and also their freedom, in order to be able to live. Finally, as a result of the principal recruitment of these bands and of this social class, the name took on an ethnic character, and the Ḥ., especially in the Hittite region, had sacrifices offered in their own name, had their own gods and even their own eponymous god: Ḥabiri.
The ideogram that designates the Ḥ. is SA-GAZ, which is sometimes found simplified as GAZ, or corrupted as SAC-GAZ, and means "brigand."
The name Ḥ., a corresponding phonetic sound, has been interpreted in different ways. The form 'pr, furnished by the Egyptian and Ugaritic texts, seems to exclude any etymology that supposes a primitive ḥ as the first radical (the ḥ is a cuneiform transcription of ', the reverse being impossible). Therefore the root is 'pr, which can also appear in the form 'br (cf. W.-F. Albright [v. bibl.], p. 32; E. A. Speiser, p. 40 ff.). It seems that the vocalization imposes on this form the stative value of "someone who is passing, going from one place to another" (= nomad), and not the active value, "one who crosses" (cf. E. A. Speiser, p. 40, note 26).
Can Ḥ. and Hebrews be identified? Here is the prudent answer of R. de Vaux: "...regarding the problem of the Ḥ., for which Ras Shamra has brought a new element..., the concordance with the Hebrews becomes more difficult to ascertain."
It seems that the Hebrews, by their manner of life and by their customs preserved even after definitively settling in one place, originally belonged to the Ḥ., but not all the Ḥ. are Hebrews.
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Renato Follet