Qualla: Merneptah Stele

Merneptah Stele: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Onceinawhile, CC BY-SA 4.0. "Won't the reverends be pleased?" The remark belongs to the archaeologist Flinders Petrie, in Thebes in 1896, the evening he realized what one line of an Egyptian victory hymn actually said. His epigrapher had been stumped by a cluster of hieroglyphs near the bottom of a towering black granite slab. Petrie looked and suggested a reading: Israel. That night he told the dinner table the stone would become better known than anything else he ever found — and on the strength of those four small signs, he was right. The Merneptah Stele was carved to glorify a pharaoh's triumph over Libya. But buried in its closing lines is the earliest reference to Israel found anywhere in the ancient world, and the only one ever discovered in Egypt.

Read more: Merneptah Stele on Qualla

Image: Onceinawhile | CC BY-SA 4.0

Merneptah Stele: A Pharaoh's Boast

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Onceinawhile, CC BY-SA 4.0. The stele stands over three meters tall, a slab of black granite cut on the reverse of an older monument of Amenhotep III and set up in the funerary temple of the pharaoh Merneptah, who reigned from about 1213 to 1203 BC. At its top, a carved scene shows the god Amun handing a sw...

Read more: Merneptah Stele on Qualla

Image: Onceinawhile | CC BY-SA 4.0

Merneptah Stele: Four Signs at the Bottom

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brave heart, using free hieroglyphic fonts, Public domain. It is the last three lines that changed everything. There the inscription turns from Libya to a separate campaign east, into Canaan, and lists the places Merneptah claims to have laid waste: the cities of Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yanoam — and then a name written differently from the ...

Read more: Merneptah Stele on Qualla

Image: Brave heart, using free hieroglyphic fonts | Public domain

Merneptah Stele: Reading the Stone Carefully

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William M. Flinders Petrie after king Merenptah's inscription, Public domain. What that single mention proves, and what it does not, is a matter scholars treat with care. The reading "Israel" is accepted by the great majority of Egyptologists; the main alternatives proposed over the years — "Jezreel," or a continued description of Libyans — have found litt...

Read more: Merneptah Stele on Qualla

Image: William M. Flinders Petrie after king Merenptah's inscription | Public domain

Merneptah Stele: An Echo Across the River

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Olaf Tausch, CC BY 3.0. The stele was found in Merneptah's ruined temple on the west bank of the Nile, in the great necropolis across from Thebes. On the opposite bank stands Karnak, where a fragmentary second copy of the same victory text was discovered — and where the story takes a further turn. In th...

Read more: Merneptah Stele on Qualla

Image: Olaf Tausch | CC BY 3.0