This post is a response to Hydarnes’ reply to my informing him that the Merneptah Stele
does not verify that the biblical Israel was inhabiting Palestine at the time that Merneptah’s stele is dated to, i.e. c.1205 BCE. Of course, Hydarnes denied this fact, which he is fully entitled to do, however, I feel it is my duty to reply to him.
At the outset I would like to say that Hydarnes claim that the two ‘Israels’ are the same entity is not taken as certain by
ANY historian of the ancient near east, I hope to demonstrate that below.
The Merneptah Stele is the only early Egyptian source that mentions ‘Israel’ and I don’t think any one would argue that this source has probably been scrutinised and written about more than any other ancient Egyptian artefact.
For those that don’t know about the Stele, and for some of those who think they know, the stele is a victory inscription hailing the Pharaoh Merneptah’s successful campaign against the Libyans at the end of the 13th century BCE (low chronology). In a few lines at the end, in a sort of appendix, the inscription, however, there is also mention of a campaign in western Asia ( Niels Peter Lemche The Israelites in history and tradition. London : SPCK ; Louisville : Westminster John knox Press, 1998. p.35)
in the translation of John A. Wilson:
‘
The princes are prostrate, saying: "Mercy!"
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;
Yanoam is made as that which does not exist; Israel is laid waste, his seed is not;
Hurru has become a widow for Egypt! All lands together, they are pacified;
Everyone, who was restless, he has been bound.’
It goes without saying that many people were highly excited over the mention of Israel in a non-biblical source and their theories and hypotheses put forward on behalf of this Israel have been many and varied. The early scholars had no doubt that the Israel of the Stele and the Israel of the Bible were the same entity, but this is not surprising, back in the early days when biblical archaeology WAS a discipline everything that an archaeologist found in Palestine was automatically compared with the biblical text, nothing was examined independent of the Bible. But, since the early 1970’s, with the arrival of the ‘New Archaeology’, these ‘archaeologists’ could no longer misrepresent the evidence and link it without any justification to the Bible, they had to justify their inferences, which was normally way beyond their capabilities. One of the main problems was that nearly all of these ‘biblical archaeologists’ were not trained archaeologists, they were mostly Christians from American protestant Bible colleges and seminaries, they were far too subjective and far too quick to make links between artefacts and the Bible. Today, most of the ‘established facts’ of these so-called ‘biblical archaeologists’ have been re-examined and reinterpreted and with the vast improvements in excavation techniques and philology, these ‘archaeologists’ have been forced to withdraw their previous erroneous claims, needless to say, this also goes for the conclusions about the ‘Israel’ of the Merneptah Stele.
To demonstrate how proponents of the claim that the two ‘Israels’ are one and the same, I would like to show how selective these people are, either that or they are extremely poor researchers. In order to do this, I have decided to use Hydarnes response to my informing him that there are difficulties in identifying the two groups as the same entity because these responses are essentially the same information that the amateur ‘historian’ regurgitates when confronted with questions about the stele.
Also, as Hydarnes has also attacked my integrity and my knowledge of the subject, I think I deserve a chance to put the record straight. I was fortunate enough to download his reply before the thread collapsed.
When I informed Hydarnes that the Stele does not PROVE that the ‘Israel’ of the Stele were settled in Canaan he replied that
Unless of course you can offer me some sort of plausible explanation (based on something substantial) for why Israel would be mentioned in context of his Canaanite victories if it proves that they weren’t occupying it.
Now the thing is, the text only says that ‘Israel is laid waste, his seed is not’, that is the entire reference to an ‘Israel’ in the Merneptah Stele. True, it does
suggest that this ‘Israel’ was encountered in Palestine because the preceding three names are all lands within Palestine, it does not suggest that the ‘Israel’ was already settled in Palestine.
The context of the Stele does not have to mean that the Israelites were occupying an area of Palestine at all, it only
suggests that Merneptah engaged them in battle there, a campaign BTW that many doubt actually happened (Redford, Donald B. The Ashkelon Relief at Karnak and the Israel Stela. Israel Exploration Society 36: p.188)
197). The ‘Israel’ of the Stele do not have to be occupying Palestine, they could have been a semi-nomadic people in the process of looking for a permanent home, but the stele says that the Israel that Merneptah encountered was not a land called Israel, it was a people called Israel, and it doesn’t state that they were living in Canaan, to say they were is reading beyond the text.
There are other contexts as well that have been proposed to explain the mention of an ‘Israel’ in the Merneptah Stele, Gary Rendsburg proposes that Rameses III was the pharaoh of the exodus, and he interpreted the Merneptah Stele in a way that disagrees with the ‘already occupying Canaan’ hypothesis.
I understand the line about Israel as a reference to the slavery period. This will explain the use of the people-determinative; they are not a foreign country but are a people living in Egypt. The hymn's author knew that Israel originated in Canaan and therefore included mention of them between Canaan and Hurru. If the Merneptah Stele refers to an Egyptian victory over the Israelites after the exodus, as the 15th-century dating presupposes and as many varieties of the 13th-century dating assume, one would expect some mention of this encounter in the Bible. As many scholars have recognized, the biblical writers did not shy away from including material about Israel's defeats. In short, the Merneptah Stele refers to the Israelites while still in Egypt. (I do not mean to imply that it was Merneptah who instituted the slavery. I believe this was accomplished by Rameses II [1279-1212 B.C.E.] and that the slavery continued under Merneptah. In any case, this point has no direct effect on the issue under discussion.)
Evidence in support of this interpretation is forthcoming from the unique determinative used to indicate the Israelites. Scholar after scholar has noted that whereas Ashkelon, Gezer, Yenoam, etc. are referred to with the foreign-land determinative (N25), Israel is followed by the people-determinative consisting of man (Al), woman (Bl), and plural sign (Z2). F. J. Yurco and L. E. Stager attempted to show that this determinative was not unique, since other peoples mentioned in the Merneptah Stele are also so indicated. But this is not correct. True, a distinction is made between the place Libya and the people Libyans, by using N25 (with Z2) for the former and N25 and Al (with Z2) for the latter. The Sea Peoples are similarly referred to. In the case of the Aqawasha, the same combination of N25 and Al (with Z2) is used. In the case of the Tursha, Shardana, and Shekelsha, only N25 (with Z2) is used, and in the case of the Luka only N25 (without Z2) is used.
What are we to make of this employment of different determinatives to represent foreign people and lands? On the one hand, Israel is akin to the Sea Peoples (except for the Aqawasha) in that they are a people without a land. This would be true of the Sea Peoples during their invasion of Egypt; they had already departed from their Mediterranean homes and were in search of a new land. (The Libyans, by contrast, are indicated by both foreign-land determinative and people-determinative, because they were a people who resided in a foreign land.) Israel is likewise a people without a land; they do not actually live in Canaan or in any foreign land for that matter, so no foreign-land determinative is used in connection with them. On the other hand, the determinative used for Israel is different from the one used to indicate the Sea Peoples because the woman-sign (B2) is included. This is an important clue. It means that the entire nation, women (and by extension children) included, is homeless. The situation which best fits this description of Israel is, of course, the slavery period. As the book of Exodus makes clear, Israelite women were also present in Egypt at this time (in fact, they figure prominently in Exod. i-xv). Alternatively, Israel in the Merneptah Stele could refer to Israelite elements in Canaan who never experienced the eisodus, slavery, and exodus (Rendsburg G, 1992 The Date of the Exodus and the Conquest/ Settlement: The Case for the 1100s. Vetus Testamentum 42: 517-18).
This is only one very plausible alternative hypothesis, the Egyptian scribe, according to Rendsburg, knew that the Israelites slaves had originally entered Egypt from Canaan, and simply included them in the Stele where he would have expected to have found some other Israelites, he wasn’t aware of the belief that all of ‘Israel’ had come out of Egypt. Obviously, I personally do not agree with this hypothesis, or any other one that claims an Exodus from Egypt and a conquest of Canaan, but the challenge was to provide any alternative explanation for the context in which ‘Israel’ appears in the Merneptah Stele, and Rendsburg provides one.
If we actually look at the name ‘Israel’ itself in the Stele it doesn’t
have to be translated as ‘Israel’ there are other alternative translations. When I suggested this to Hydarnes he retorted that this claim was ‘
What sheer poppycock and you know it. . Well, the claim is not ‘sheer poppycock’, the name ‘Israel’ on the Stele has been translated several ways, and for someone who claims to be an ‘expert’ I am surprised that he is unaware of this. I would like to say that the most
likely translation is in fact ‘Israel’, but there are scholars who claim that it doesn’t have to be translated as such.
For example, according to Othniel Margalith the ‘Israel’ of the Merneptah Stele is unrelated to the people of the Bible. His conclusions were based on the suggestion that the Egyptian ‘s’ could also be represented as a ‘z’ and this suggested that the name ‘Israel’ could be translated as ‘Izreel’, which according to Margalith, an inexperienced scribe incorrectly inscribed ‘Isreel’ instead of ‘Yezreal’ the valley in the north of the country (Margalith, quoted in Hasel, Michael G, Israel in the Merneptah Stele BASOR 296 p.46).
Another translation comes from Alessandra Nibbi, although this hasn’t gained much support, suggests that the ‘Israel’ of the Merneptah stele are actually a people known as ‘the wearers of a sidelock’ and could be alluding to the Lybians (Nibbi quoted in Hasel page 45)
These are two alternative translations, proving that not all scholars translate the ‘Israel’ of the stele as ‘Israel’.
My suggestion to Hydarnes that there are alternative translations was met by an insult to my integrity whereby he accused me of being less than honest. He claimed that:
Not only is there no justification for such a blind and unwarranted extrapolation, but I think it serves as a testament to how far you’re willing to go, even if it means contradicting the majority of scholars.
I think that an apology should be forthcoming from Hydarnes as I have shown that there are indeed different translations of the ‘Israel’ of the Stele, whether or not he agrees with them or not is immaterial, I only informed him that some people favour a different translation, he, of course, should have known this, with his ‘expertise’.
He did say that he would:
be greatly obliged if you could reference me to at least one source that doesn’t agree on the placement of the word in Merneptah’s victory stele as Israel.
I have not only provided one source that disagrees, I have provided two, therefore this shows that Hydarnes’ knowledge of the Merneptah stele is greatly lacking.
The next point about the stele is concerning what we can actually know about the ‘Israel’ of the Stele, Hydarnes’ next point illustrates this very well:
Because I’ve seen a host of material pertaining to this stele, and have not seen even one that would be suggestive of what you’re proposing, I will need some sort of source from you on that. I assure you, however, that most scholars and educational references concur on interpreting the word in the stele to mean Israel.
I suggest that Hydarnes may have read a ‘host of material’ but I also suggest that this ‘host of material’ actually contains a very narrow and limited viewpoint of the Merneptah stele, in fact, it only gives one viewpoint. Anyone investigating any historical event or source cannot possibly gain a good background knowledge unless they read widely on the subject, this includes arguments for against a particular event, and it is crystal clear that Hydarnes knows very little about Egyptology, Ancient Near Eastern history or archaeology.
He is correct though when he says ‘most scholars interpret the word to mean ‘Israel’, this is the most likely translation, it isn’t the only one however. But what Hydarnes appears to be blissfully ignorant of is that although the word id translated as ‘Israel’ no scholar categorically claims that it is the ‘Israel of the Bible, the text cannot tell us that. Interpreting the word to say ‘Israel’ is not the same as saying that the ‘Israel’ of the stele is the same entity of the Hebrew Bible. What scholars do actually claim is that the ‘Israel’ of the stele ‘could’ be the same entity, or it is ‘likely’ or ‘probably’, no one claims that the stele can be linked to the Bible. Here are some views of respectable scholars:
Except for the biblical story there is no literary evidence that there was ever an Egyptian Sojourn and Exodus as described in the Bible. This is true regardless of the date one assumes for the event, if there was such an ‘event’ at all. In the past (as well as the present) much discussion has been given to the Egyptian Stele (or stela) dated to the time of the pharaoh Merneptah (whose revised dates are usually given as ca. 1213-1203 BC) who ruled at the end of the 13th century BC.
For all the ink this reference to ‘Israel’ has generated, what does it really tell us about the origin and nature of the ‘Israel’ of the Bible? Not much. The attempts by Yurco 1997 and DeVaux 1978 to link the ‘Israel’ of the Stele with the ‘Israel’ of the Bible that supposedly came out of Egypt under Moses have been unsuccessful. Without assuming the biblical story in advance, there is absolutely nothing in the stele inscription itself to suggest to anyone that this ‘Israel’ was ever in Egypt. All that can reasonably be inferred from it is that an Egyptian scribe at the end of the 13th century BC could list among the enemies defeated by the pharaoh a group of people living in Canaan known collectively as ‘Israel’. How this ‘Israel’ was organised, what deity or deities it worshipped, and most of all, from where this ‘Israel’ originated and in what way or ways, if any, it is to be related to the ‘Israel’ that emerged 200 years later under Saul and David is nowhere mentioned or even suggested. Thus the Merneptah Stele, as well as other Egyptian sources sometimes brought into the discussion, are ultimately irrelevant to the question of whether or not there was ever an Israelite ‘Exodus’ from Egypt as told in the Bible (Laughlin, J. C. H. (2000). Archaeology and the Bible. London, Routledge.pp.89-90).
And:
There is very little in the way of textual material dating to this period that can help us sort out the problem of who the early Israelites were or where they came from. The few potentially relevant sources date to the Late Bronze Age and are difficult to assess in terms of their direct relatedness to ancient Israel’s emergence. One of these is the Merneptah stela, a monument viewed by many as the key to dating the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan. In the long run, however, this monument has ended up being one of those pieces of evidence that raises a number of interesting questions but thus far has not provided any definitive answers. The stela (discovered at Thebes and now dated to ca. 1207 B.C.E.) is a monument that recounts the military exploits of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah and contains the earliest known reference to "Israel" ("Israel is laid waste, its seed is not"), which is included in a list of conquered peoples.
At one time it was assumed that the reference is evidence for dating the conquest" of Canaan as described in the book of Joshua to a time before Merneptah's campaigns in Syro-Palestine. But if we accept the argument that the stories in Joshua are a later fiction, and are thus not representative of Israel at the beginning of Iron Age I, we are left with the question of what is meant by "Israel." Although there seems to be little doubt that Merneptah's Israel was located somewhere in Palestine, the reference does not make clear exactly what kind of entity is being referred to. The problem stems from the determinative that occurs in connection with the word "Israel" and identifies it not as a nation or a city-state (as is the case, for example, for Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yanoam) or even as a group that is associated with any particular land (as is the case in the reference to Canaan), but simply as people.
There are a number of ways in which the reference has been interpreted. Some have proposed that Merneptah's Israel was a socioethnic or sociopolitical entity in Canaan, some that it consisted of a territory within Canaan, and some that it was both a people and a territory within Canaan, and some argue that it was a nomadic tribal entity, and yet others that it as sedentary.
Another issue relates to the term ‘prt’, "seed," in the reference, which is variously understood as referring either to Israel's "descendants/offspring" or to its "grain." If it means the former, it could refer to either a settled group or a nomadic one. If it means the latter, it may indicate Israel's food supply, implying that Israel was some type of sedentary agricultural society.
The Merneptah stela, then, provides us with evidence that some entity called Israel existed in the latter part of the thirteenth century BCE but at present it provides no clear answer to the question of what that entity was, what its size or internal organization was, what the sources and socioeconomic status of its members were, or how, or even if, this "Israel" is related to the Israel depicted in the stories in the Pentateuch or the books of Joshua and Judges (McNutt, P. M. (1999). Reconstructing the society of ancient Israel. London; Louisville, Kypp. 44-45).
Finally:
the name 'Israel' is used in the Old Testament tradition only as a collective term for a group of twelve tribes which had a separate history of their own. The name first occurs in the Old Testament where, in the course of a personifying description of prehistorical Israel, the father of the twelve ancestors and heroes eponymi of the tribes is called ‘Israel’ (Gen. xxxii, 29) and after that the name is used for this person or as a collective term. There is not a trace of evidence as to how the group of the twelve tribes acquired it and whether it had had a previous history in the course of which certain changes of meaning led to this collective name. It is, in any case, idle to make conjectures for which there is no real foundation at all. Even the oldest, very early epigraphic occurrence of the name does not help us. It is found in a song of triumph for the Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah on a stele which was set up in this Pharaoh's mortuary temple in the Pharaonic necropolis in Thebes, and it is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (the so-called ‘ Israel stele’). In line 27, in connection with the conquest of some Palestinian cities, the Pharaoh is also extolled for destroying 'Israel'. It is, however, impossible to say with any certainty what the ‘Israel’ referred to here actually was in the Palestine of circa 1225 B.C., whether it was already the 'Israel' of the twelve tribes in the form known to Old Testament tradition or some still older entity which bore the name 'Israel' and then for some now obscure historical reason passed it on to the 'Israel' that we know (Noth, Martin The history of Israel, London : Black, 1959. p.3).
Every competent scholar involved in the debate knows the limitations of archaeology, they know that there is no concrete links between the ‘Israel’ of the Merneptah Stele and to say that the ‘Israel’ of the stele ‘proves’ that Israel of the Bible was in Palestine at the end of the 13th century BCE is not a claim that any competent scholar would make. The furthest they would go is to say that it is ‘likely’ that this ‘Israel’ is linked in some way to the ‘Israel’ of the Bible, but by using the stele itself it is impossible to make any link at all.
But.. LOL, if we do concede that they are one and the same ‘Israel’ then it certainly falsifies the 15th century Exodus date proposed by one
possible interpretation of 1 Kings 6:1.
Back to Hydarnes:
Moreover, the reason why this conclusively rules out Rameses II OR Merneptah is quite simple, really.
The Merneptah stele is actually a very strong argument
FOR the Exodus and Conquest to have occurred during the time of Rameses II.
The ‘Israel’ of the Stele are referred to as a people who have not yet settles in Palestine, if they had settled there then they would have the determinative for ‘Land’ before their name. The stele is dated to around 1207 BCE therefore the Israelites may be in the process of settling in Palestine, they have not settled there yet as the name ‘Israel’ in the stele doesn’t refer to an area of land, it refers to a landless people.
If they are in the process of settling down, then the Exodus from Egypt would have to be 40 years or less before 1207 BCE, this would place the Exodus at around 1245 BCE give or take a few years. Rameses II ruled from around 1279-1213, and then Merneptah ruled from 1213-1203. Now we know that there were no references at all to anyone called Rameses before the 19th dynasty, so the Israelites must have been involved in the building of Rameses II’s city when Moses asked the pharaoh to ‘let my people go’. The Exodus could have happened in say 1245 ,the Israelites wandered for 40 years then started to enter Palestine around 1205, this fits perfectly with the mainstream chronology. The Merneptah stele shows that, if this was a mention of the biblical Israel, that they hadn’t settled there yet, and surely they would have been settled in Palestine if they had left Egypt 250 years earlier in the biblically proposed 1446 BCE date.
There is more evidence to suggest a 13th century conquest, the fact that the lands of the Moabites and the Edomites were unoccupied before that date. I am sure we have all seen the quote from Nelson Glueck, ‘
No archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. ’, well Glueck excavated the area where the Edomites and the Moabites lived according to the Bible and he didn’t find any signs of occupation before the 13th century BCE.
Bill Dever writes:
An American rabbi, Glueck epitomized an earlier era’s romantic notion of biblical archaeology. Whether dashing across desert sands in a jeep or trudging on foot, Glueck did important work surveying sights in Transjordan and the Sinai. Despite his desire to corroborate the biblical tradition, Glueck’s site surveys indicated that ancient Edom, Moab, and Ammon were sparsely populated and defended at the beginning of the Iron Age, when, if the biblical accounts were accurate, the Israelites would have been cutting a victorious swath through them on the way to conquering the promised land (Dever, William G. et al. Exodus : the Egyptian evidence, Winona Lake, In. : Eisenbrauns, 1997. p.73).
The 1446 BCE date for the Exodus, which suggests a c.1400 BCE date for the conquest is further falsified by the Amarna Letters. These are letters written to the pharaoh from the kings and princes of many small Palestinian city-states, and are dated from around 1400-1350 BCE. Clearly, if the Bible chronology is correct, then the Israelites should have been occupying the entire land of Palestine by during the time that the Amarna Letters were written, but there is not a single mention of Israel in these letters, and even more embarrassing is that some of the very places claimed as over run by Joshua and his armies are happily writing to pharaoh, totally unaware that the Israelites had totlally annihilated them! Two examples being a letter from ‘Labayu the mayor of Shechem’ and various letters from IR-Heba of Jerusalem’. Ir-Heba’s letters from Jerusalem are El Amarna Letters EA 237, 244-46, 249-50, 252-53, 155, 263, 285-290, Ir-Heba also mentions labayu mayor of schechem in EA 287 and 289.
The available evidence only makes sense if the exodus and conquest happened in the 13th century, anything before this date has been falsified.
I think it is time that people posting on this topic started to support their claims with some decent references and evidence, and stopped the personal comments that only serve to deflect attention away from how poorly certain people understand history and archaeology, I am really surprised at the quality of arguments presented here by people who are supposed to be adults. So it is time to up the ante a little bit and try justifying conclusions, simply stating things such as Hydarnes did on the Merneptah stele is highly embarrassing and has no place in an adult discussion.
Brian.
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