King Tunip-Tesûsûup of Tikunani, ruler of an obscure Syrian kingdom in the 15th century B.C.E., is mentioned on this 8.5-inch-high prism, which was bought on the antiquities market. The prism lists more than 400 of the king’s workers, many of whom have Hurrian names—as does the king himself, who may have ruled a vassal state of the Mittani kingdom. On the prism, some of the king’s servants are called Hòabiru, a term derived from the Sumerian word for “outcast” and applied to a nomadic Near Eastern people. Some scholars hold that the Hòabiru were the biblical Hebrews.
