Volta
Culturec. 1208 BCE

Merneptah Stele

Also called: Israel Stele, Merenptah Stele

Stele on which Pharaoh Merneptah recorded his victories, including in Canaan. Its line “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not” contains the first known mention of the name Israel.

The Merneptah Stele, Egyptian Museum, Cairo
The Merneptah Stele, Egyptian Museum, Cairo

Onceinawhile · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

Around 1208 BCE, in the fifth year of his reign, Merneptah, son of Ramesses II, set up a stele celebrating his victory over invading Libyans. At the end of this granite slab over three metres high, a short passage also records a campaign in Canaan: “Canaan is plundered with every evil; Ashkelon is carried off; Gezer is seized … Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.”

Found by the British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in Merneptah’s mortuary temple at Thebes in 1896, the stele is the oldest record of the name Israel. The other names carry the sign for a land, but Israel carries the sign for a people, showing that a group called Israel lived in Canaan by this time.

The stele does not confirm the Exodus story. But because it shows Israel already in Canaan, it is a fixed point in debates over when the story could be set. It is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

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The map in 1208 BC

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States at the time
New Kingdom of Egypt
Places
Thebes

People

  • Merneptah1270 BC – 1203 BC

    monarch · Pharaoh of Egypt’s 19th Dynasty (r. c. 1213–1203 BCE), thirteenth son of Ramesses II; his stele carries the first known mention of “Israel”

Before and after

Earlier
1274 BC Battle of Kadesh
Later
323 BC Hellenistic Culture

Themes that include this event

  • The Exodus1279 BC – 1208 BC

    From slavery and the burning bush, the ten plagues and the parted sea, to the Ten Commandments at Sinai, forty years in the wilderness and Moses on Mount Nebo — the Exodus as the Hebrew Bible tells it, followed on the map alongside Ramesses II’s capital and the Merneptah Stele, the first record to name “Israel”