Merneptah Stele

Description and context

The stele was discovered in 1896 by Flinders Petrie in the ancient Egyptian capital of Thebes, and first translated by Wilhelm Spiegelberg. 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 on one side and by Khonsu on the other".

Now in the collection of the Egyptian Museum at Cairo, 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, but Merneptah and one of his nearest successors, Ramesses III, faced major invasions. The problems began in Merneptah's 5th year (1208), 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 (1141–1133) inscribed on a statue base from Megiddo.

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 Syro-Palestine, 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.

"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:

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):

The determinatives "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 that: "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 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.

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:

• "Jezreel", a city and valley in northern Canaan;
• A continuation of the description of Libya referring to "wearers of the sidelock"

However, these remain minority interpretations.

Interpretation

It is not clear, however, just who this Israel was or where they were located. The reference to Israel in the stele has spawned two major schools of thought. The traditional schools of thought identify the 'Israel' in the stele with the Biblical Israel. However, the inquiries of the minimalist school of thought which doubts the biblical narrative's antiquity have impacted on the interpretation of the stele. For the "who", if those depicted on the battle reliefs of Karnak are the Israelites, then Merneptah's Israelites are therefore Canaanites, because they are depicted in Canaanite costume; if, on the other hand, the Karnak reliefs do not show Merneptah's campaigns, then the stele's Israelites may be "Shasu", a term used by the Egyptians to refer to nomads and marauders.

Similarly, if Merneptah's claim to have destroyed Israel's "seed" means that he destroyed its grain supply, then Israel can be taken to be a settled, crop-growing people; if, however, it means he killed Israel's progeny, then Israel can be taken to be pastoralists, i.e. Shasu. The normative Egyptian use of "wasted, bare of seed" was as a repeated, formulaic phrase to declare victory over a defeated nation or people group whom the Egyptian army conquered and had literally destroyed their grain supply in the specific geographic region that they inhabited. 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. Biblical scholar Thomas L. Thompson writes that "this name in the Merneptah inscription of the late thirteenth-century might conceivably understand it as the name of a region, in polarity with the clearly geographical name: Canaan." Also, "The group 'Israel'.. are rather a very specific group among the population of Palestine which bears a name that occurs here for the first time that at a much later stage in Palestine's history bears a substantially different signification." For, "References to the Merneptah stele are not really helpful. This text renders for us only the earliest known usage of the name 'Israel'." So, "to begin the origins of biblical Israel with Merneptah.. on the grounds that we have extra-biblical rather than biblical attestation is willful. These texts are, mirabile dictu, even less relevant than the biblical traditions."

As for its location, most scholars believe that Merneptah's Israel must have been in the hill country of central Canaan, but some think it was across the Jordan, others that it was a coalition of Canaanite settlements in the lowlands of the Jezreel valley (the potential Israelites on the walls of Karnak are driving chariots, a weapon of the lowlands rather than the highlands), and others that the inscription gives very little useful information at all.

Karnak reliefs

The stele was found in Merenptah'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 Yurco announced that some reliefs at Karnak which had been thought to depict events in the reign of Ramesses II, Merenptah's father, in fact belonged to Merenptah. The four reliefs show the capture of three cities, one of them labelled as Ashkelon; Yurco suggested that the other two were Gezer 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.