The Merneptah Stele, also known as the Israel Stele or the Victory Stele of Merneptah, is an inscription by

Merneptah Merneptah or Merenptah (reigned July or August 1213 BC – May 2, 1203 BC) was the fourth pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. He ruled Egypt for almost ten years, from late July or early August 1213 BC until his death on May 2, ...

, a

pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: '' pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the ...

in ancient Egypt who reigned from 1213–1203 BCE. Discovered by

Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egyp ...

at Thebes in 1896, it is now housed at the

Egyptian Museum The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum or the Cairo Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities. It has 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display a ...

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...

. The text is largely an account of Merneptah's victory over the ancient Libyans and their allies, but the last three of the 28 lines deal with a separate campaign in

Canaan Canaan (; Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 – ; he, כְּנַעַן – , in pausa – ; grc-bib, Χανααν – ;The current scholarly edition of the Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus T ...

, then part of Egypt's imperial possessions. It is sometimes referred to as the "Israel Stele" because a majority of scholars translate a set of hieroglyphs in line 27 as "

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

". Alternative translations have been advanced but are not widely accepted. The stele represents the earliest textual reference to Israel and the only reference from ancient Egypt. It is one of four known inscriptions from the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...

that date to the time of and mention

ancient Israel The history of ancient Israel and Judah begins in the Southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. "Israel" as a people or tribal confederation (see Israelites) appears for the first time in the Merneptah Stele, an inscri ...

by name, with the others being the Mesha Stele, the Tel Dan Stele, and the

Kurkh Monoliths The Kurkh Monoliths are two Assyrian stelae that contain a description of the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II and his son Shalmaneser III. The Monoliths were discovered in 1861 by a British archaeologist John George Taylor, who was the British Consu ...

. Consequently, some consider the Merneptah Stele to be Petrie's most famous discovery, an opinion with which Petrie himself concurred.

Description and context

The stele was discovered in 1896 by

in the ancient Egyptian capital of Thebes, and first translated by

Wilhelm Spiegelberg Wilhelm Spiegelberg (25 June 1870, Hannover – 23 December 1930, Munich) was a German Egyptologist. He specialized in analyses of Demotic and hieratic text. Spiegelberg grew up as the second oldest of four brothers in a German Jewish family. He ...

. In his "Inscriptions" chapter of Petrie's 1897 publication "Six Temples at Thebes", Spiegelberg described the stele as "engraved on the rough back of the stele of Amenhotep III, which was removed from his temple, and placed back outward, against the wall, in the forecourt of the temple of Merneptah. Owing to the rough surface, and the poor cutting, the readings in many places require careful examination... The scene at the top retains its original colouring of yellow, red, and blue. Amun is shown giving a sword to the king, who is backed by

Mut Mut, also known as Maut and Mout, was a mother goddess worshipped in ancient Egypt and the Kingdom of Kush in present-day North Sudan. In Meroitic, her name was pronounced mata): 𐦨𐦴. Her name means ''mother'' in the ancient Egyptian l ...

on one side and by

Khonsu Khonsu ( egy, ḫnsw; also transliterated Chonsu, Khensu, Khons, Chons or Khonshu; cop, Ϣⲟⲛⲥ, Shons) is the ancient Egyptian god of the Moon. His name means "traveller", and this may relate to the perceived nightly travel of the Moon ...

on the other". Now in the collection of the

, the stele is a black granite slab, over 3 meters (10 feet) high, and the inscription says it was carved in the 5th year of Merneptah of the 19th dynasty. Most of the text glorifies Merneptah's victories over enemies from Libya and their Sea People allies, but the final two lines mention a campaign in Canaan, where Merneptah says he defeated and destroyed Ashkalon, Gezer, Yanoam and Israel. Egypt was the dominant power in the region during the long reign of Merneptah's predecessor,

Ramesses the Great Ramesses II ( egy, rꜥ-ms-sw ''Rīʿa-məsī-sū'', , meaning "Ra is the one who bore him"; ), commonly known as Ramesses the Great, was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Along with Thutmose III he is often regarded as t ...

, but Merneptah and one of his nearest successors, Ramesses III, faced major invasions. The problems began in Merneptah's 5th year (1208 BC), when a Libyan king invaded Egypt from the west in alliance with various northern peoples. Merneptah achieved a great victory in the summer of that year, and the inscription is mainly about this. The final lines deal with an apparently separate campaign in the East, where it seems that some of the Canaanite cities had revolted. Traditionally the Egyptians had concerned themselves only with cities, so the problem presented by Israel must have been something new – possibly attacks on Egypt's vassals in Canaan. Merneptah and Ramesses III fought off their enemies, but it was the beginning of the end of Egypt's control over Canaan – the last evidence of an Egyptian presence in the area is the name of

Ramesses VI Ramesses VI Nebmaatre-Meryamun (sometimes written Ramses or Rameses, also known under his princely name of Amenherkhepshef C) was the fifth ruler of the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt. He reigned for about eight years in the mid-to-late 12th century ...

(1141–1133 BC) inscribed on a statue base from

Megiddo Megiddo may refer to: Places and sites in Israel * Tel Megiddo, site of an ancient city in Israel's Jezreel valley * Megiddo Airport, a domestic airport in Israel * Megiddo church (Israel) * Megiddo, Israel, a kibbutz in Israel * Megiddo Junctio ...

Lines 26–28

The bulk of the inscription deals with Merneptah's victory over the Libyans, but the last 3 of the 28 lines shift to Canaan: The "nine bows" is a term the Egyptians used to refer to their enemies; the actual enemies varied according to time and circumstance. Hatti and Ḫurru are Levantine, Canaan and Israel are smaller units, and Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam are cities within the region; according to the stele, all these entities fell under the rule of the Egyptian empire at that time.

Line 27

"Israel"

Petrie called upon Wilhelm Spiegelberg, a German philologist in his archaeological team, to translate the inscription. Spiegelberg was puzzled by one symbol towards the end, that of a people or tribe whom Merneptah (also written Merenptah) had victoriously smitten – ''I.si.ri.ar?'' Petrie quickly suggested that it read "''Israel!''" Spiegelberg agreed that this translation must be correct. "Won't the reverends be pleased?" remarked Petrie. At dinner that evening, Petrie who realized the importance of the find said: "This stele will be better known in the world than anything else I have found." The news of its discovery made headlines when it reached the English papers. The line which refers to Israel is below (shown in reverse to match the English translation; the original Egyptian is in

right-to-left script In a script (commonly shortened to right to left or abbreviated RTL, RL-TB or R2L), writing starts from the right of the page and continues to the left, proceeding from top to bottom for new lines. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Pashto, Urdu, Kashmir ...

Determinative

While Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam are given the determinative for a city – a throw stick plus three mountains – the hieroglyphs that refer to Israel instead employ the throw stick (the determinative for "foreign") plus a sitting man and woman (the determinative for "people") over three vertical lines (a plural marker):

T14 A1*B1:Z2s

The

determinative A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may ...

"people" has been the subject of significant scholarly discussion. As early as 1955, John A. Wilson wrote, of the idea that this determinative means the "'ysrỉꜣr" were a people: "The argument is good, but not conclusive, because of the notorious carelessness of Late-Egyptian scribes and several blunders of writing in this stela". This sentiment was subsequently built upon by other scholars. According to ''The Oxford History of the Biblical World'', this "foreign people ... sign is typically used by the Egyptians to signify

nomadic A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the popu ...

groups or peoples, without a fixed city-state home, thus implying a seminomadic or rural status for 'Israel' at that time". The phrase "wasted, bare of seed" is formulaic, and often used of defeated nations – it implies that the grain-store of the nation in question has been destroyed, which would result in a famine the following year, incapacitating them as a military threat to Egypt. Israel segment

According to James Hoffmeier, "no Egyptologists would ever read the signs of a foreign ethnic entity as indicating a foreign land, but a people group". In contrast to this apparent Israelite statelessness, the other Canaanite groups fought by Egypt: Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yano'am, are described in the stele as nascent states.

Alternative translations

Alternatives to the reading "Israel" have been put forward since the stele's discovery, the two primary candidates being as follows: * "Jezreel", a

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

and

valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between hills or mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers or streams ove ...

in northern Canaan; * A continuation of the description of Libya referring to "wearers of the sidelock" However, these remain minority interpretations.

Interpretation

The Merneptah stele is considered to be the first extra-biblical reference to

in ancient history and is widely considered to be authentic and providing historical information. Michael G. Hasel, arguing that ''prt'' on the stele meant grain, suggested that "Israel functioned as an agriculturally based or sedentary socioethnic entity in the late 13th century BCE". and this in some degree of contrast to nomadic "Shasu" pastoralists in the region. Others disagree that ''prt'' meant grain, and Edward Lipinski wrote that "the 'classical' opposition of nomadic shepherds and settled farmers does not seem to suit the area concerned". Hasel also says that this does not suggest that the Israelites were an urban people at this time, nor does it provide information about the actual social structure of the people group identified as Israel. As for its location, most scholars believe that Merneptah's Israel must have been in the hill country of central Canaan.

Karnak reliefs

The stele was found in Merneptah's funerary chapel in Thebes, the ancient Egyptian capital on the west bank of the Nile. On the opposite bank is the Temple of Karnak, where the fragmentary copy was found. In the 1970s Frank J. Yurco announced that some reliefs at Karnak which had been thought to depict events in the reign of

Ramesses II Ramesses II ( egy, rꜥ-ms-sw ''Rīʿa-məsī-sū'', , meaning "Ra is the one who bore him"; ), commonly known as Ramesses the Great, was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Along with Thutmose III he is often regarded as ...

, Merneptah's father, in fact belonged to Merneptah. The four reliefs show the capture of three cities, one of them labelled as

Ashkelon Ashkelon or Ashqelon (; Hebrew: , , ; Philistine: ), also known as Ascalon (; Ancient Greek: , ; Arabic: , ), is a coastal city in the Southern District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, south of Tel Aviv, and north of the border wit ...

; Yurco suggested that the other two were

Gezer Gezer, or Tel Gezer ( he, גֶּזֶר), in ar, تل الجزر – Tell Jezar or Tell el-Jezari is an archaeological site in the foothills of the Judaean Mountains at the border of the Shfela region roughly midway between Jerusalem and Tel Av ...

and Yanoam. The fourth shows a battle in open hilly country against an enemy shown as Canaanite. Yurco suggested that this scene was to be equated with the Israel of the stele. While the idea that Merneptah's Israelites are to be seen on the walls of the temple has had an influence on many theories regarding the significance of the inscription, not all Egyptologists accept Yurco's ascription of the reliefs to Merneptah.

Gallery

File:Merneptah Stele 2022 02.jpg, The stele in the

in 2022, with tourists shown for scale File:Merneptah Stele 2022 (reverse side 02).jpg, The reverse side of the stele File:By ovedc - Egyptian Museum (Cairo) - 172.jpg, The museum label File:Merneptah Stele 2022 (reverse side, top).jpg, Reverse side, top, close up File:Merneptah Stele 2022 09.jpg, Front side, top, close up File:Kairo Museum Merenptah-Stele 01.jpg, The stele in 2019. The bottom section, containing the reference to ''ysrỉꜣr'', has a protective covering File:By ovedc - Egyptian Museum (Cairo) - 174.jpg, Close up of the reference to ''ysrỉꜣr''

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

* * * * * . * * * * * * * * * . * * * * * *

External links

* * {{Authority control 13th-century BC steles 1896 archaeological discoveries Ancient Egyptian stelas Victory steles Ancient Israel and Judah Foreign contacts of ancient Egypt Egyptian Museum Late Bronze Age collapse