Debate

Even though linguistic, contextual, and archaeological evidence easily leads to the interpretation that Merneptah’s inscription is referring to biblical Israel, the stele’s biblical significance has often been challenged. Despite the scholarly consensus that the stele refers to a people group named “Israel” (Killebrew, “Israel,” 730), some scholars question whether the stele has anything to do with biblical Israel at all.

The hieroglyphs rendered “Israel” in standard translations (e.g., Pritchard, ANET; Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature; Hoffmeier, “The (Israel) Stela,”; Weippert, Historisches Textbuch) consist of the phonetic spelling ysryȝrl/ and the determinative symbol for indicating a people-group—a throwing stick (indicating foreigner), and a seated male and female over three strokes (indicating a group of men and women). Alternative transliterations and translations have been proposed and interpreted as merely a geographical region or as a reference that has nothing to do with the people of Israel. However, these competing theories are faced with many philological problems (Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stele,” 46–47). Perhaps the most viable alternative is the transcription yzrʿʾl (Iezreel), taking the Egyptian s as standing for the Hebrew z and referring to the region of Jezreel (e.g., Margalith, “On the Origin and Antiquity,” cited in Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” 46).

The alternate theories consistently disregard the determinative that modifies the hieroglyphs in question. As noted above, the stele marks the phrase with a determinative that designates Israel as a people-group, not a place (Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” 51). Thus, it seems best to take this as a reference to a people-group, not a place or region. Furthermore, contextual support for seeing this as a reference to Israel comes from the poetic structure of the text. Hasel argues that the hymn’s structure positions the term for “Israel” parallel to “Ashkelon,” “Gezer,” and “Yenoam,” which are marked by the determinative for sociopolitical entities—a throwing stick above the sign for a hill-country, not the more generic geographical regions of Canaan and Hurru also mentioned in the text (for an overview of poetic analyses of the text and a detailed presentation of this argument, see Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” 47–51; compare Yurco, “Merneptah’s Canaanite Campaign,” 189n1).

Others have argued that ysryȝrl/ refers to an entity located outside of Canaan and possibly even in Egypt (e.g., Nibbi, Canaan and Canaanite, 93–101). However, the mention of ysryȝrl/ along with Canaanite city-states such as Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yenoam suggests that it refers to an entity in Canaan. Furthermore, excavations of a destruction layer at Gezer (Dever et. al., Gezer II, 50, and Dever, Gezer IV, 50–51 and 59) provide archaeological evidence suggesting that Merneptah’s campaign was in Canaan (Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” 47 and 55n3). This is further supported by inscriptional evidence from the Amada Stele that calls Merneptah “subduer of Gezer” (Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” 55n3; Yurco, “Merenptah’s Canaanite Campaign,” 190).

Based on all of this evidence, the most widely accepted view of Merneptah’s inscription is that it refers to the people of Israel in Canaan as described in the Hebrew Bible. Works supporting this interpretation include Kitchen (Ancient Orient), Mazar (Archaeology), and Dever (“How To Tell”). For a list of proponents of this view, see Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” 47.