Near the bottom of a long boast about his wars, Merneptah's court poet lists the enemies Egypt claims to have crushed in Canaan — and one of them is written with the hieroglyphic marker for a people rather than a city: Israel. It is a single line, hostile in intent, and priceless in effect. A pharaoh's stone-cutters, working around 1208 BC, took it for granted that a people called Israel was already living in Canaan.
- What it is
- Granite victory monument of Pharaoh Merneptah, inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphs
- Date of artifact
- c. 1208 BC
- Discovered
- Merneptah's funerary temple, Thebes, Egypt, 1896 (Flinders Petrie)
- Where it is now
- Egyptian Museum, Cairo
- Related to
- The earliest known mention of the name “Israel” outside the Bible
- Scripture
- Judges 1
What this find showsBy the late thirteenth century BC a people named Israel existed in Canaan and was significant enough for Egypt to name among its enemies.
What it does not proveIt says nothing about how Israel got there — it neither confirms nor describes the exodus or the conquest, and it does not treat Israel as a state with a king.
Sources & further reading