The Merneptah Stele
is an ancient record by an Egyptian pharaoh, Merneptah, documenting his war
with the Libyans and the successes and/or failures from it. Merneptah ruled from 1213 to 1203 BCE. The stele that he had commissioned was
inscribed on the back of an existing stele, and this contributed to why it was
not discovered until 1896 AD[1]. The engraving of a stele or a relief was not
an uncommon practice in ancient times, and defiantly not for the Egyptians;
however, what sets this one apart from the others is that it contains a
reference a little more than 100 lines in to some small territories in the land of Canaan,
one of which is Isrir, or Israel. This is commonly regarded as the first
instance of Israel
in recorded history, excluding the biblical sources.
There has been and
still is some debate over associating the reference to Israel in the Merneptah Stele with the biblical Israel. This debate ranges from where to place the
designated people, whether or not they can be regarded as a separate people, or
if the scribe making the stele used an incorrect term designating Israel as a
people instead of a location, or misspelled Israel altogether.
Merneptah carried out
several military campaigns during his reign, mostly concerned with the Libyans
that were threatening Egypt
from the west. The stele in question is
the record of one of these campaigns conducted against the Libyans[2]. The main relevant text of the stele is as
follows:
The princes are prostrate, saying
“Peace!”
Not one raises his head among the
Nine Bows.
Desolation is for Tehenu; Hatti is
pacified;
plundered is Canaan
with every evil;
carried off is Ashkelon;
seized
upon is Gezer;
Yeno`am is made as that which does
not exist.
Israel is laid waste, his seed is
not;
Kharu has become a widow because of Egypt!
All lands together are pacified;
Everyone who was restless has been
bound
By the King of Upper and
Lower Egypt:
Ba-en-Re Meri-Amon; the
Son of Re:
Mer-ne-Ptah
Hotep-hir-Maat, given life
like Re every day.[3]
There have been many
interpretations and much speculation both in and out of the academic community
regarding just these few short lines of the Stele. There are those that have understood the
placement of the name of Israel
in the text to be significant to the actual physical location of the
people. The essay by Gitten, Wright, and
Dessel said “[i]n the stela, Israel
is situated within the geographical confines of Canaan and Hurru, as are the
city-states/kingdoms of Ashkelon, Gezer,
and Yanoam. The word ‘Israel’ in the
stela is defined as a rural or tribal entity by the determinative for ‘people’”[4]. This can be compared and contrasted with what
Sparks wrote regarding the wording, specifically
the determinative used by the Egyptian scribe relative to the word that is
translated as Israel. “The Egyptian text provides a determinative
before the name of each toponym, and in every case but one the same determinative
is used. The exception is Israel, which
is proceeded by the determinative for people rather than land. The scribe was consistent throughout the
Stela, so we should conclude that he intentionally distinguished the People of
Israel from other peoples.”[5] According to Sparks,
the determinative is designating that the people of Israel
are separate and distinct from the other people in the surrounding areas of Canaan, as opposed to the view espoused by Gitten et al
that it referred to a specific rural location.
Another part of the
Stele that should be looked at closely along with the translations of it is the
specific line containing the word Israel. Two reputable sources, Hasel and Ahlstrom,
both provide translations that are the same except for the use of one
pronoun. In Hasel, the line is
translated “Israel is laid
waste, its seed is not.”[6], and
in Ahlstrom it is translated as “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not”[7]. This small difference could also account for
a large misunderstanding of what Israel is referring to as
well. Going with the translation that
Hasel provides and using the pronoun ‘its’, this reflects back to a thing. This thing in this instance would be most likely
be a physical location; a section or area of land. Due to the placement of the comma as
punctuation, it can be interpreted as the land referred to as Israel is wasted
and there is no more grain there, or, if the emphasis on the words changes
slightly but still using the same punctuation, it can be interpreted as meaning
that the land of Israel is wasted, but the grain is not wasted, it
survived. While it is possible to
translate either way with this line, it is more likely that it is the first
instance in this case; being that the land and grain both were destroyed. Taking the second translation, however, and
using the more commonly found pronoun of ‘his’, this brings to mind the
connotation of a people or a nation. Using
this translation, it is more appropriate that the Israel that is referred to is a nation
with an independent identity. Indeed,
this connotation of Israel
lies more so in line with the traditional biblical account of Israel being a people that are all descended
from Jacob, whose name was changed by God to Israel[8].
Interestingly, while
Ahlstrom uses the translation with the pronoun ‘his’, he refers to the Stele as
describing a both physical location and a national people. “In
light of the ABCD ring structure [of the layout of the nations and city-states
in the Stele] mentioned, two possible conclusions can be drawn about Israel’s
location, depending upon one’s assessment of the author’s knowledge of ancient
Palestine and his precision in using terminology. If Hatti is used in its usual sense to designate
Asia Minor and Syria,
then it is possible to conclude that the author intended them to be two
complementary subregions which together comprised the larger region of Syria-Palestine. In the same way, Canaan and Israel could be
used here to subdivide the narrower area of Cisjordanian Palestine into two
complementary sections which together would represent the whole. It is possible that Israel then has
been used to represent the hill country area.
It could represent an accurate association of the people of Israel with the hill country population,
suggesting that the Egyptian scribe did not know of a specific term for the
Palestinian hill country, such as Ephriam, but did know that a group of people
called Israel
lived there.”[9]
Regarding the actual
name Israel used in the
Merneptah Stele, Sparks
has further comment. “Israel is not an Egyptian term and therefore
cannot be viewed as an Egyptian exonym.
It is clearly Western Semitic and must be either the name that Israel used for
itself or that another Western Semetic culture applied to them. Israel is recognised as being made
up of a combination of El and and combination of sara and srr, or ysr / sr which means to rule or be
upright. Thus, it can be translated as
Jacob struggles with El or El persists.
Due to this, it is most likely that we are dealing with an endonym, or a
name that Israel
gave themselves.”[10] This would also support the biblical idea
that Israel
is a nation in and of themselves, separate from the Canaanites and the
surrounding nations, and that they also had their own region that they
occupied.
There
is another theory that has been proposed to the basis of the name Israel. It has been proposed that Israel is constructed from the names of Isis, Ra, and El; the gods of the regional area from that
time. Isis
was also known as Issa, (the wife of Ra), Ra was the Egyptian sun god, and El
was the Israelite name for God. When
combined, the names Issa + Ra + El would form the word Israel[11]. While it is completely feasible that a cross
pollination of deities occurred in this local region, and there is no reason
that some of the religious beliefs could have been shared and adopted from
culture to culture, the formation of the name Israel in this manner is reliant
upon using the English translations of these names, and as such makes this
point mute.
There
are also those who refute that Israel
as taken from the Merneptah Stele refers to the biblical Israel. When excluding the biblical sources and
relying just on the extrabiblical sources, there is a gap of approximately four
hundred years from when the Merneptah Stele was inscribed and the iteration of
Israel in historic record[12]. It is feasible that this few hundred year gap
could be explained by a number of things such as an expanding national identity
by Israel so that it had not yet reached a significant enough size to be
documented, or that Israel was taken into slavery by Egypt or Babylon or
another larger nation as is recorded as happening in the bible, and these
nations did not record the name of the enslaved nations, to name a few. Another possibility, though, is raised by
Hasel. He stated that the view that the
term Israel on the Merneptah
Stela is unrelated to the people Israel of the Hebrew Bible was a
position taken by Margalith based on the 1948 suggestion of Driver that the
Egyptian s could be the Hebrew z. This means that the name
would be translated as Iezree,l which
could be an inexperienced scribe’s rendering of Yezreal, the valley to the north of the country. Further, he states that this would fit the
comment at the end that says that Israel has no seed and conform to
the rest of the inscription which has location names[13].
There
are still other experts that suggest that the last few lines of the stele’s
inscription are the lyrics to a poem or victory anthem honouring the pharaoh’s
military prowess[14]. The mention of the defeated tribes could be
intended to remind the people of the previous victories that Egypt had
had. The fact that it contained the word
Isrir, is substantially different and unique from what has been discovered in
that time era. It is known that rules
from that time, (and somewhat still today even) would exaggerate their
accomplishments and victories[15]. One such reason for the sceptical side of the
Merneptah’s Stele in relation to Israel is that there are no other
records from that time dictating military campaigns into the Canaanite
region.
One possible reason
that there are no other references to Israel by themselves could be that at
this point in history they were similar in features to the Canaanites, and they
may have just been included in the records under the name Canaan[16]. The Merneptah reliefs depict both the
Canaanites and the Israelites as having the same hairstyles and clothing. These similarities between the Canaanites and
the Israelites could lend themselves easily to an understanding of the
appropriation of the Israelite or Canaanite legacy by different groups when
looking at history.
In conclusion, the
Merneptah Stele holds the records of the pharaoh Merneptah’s military exploits
into and around the area of Canaan. While there is a lot of information contained
in the Stele itself, there is a large amount of conjecture and speculation that
accompanies it. The nature of the
leaders of the time to exaggerate their exploits causes some of the details to
be questioned. Further, while the Stele
does mention Israel, there
is as of yet no definitive answer as to the relationship to the biblical Israel, or if
this was reference to another people or place that was similar. Until there is more evidence of use of the
name Israel during this time
discovered, the speculation on what significance and insights the Stele can
offer the modern world on the nature and existence of ancient Israel will
continue to be debated.
Bibliography
Arcaeologica.org
http://archaeologica.boardbot.com/viewtopic.php?t=1461 (Accessed 20 Oct 2011)
Ahlstrom,
G., and Edelman, D. (1985). ‘Merneptah’s Israel’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies.
44.1. pp. 59-61.
Hasel,
M. (1994). ‘Israel in the Merneptah Stela’, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental
Research. No. 296. pp.
45-61.
Holy Bible, The. King James Version. 1989.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Salt
Lake City, UT.
Sparks,
K. (1998). ‘Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song’, Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel. pp.
94-124.
wiseGEEK.com http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-merneptah-stele.htm (Accessed 20 Oct 2011)
The
Bible and Interpretation. http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/emeyers.shtml (Accessed 20 Oct 2011)
[3] Ahlstrom, Merneptah’s Israel, p. 60
[5]
Sparks, Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s
Song, p. 105
[6]
Hasel, Israel in the Merneptah Stela, p. 45
[7] Ahlstrom, Merneptah’s Israel, p. 60
[8] Genesis 32:28
[9]
Ahlstrom, Merneptah’s Israel, p.
60-61
[10]
Sparks, Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s
Song, p. 107
[12]
Sparks, Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s
Song, p. 96
[13]
Hasel, Israel in the Merneptah Stela, p. 46
[15] Ibid
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