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The Merneptah Stele — also known as the Israel Stele or Victory Stele of Merneptah is an inscription by the Ancient Egyptian king Merneptah (1213 to 1203 BC), which appears on the reverse side of a granite stele erected by the king Amenhotep III. It was discovered by Flinders Petrie in 1896 at Thebes.

The stele has gained much fame and notoriety for being the only Ancient Egyptian document generally accepted as mentioning "Isrir" or "Israel". It is also, by far, the earliest known attestation of Israel. For this reason, many scholars refer to it as the "Israel stele".

The mention of Israel and Canaan, however, is brief, and a large part of the stele regards Merneptah's campaign against the Libyans.

Content

The black granite stela primarily commemorates a victory in a campaign against the Libu and Meshwesh Libyans and their Sea People allies, but its final two lines refer to a prior military campaign in Canaan in which Merneptah states that he defeated Ashkelon, Gezer, Yanoam and Israel among others.

Discovery

The stele was discovered in 1896 by Flinders Petrie who located it in the first court of Merneptah's mortuary temple at Thebes. and is now in the collection of the Egyptian Museum at Cairo; a fragmentary copy of the stele was also found at Karnak. Petrie immediatedly realized the importance of his find and remarked:

"This stele will be better known in the world than anything else I have found."

The stela has a height of 318 centimetres (or roughly 10 feet) and a width of 163 centimetres. Its text is mainly composed of a prose report with a poetic finish, mirroring other Egyptian New Kingdom stelae of the time. The stela is dated to Year 5, 3rd month of Shemu (summer), day 3 (c.1209/1208 BC), and begins with a laudatory recital of Merneptah's achievements in battle.

Title confusion

This title "Israel Stele" is somewhat misleading because the stele only makes a brief mention of Israel and Canaan, though such an early mention of Israel from a coexisting nation is undoubtably important to Israel's history.

The line mentioning Israel is grouped together with three other defeated states in Canaan (Gezer, Yanoam and Ashkelon). :

"Israel is wasted, bare of seed" or "Israel lies waste, its seed no longer exists"

The reference to Israel on the stele reads right to left Y SYRIA 10,000 determanitive foreign people (Syria 10,000 foreign people) Rktect

(the glyphs should point the other way)

Merneptah also inserted only one stanza about his Canaanite campaigns, but includes multiple stanzas regarding his defeat of the Libyans. The line referring to Merneptah's Canaanite campaign reads:

Canaan is captive with all woe. Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer seized, Yanoam made nonexistent; Israel is wasted, bare of seed.

Historical debate

Merneptah's campaign

There is disagreement over whether or not Merneptah did actually campaign in Canaan and did not merely recount what was there, similar to later Assyrian documents which never contained the admission that Assyria had lost in battle. This argument holds some weight, as a stela by Merneptah's predecessor Ramesses II about the Battle of Kadesh indicates firm control of the Levant, making it strange that Merneptah had to reconquer it – unless Merneptah had faced a revolt in this region that he felt compelled to crush in order to exert's Egypt's authority over Canaan. In this case, Merneptah's control over Canaan was precarious at best.

Mention of Syria as a people rather than a state

"Israel is laid waste; its seed is not." should be translated correctly as Syria

y syr i a 10,000 foreign people	fk.t wr	bn	pr.t	f
Syria 10,000 foreign people	(fkhnw) Syria	bare	house	its

Half a century ago the stela was read as mentioning Israel, that isn't quite correct as you really can't change the order of the letters in a stack. On the other hand the people of Israel in Canaan did have tribes bordering on Syria so even though called Syrians by Merneptahs scribe its really not possible to conclusively determine much about the people reffered to from this passage.

The hieroglyphic determinative for "country" is absent for Israel, but the determinative for many people is clearly there.

While the other defeated Egyptian enemies listed besides Israel in this document such as Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam were given the determinative for a city-state—"a throw stick plus three mountains designating a foreign country"—

The hieroglyphs which refer to Syria employ the determinative sign used for peoples plural with a finger which is the symbol for 10,000 under a mouth or ro meaning portion plus the determinative for the thing itself. This is often misread as a throw stick plus a man and a woman over a mountain which is the determinative for foreign people. over three vertical plural lines it means peoples using the plural.

This sign is typically used by the Egyptians to signify nomadic groups or peoples without a fixed city-state, thus implying a seminomadic or rural status for Israel in Merneptah's Year 5. Apart from this, there is little else that can be concluded about the peoples at this time.

Link to the Shasu

Donald Redford states that "Israel" was a band of Bedouin-like wanderers known to Egyptians as "Shasu" citing a link at the Soleb temple of Amenhotep III to "Yhw- in the land of the Shasu", which has been considered an early form of tetragrammaton.

The shashu are better understood as the original inhabitants of Canaan, the warlike nomadic pastorialist Amalek. The Sons of Israel were not as nomadic as the shashu bedouins and by the time of Merneptah were living in cities anong other people.

This proposed link between the Israelites and the Shasu is undermined, however, by the fact that in the Merneptah stela the Israelites are not depicted as Shasu, but wear the same clothing and have the same hairstyles as the Canaanites, who are shown defending the fortified cities of Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yanoam.

Significance of Israel's mention

Michael G. Hasel, director of the Institute of Archaeology at Southern Adventist University argues that Israel was already a well established political force in Canaan in the late 13th century BCE:

"Israel functioned as an agriculturally based or sedentary socioethnic entity in the late 13th century BCE one that is significant enough to be included in the military campaign against political powers in Canaan. While the Merneptah stela does not give any indication of the actual social structure of the people of Israel, it does indicate that Israel was a significant socioethnic entity that needed to be reckoned with."

See also

• Mesha Stele
• Tel Dan Stele
• Shasu
• The Israel Stela

Notes

1. Carol A. Redmount, 'Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt' in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed. Michael D. Coogan, (Oxford University Press: 1999), p.97
2. Ian Shaw & Paul Nicholson, The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, British Museum Press, (1995), pp.183-184
3. Redmount, op.cit., p.97
4. Margaret Drower, Flinders Petrie: A life in Archaeology, London: Victor Gollancz, 1985. p.221
5. Alessandro Bongioanni & Maria Croce (ed.), The Treasures of Ancient Egypt: From the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Universe Publishing, a division of Ruzzoli Publications Inc., 2003. p.186
6. The Victory Stela of Merneptah
7. In the original text, the bird (a swallow) is placed below the t sign (a semicircle) but for reasons of legibility, the bird is here placed next to the t sign.
8. (y isr ia y) According to Flinders Petrie.
9. Redmount, op.cit., p.97
10. Stager, Lawrence E., "Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel" in Michael Coogan ed. The Oxford History of the Biblical World, Oxford University Press, 2001. p.92
11. M. G. Hasel, "Israel in the Merneptah Stela," BASOR 296, 1994, pp.54 & 56, n.12.

References

• Coogan, Michael D., 1999. The Oxford History of the Biblical Word, Oxford University Press
• Görg, Manfred. 2001. "Israel in Hieroglyphen." Biblische Notizen: Beiträge zur exegetischen Diskussion 106:21–27.
• Hasel, Michael G. 1994. "Israel in the Merneptah Stela." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 296:45–61.
• Hasel, Michael G. 1998. Domination and Resistance: Egyptian Military Activity in the Southern Levant, 1300–1185 BC. Probleme der Ägyptologie 11. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-10984-6
• Hasel, Michael G. 2003. "Merenptah's Inscription and Reliefs and the Origin of Israel" in Beth Alpert Nakhai ed. The Near East in the Southwest: Essays in Honor of William G. Dever, pp. 19–44. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 58. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. ISBN 0-89757-065-0
• Hasel, Michael G. 2004. "The Structure of the Final Hymnic-Poetic Unit on the Merenptah Stela." Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 116:75–81.
• Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. 1994. "The Physical Text of Merneptah's Victory Hymn (The 'Israel Stela')." Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 24:71–76.
• Kitchen, Kenneth A. Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated & Annotated Translations. Volume 4: Merenptah & the Late Nineteenth Dynasty. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2003. ISBN 0-631-18429-5
• Kuentz, Charles. 1923. "Le double de la stèle d'Israël à Karnak." Bulletin de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale 21:113–117.
• Lichtheim, Miriam. 1976. Ancient Egyptian Literature, A Book of Readings. Volume 2: The New Kingdom. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Manassa, Colleen. 2003. The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah: Grand Strategy in the Thirteenth Century BC. Yale Egyptological Studies 5. New Haven: Yale Egyptological Seminar, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale University. ISBN 0-9740025-0-X
• Redford, Donald Bruce. 1992. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Redmount, Carol A. 'Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt' in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed: Michael D. Coogan, (Oxford University Press: 1999),
• Stager, Lawrence E. 1985. "Merenptah, Israel and Sea Peoples: New Light on an Old Relief." Eretz Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographic Studies 18:56*–64*.
• Stager, Lawrence E. 2001. "Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel" in Michael Coogan ed. The Oxford History of the Biblical World, pp. 90–129. New York: Oxford University Press.

• Ancient Egyptian stelas
• Ancient Israel and Judah
• 13th century BC works
• 1200s BC
• Ancient Egyptian scribal works