6 - The People of Yahweh

Summary

By my reading of the Egyptian evidence, Yhwʒ is one unit in a coalition of forces that Egypt claimed to have fought and defeated, so as to represent each by a bound prisoner with a distinct label. Together with Trbr, Smt, and Pyspys, Yhwʒ belonged to a “Shasu-land,” not a self-given identity but an Egyptian way to characterize the associated groups and to locate them spatially by a logic that is opaque to us beyond the connection of the mobile pastoralist Shasu with land not occupied by the cities of Canaan and their small subordinate kingdoms. This analysis is intended to embrace a range of possible relationships to the “land” that the Egyptians attributed to this connected Shasu population, but the identification of each individual name with a body of people appears unavoidable. These are not topographical features or gods or sacred places unless they gave their names to the Shasu units thus designated. I find no evidence that in the early 14th century, a Shasu-land was restricted to the southern region later identified with Edom and Seir, though a southern location would not affect the larger interpretation of Yhwʒ as a Shasu group, which I define as a “people.”