ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the evidence of written documents and evaluates their contribution to the scholarly debate on the origins of ancient Israel and its kinfolk. In the middle of the second millennium bce new names appear in the documents – mostly Egyptian documents. The Egyptians, who knew the land as Rtnw and its inhabitants mostly as 'mw, began to use new names: Huru and Canaan, Amurru, Aram, Se'ir and Edom, Moab and Israel. The toponyms Se'ir and Edom are derived from the wooded red-stone mountains of Edom. The names Se'ir and Moab appear for the first time in documents from the reign of Ramesses II. The name Edom appears in a document from the reign of Seti II. Archaeology testifies to the resettlement of the Palestinian hill-country – on both sides of the Jordan River – in the Iron I Age, after having been deserted in the Late Bronze Age.
