Labaya
14th-century BCE (Amarna period) ruler or warlord in the central hill country of southern Canaan (Samaria)
Labaya (Labayu or Lib'ayu) was a Canaanite prince and the ruler of Shechem in the central hill country of southern Canaan during the Amarna Period (c. 1350 BC). He lived contemporaneously with the pharaoh Akhenaten. Labaya is mentioned in several of the Amarna Letters (abbreviated "EA", for 'el Amarna'). He is the author of letters EA 252–54.
Labaya was active over the whole length of Samaria and slightly beyond, as he gave land to Ḫapiru in the vicinity of Šakmu (Shechem). He and his sons threatened powerful city-states such as Jerusalem and Gazru (Gezer) to the south and Magidda (Tel Megiddo) to the north.
Career
The Amarna letters give an incomplete look at Labaya's career. In the first of Labaya's letters thus far discovered (EA 252), he defends himself to the Pharaoh against complaints of other city rulers about him, for example, the complaint that he has hired mercenaries from among the Habiru. Labaya further admitted to having invaded Gezer and insulting its king Milkilu.
“Labaya” enters the record as 14th-century BCE (Amarna period) ruler or warlord in the central hill country of southern Canaan (Samaria). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Labaya, 14th-century and Amarna can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q359130. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1350.
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This entry incorporates text from “Labaya” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.