The Merneptah Stele

Flinders Petrie discovered the stele in 1896 at the back of Pharaoh Merneptah's mortuary temple in western Thebes, reused face-down as paving — Merneptah had himself usurped a slab originally cut for Amenhotep III. The 10-foot black granite monument bears 28 lines of hieroglyphics cataloging Merneptah's victories around 1208 BC. Most of the text trumpets a Libyan campaign; the closing seven lines turn to Canaan. There the line appears: "Israel is laid waste, his seed is no more." The phrase is the earliest extra-biblical mention of Israel by name. The grammatical determinative attached to the word — three vertical strokes following a seated man and woman — marks Israel as a people group rather than a city or territory, which is the determinative used for Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yenoam in the same passage. In Egyptian scribal convention, that distinction is deliberate. By 1208 BC, Israel was already a recognizable population in Canaan, large enough for a pharaoh to brag about defeating. The find anchors the lower limit for an Israelite presence in Canaan and pushes back against minimalist readings that would deny any Israelite identity before the monarchy. Petrie himself, on first reading the line, reportedly told colleagues, "This stele will be better known in the world than anything else I have found." A duplicate inscription has since been identified at Karnak. The original is in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The boast is the standard pharaonic hyperbole — Israel was clearly not destroyed. Sources: Flinders Petrie, Six Temples at Thebes (1897); Michael G. Hasel, "Israel in the Merneptah Stela," BASOR 296 (1994); James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt (1996); Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (1992).