Next oldest record is u-ru-sa-lim of the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba (1330s BCE), which is widely deemed to represent Jerusalem rather than the unfound city (UR or URU) of Salem (SLM) or Usalem (USLM). While petrographic analysis suggests that the fabric of these letters came from the southern Levant between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, there is a dearth of archaeological evidence attesting to any occupation of Jerusalem around this time. Even the Hebrew Bibles asserts that the Israelites had long been stationed if not held in captivity in Egypt, where it is unlikely that they wrote using the same cuneiform as the Amarna letters. Even though the New Kingdom Egyptians claim to have had expelled the Hyksos from the region, the name could still be a survival or corruption of the Hyksos name.
