The stele was originally Amenhotep III’s. It dates to 1209-1208 BC, which places it during the time of the Judges. The text on the Stele describes the Pharaoh’s raids to Canaan and is known as the earliest non-biblical source that refers to the people of Israel. 2012. However, Noll makes the case that Israel were/was not in the central hill country: Israel… apparently, lived in the vicinity of Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam, thus, perhaps the Cisjordan Highlands or the Jezreel Valley. It might also be considered that Merneptah would find it easier to fight in the plain of Jezreel than in the highlands. I have demonstrated that “iisii-r-iar” is in fact an egyptian sentence meaning: those exiled because of their sin. "Identifying Earliest Israel. Ashkelon is carried off, Israel in the Merneptah Stela* MICHAEL G. HASEL Department of Near Eastern Studies University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85716 The name Israel in the Merneptah stela of ca. ↩, Flinders Petrie, Seventy Years in Archaeology (New York, 1932), 171. Historicity, Canaan is plundered, The southern Negev, according to other New Kingdom Egyptian texts was never conquered, nor did it need to be. There’s one problem with all this: the Israelite Settlement Pattern we went through in the previous post didn’t begin until maybe 50-70 years after Merneptah’s mention of Israel. We can get closer to the intended meaning by … Hjelm, Ingrid and Thomas L. Thompson. It is not impossible that Merneptah did battle with the few people who were living in the hills at that time. Or something. 2002. Quite the statement. The stele was originally erected by Pharaoh Amenhotep III, but later inscribed by Merneptah (1213-1203 BC), the… Miller explains this better than I can: …it makes no difference what the Iron I highlanders called themselves: they were the direct antecedents of Iron II Israel and, thus, “Proto-Israel.” There is direct continuity from the Iron I highlands to Iron II Israel and Judah in pottery, settlements, architecture, burial customs, and metals… So whatever the Iron I highlanders called themselves, by their continuity with Iron II they were nevertheless “those elements that were not yet Israel, but which went into or led up to the creation of Israel” (Thompson 1987:33). ↩, I guess the following labels and who I’ve attached to them say more about me than it does the authors, but, whatever. This I have not yet looked over as it can only be seen a few inches from one’s nose as one lies under the stone; but I must copy it soon.10. Petrie explained this in an 1896 article as follows: That the name here is that of the people Israel, and not of the city Jezreel, is shown by the writing of it with s and not z, and by its being expressly a “people” unlike the other names here, which are those of “places.”16. Well, not Israel to be exact, but rather Is-ri which could read Israel or just Isri, meaning some other ancient civilisation. Elsewhere Flinders Petrie wrote that the destruction and looting Menreptah had inflicted on his predecessor Amenhotep III’s mortuary temple was, …as bad as anything ever done by Turk or Pope…7. Yenoam is brought to nought, While the Bible does not mention Pharaoh Merneptah or his campaign, the Merneptah Stele has great biblical significance. ↩, Petrie MSS 1.13 – Petrie Journal 1895 to 1896 (Thebes). ↩, Michael G. Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (November), no. Some of I could go on, but I won’t. Is punished by King Merenptah, gifted with life, Not one lifts his head among the Nine Bows. ↩, Robert D. Miller II, Chieftains of the Highland Clans: A History of Israel in the Twelfth and Eleventh Centuries B.C. In a row. Available here. ↩, “The final portion of the text is a twelve-line poem of praise which complements the initial encomium. against the Libyans, and, eventually a campaign to Canaan by which a group of people named Israel would have been destroyed. Given the fact that the purpose of the stele is to celebrate the great accomplishments of Pharaoh Merneptah—the most powerful man in the world at the time—the fact that he mentionsIsraelat all is significant. And Dever’s not alone in this. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 451. and Hurru is become a widow because of Egypt. This is the first time the name "Israel" appears outside the Old Testament. ↩, William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, Context of Scripture (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2000), 41. The Merneptah Stele is a 7-foot stone slab with Egyptian hieroglyphics inscriptions dating back to Pharaoh Merneptah (c. 1230 B.C.) corner of the first court. The fact that Merneptah would bother to mention Israel at all as a distinct socio-ethnic group in Canaan indicates that they were a significant military force by 1209 BC. “Ceramics, Ethnicity, and the Question of Israel’s Origin.”. Taken is Gezer, The stele describes the military campaign undertaken in 1207 B.C. If the people living in the villages that make up the Israelite Settlement pattern we looked at in the previous post were the ancestors of people who lived 200 years later that we’re all happy to call “Israel”, it kinda makes sense to associate Merneptah’s “Israel” with either the central hill country (or a part of it), or with a group of people living in it. ↩, Flinders Petrie, Seventy Years in Archaeology (New York, 1932), 172. (Long) Before Pharaoh Merenptah? and makes mention of Israel. On the opposite bank is the Temple of Karnak, where the fragmentary copy was found. As Miller points out, the people determinative is used on this same stele for places, specifically, A thorough examination of Egyptian scribal practice, however, shows the use of the determinative to be almost completely arbitrary… Within the Merneptah Stele itself, in lines 4–5 the Meshwesh, who are definitely a people, have the city-state determinative; in line 5 and line 10 the Libyan people (rbw) have the city-state determinative; and in lines 11 and 21 Libya (Tjehenu [thnw]) has both the people determinative and the city-state determinative. A more recent translation benefiting from more than 100 years of scholarship14 is as follows: The (foreign) chieftains lie prostrate, saying “Peace.” (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1990), 234. “Dating the Emergence of Historical Israel in Light of Recent Developments in Egyptian Chronology.”, This page was last edited on 11 April 2021, at 17:35. Israelite-Origins, The stele of Merneptah contains the oldest mention of Israel in an extra-biblical document. Add word 100. (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 202–203. For example, here’s an excerpt from Hoffmeier’s entry for the Merneptah Stele in Context of Scripture: It has long been noted that the writing of Israel uses the determinative (semantic indicator) for an ethnic group, and not for a geographic region or city. It had evidently stood against the south wall in the corner, and been overthrown forwards. Also, in unrelated but relatively recent Matthew Flinders news… ↩, Let the record show that back when I was 13 years old I delivered the Yorkshire Post on my paper round – a short career that came to a sudden and abrupt end after sleeping in and missing my round. ", J. K. Hoffmeier, "The Egyptian Origins of Israel: Recent Developments in Historiography", in Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider, William H.C. Propp (eds. “So it is, and won’t the reverends be pleased,” was his reply.11. Available here. Powered by. Another artefact cited in support of the later dating of the Exodus is the Merneptah Stele found in the burial crypt of the Pharaoh Merneptah (1213 – 1203) in Thebes. ↩, Michael G. Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (November), no. The people of Israel is laid waste,— their crops are not, The stele measures 10’4” x 5’4”, and is written in Egyptian Hieroglypics. ↩, Flinders Petrie, Six Temples at Thebes, 1896 (London, 1897), 13. Bearing in mind that there is no ‘l’ in the ancient Egyptian alphabet, it is quite feasible that Isri is in fact Israel. Merenptah’s stele. The monument was found where it had once stood in ancient Egypt, at the temple that honored Pharaoh Merneptah. An example of this is the Merneptah Stele. ↩, William G. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? It is a significant historical corroboration of Israel. Merneptah Stele. like the sun every day.13. According to a recently published article by Manfred Görg, Peter van der Veen and Christoffer Theis, the name-ring on the right may indeed read “Israel,” and they date it almost 200 years earlier than the reference to Israel on the Merneptah Stele. The four reliefs show the capture of three cities, one of them labelled as Ashkelon; Yurco suggested that the other two were Geze… ↩, “Poetic lines on this monument mention the conquest of the cities Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yenoam, as well as of Israel, which appears here (as a name of a tribe) for the first and only time in Egyptian sources.” Amihai Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000-586 B.C.E. In 1896 archaeologists discovered a stele in Pharaoh Merneptah’s mortuary temple in Thebes,Egypt. In the 1970s Frank Yurco announced that some reliefs at Karnak which had been thought to depict events in the reign of Ramesses II, Merneptah's father, in fact belonged to Merneptah. Though the end of his reign was peaceful enough Merneptah ruled during the beginning of the Late Bronze Age collapse and he suffered the first waves of the invasions of the Sea People. The latter is more likely since, from archaeological surveys, it would seem that very few people were living in the hills of Canaan. Pharaohs Ramsès II and Merneptah used this sentence when talking about the exiled Akhenaton’s followers, forced to 14 (November 1945), 3. 5, No. A few weeks earlier Flinders Petrie had been in Egypt, excavating temples in Thebes on Luxor’s west bank over the winter of 1895-1896. Conquest, Israelite-Settlement, ↩, K. L. Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction, vol. Discovered in 1896 in Merneptah's mortuary temple in Thebes by Flinders Petrie, the stela is a poetic eulogy to pharaoh Merneptah, who ruled Egypt after Rameses the Great, ca. Within archaeological and historical circles, this stele also became known as the "Israel stele." ↩, Yorkshire Post, April 10, 1896, page 4, column 5. The information below was taken from the article on the Merneptah Stele published in Wikipedia: The Stele The Merneptah Stele-also known as the Israel Stele or… ... Add a meaning Cancel. The Merneptah Stele—also known as the Israel Steleor Victory Stele of Merneptah—is an inscription by the Ancient EgyptiankingMerneptah(1213 BC-1203 BC), which appears on the reverse side of a granite steleerected by the kingAmenhotep III. ‘One of the knottiest problems in the archaeology of metal sources.’, © 2021 Biblical Historical Context. while Hatti is pacified. * The ancient Egyptian inscription dates to about 1205 B.C.E. Israel, Despite these variations in opinion on the validity of the inscriptions historical significance, the Merneptah Stele does suggest some interesting details about early Israel. 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