The Merneptah Stele and the Earliest Mention of Israel

The event

Around 1208 BC, Pharaoh Merneptah, son and successor of Ramesses II, commissioned a large granite victory stele listing the peoples and cities he claimed to have defeated during a campaign into Canaan. Near the end of the inscription, tucked among the names of Canaanite city-states like Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yanoam, appears a group written with the hieroglyphic determinative used for a people rather than a settled city-state: "Israel is laid waste, its seed is not."

For evangelical readers this is a genuinely thrilling find. It is the oldest reference to Israel outside the Bible itself, and it proves beyond doubt that a people already known as "Israel" was recognized and considered significant enough to boast about defeating in Canaan by the late thirteenth century BC — squarely within the range required by both the early-date and late-date Exodus chronologies, since either view has Israel settled in the land well before this stele was carved.

Merneptah's boast, like most royal battle inscriptions of the era, was almost certainly exaggerated — Israel obviously was not "laid waste" in any final sense. But exaggeration and propaganda are themselves useful evidence: they confirm Israel was already a real, established, and evidently troublesome presence in Canaan worth an Egyptian pharaoh's attention and a monument back home — solid outside confirmation of the very people, and roughly the very era, the book of Judges describes.