Merneptah

SUMMARY: Lecture-18 discusses the origins of the Israelites, including the first mention of "Israel" in Merenptah's "Israel" Stela, the current status regarding minimal to no archaeological evidence for an Exodus (also postulated as being a later remembrance of Hyksos expulsion), the state of evidence regarding the sojourn in Sinai (also minimal/no archaeological evidence), the "Exodus Papyrus" (noting the escape and tracking of two fugitives from Egypt), the conquest account (which also contains conflicting data in the archaeological record), the emergence of numerous, small, hill country and other settlements (i.e., typically small, agrarian enclosures with some terracing in areas, herding, semi-nomadic roots in settlement design, forest clearance in newly occupied terrain, simple pottery and other artefacts with clear Canaanite roots), and the emergence of a more complex, Israelite polity by 1000 BC. This lecture is designed mainly as an educational resource/aid for college students (i.e., normally posted only on my institution's course website), the public (e.g., people auditing my course), and interested colleagues from other disciplines (to whom I periodically provide copies privately).  I am posting it here, both as a broader access, educational tool, and especially to promote the study of this region and its past societies.  For further knowledge about this region and period, I refer interested parties to the textbooks and other sources from which the initial materials were extracted for this ppt. (see syllabus; e.g., initially Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible), and/or the bibliographies in these works and my online resource guides (see other files in my academia folders).  Much of this and the other lectures summarize the pertinent materials in the course textbook(s), add in other data, including my own research materials, and furnish numerous images to clarify/illustrate the wealth of information encountered in the textbook(s).  Some generic imagery (usually indicated as such) is posted to aid in transmitting various concepts visually, and/or when a specific image remains not located (temporarily).  I update and revise such lectures each time, with such elective courses normally being taught once every two years.  I try to cover the most current, mainstream views, and usually place summary notes at the end of each lecture (or in separate test study guides).  Over time, each lecture is improved, errors rectified, and additional data placed within the lecture.  These ppt. lectures take many hours to compile, but they have proved useful to many of my more serious students (who have since pursued graduate degrees), and a few colleagues, who, like me, often teach outside our main fields of specialty, and I hope they can be of benefit to others as well.  My apologies for any errors I may have made (over time, as I teach this course every two years, I try to rectify any errors that might slip in inadvertently), and for my liberal usage of educational imagery from professional sources and vetted internet sources.  UPDATED:  Oct. 2023, re-formatting, and a new slide and text revisions.

Fourty years between the solar eclipse in 1223 BCE (the Egyptian darkness as the nineth plague in the first year of the Merneptah’s reign) and the lunar eclipse in 1183 BCE (interpreted in the relations with ‘lunar’ Jericho) might be a key to the Biblical chronology

Nowadays people don't have much time to spend in the canteen just there and waiting for the waiter to take their order. Many customers visit the canteen in their leisure time like lunch break and short breaks so they have limited time to eat and return to their respective work. The challenges encountered by manual systems in canteens is efficiency and satisfaction. The ordering of food in most of the canteens is not pleasant for customers since they have to make long queues before placing the order and when the order is placed, they have to wait in the counter until their order is prepared. Another problem is efficiency that food canteens should maintain in their standard operations and keep with the quality of their product and services no matter how much crowd is present in there. Hence the E-canteen would be a good solution for this problem.

‘Israel’ is mentioned in the Merneptah Stela, dated to his 5th regnal year—1209/8 BCE in an extra-biblical source for the first time. Dozens of articles were written in order to explain the meaning of the name Israel, identify the origin and nature of ‘Israel’, locate this entity, and evaluate the veracity of the described events. Scholars based their research on grammatical and orthographical, structural,  phonological, literary, lexicographical and art-historical arguments,in order to connect or disconnect this entity from the later entity known as ‘the peoples of Israel’, which is mentioned in the Bible. My purpose in dealing with the Merneptah stela and his campaign against Canaan and ‘Israel’ is based on its broader international geopolitical context. By this, I mean the relations of Egypt with the Levant, Libya and Kush from the end of Ramesses II’s reign, when Egypt was at the peak of its empire, till the early years of Ramesses III, some three decades later. I will base my analysis on Royal and Private Inscriptions, Temple reliefs, scarabs, and other archaeological finds.

Note: this draft has since been incorporated as Section I of Moses Found in Egypt, posted April 18, 2016

The mummy of Ramesses IX bears symptoms of advanced stage leprosy. This and other physical and chronological evidence matches Ramesses IX to the Venice Book of Jasher's description of a pharaoh named Melol, who died while Moses was in Midian (the king of Egypt in Exodus 2:23). In addition to leprosy, a missing nose and a gash on the right temple of Ramesses IX's mummy are consistent with a detailed description of Melol's slow death after an accident in which a chariot rolled over his face. Cracked skin on the forehead of the mummy is consistent with the claim that Melol was buried in haste, without proper embalming. Chronologically, matching 20th dynasty pharaoh Ramesses IX to Melol requires a reassessment of Exodus 1:11, which is commonly used to place the oppression of the Hebrews within the reign of 19th dynasty pharaoh Ramesses II. The Book of Jasher clarifies this passage, stating that Rameses was an existing city. Also, since the pharaoh of the oppression did not reside there, Rameses was no longer the Egyptian capitol. In total, the detailed records of the Book of Jasher cannot reasonably be dismissed as later embellishment of the Pentateuch.  Melol is not the product of a medieval forger's imagination. Melol is Ramesses IX.

ABSTRACT: This lecture covers the domestic affairs, international relations, special events or achievements/constructions, and burials during the reigns of (1). Ramesses I; (2). Sety I; (3). Ramesses II (with a lengthy treatment on the Battle of Kadesh); (4). Merenptah (including Israel Stela); (5). Amenmesse; (6). Sety II; (7). Siptah (with queen regent: Tawosret); and (8). Queen Tawosret. It concludes with a section on both overall treatments on Dynasty 19 (and beyond) and individual selected sources for each of the Dynasty 19 rulers, including some recent documentaries. UPDATED: Some new sources, plus text, images, edits, and re-formatting, March 2021.

In the narrow sense this volume deals with Egyptian military activity in the southern Levant, about 1300 to 1185 B.C. In the broad sense it provides a case study for the integration of historical, archaeological, and anthropological perspectives. Based on a comprehensive concordance of terms in Egyptian military accounts, this study begins with a contextual analysis of over thirty terms and clauses. With the Egyptian perception of events established, two chapters are devoted to the archaeological evidence for Egyptian presence, influence, and destruction at over forty site, regional, and socio-ethnic toponyms in the southern Levant. In conclusion, an unprecedented research paradigm is presented for the assessment of Egyptian military activity.
This volume includes illustrations, maps, and an extensive bibliography essential to Near Eastern historians, sociologists, archaeologists, Egyptologists and biblical scholars.

This article examines the Merneptah Stele and its role in recent efforts to reconstruct Israelite history and identity. Though necessarily concerned with the issues of translation and location as they relate to the entity named in the stele, this review is dominated by an assessment of the various ways in which biblical scholarship has related to this singular
reference. To that end, issues of theory and method, both archaeological and anthropological, are prioritized as the review appraises the various attempts to isolate this entity as the Archimedean point of Israelite historical and ethnic development. Though certainly critical of what it perceives as the sterile reproduction of long-held beliefs, it is a review that, in its appeal to the work of Pierre Bourdieu, looks to identify prospects for further study of the stele, rather than foreclose the very questions that it raises.

The name Israel in the Merneptah Stela has entered a new phase of discussion and debate in recent reconstructions of the origin of ancient Israel. Some of the issues involved include the transition of the name Israel and the location and nature of the entity Israel. This study assesses a number of linguistic analyses indicating that the Egyptian designation is properly translated as Israel. Our new structural analysis reveals that Israel was located within the region of Canaan and Hurru, designations that stand parallel to each other.

1207 av. n. è. Une entrée dramatique dans l'histoire : la stèle de Mérenptah Vers 1207 av. n. è., le pharaon Mérenptah fait ériger une stèle où il célèbre sa victoire contre des peuples rebelles et notamment un certain « Israël », dont c'est la plus ancienne mention connue.

The present study discusses the immediate context of the Merenptah inscriptions and reliefs before engaging in a much wider survey of contemporaneous Egyptian, Canaanite, Hittite, and Assyrian military accounts which establish that the destruction of subsistence sources was a common military tactic during the second millennium. Together with a reanalysis of the reliefs from the broader perspective of Egyptian iconography this study suggests that Israel was an agricultural, societhnic entity without a city-state support system within Canaan and that Israel was already powerful enough to warrant the attention given by Merenptah in 1209 BCE.

The papyrus of Pentauret is the only document in this group
where the date of its composition is recorded. To prove that the text was
written on the papyrus during Merneptah’s reign, the reason why the
epithet ‘great’ was applied to the chief of Ramesses’s II enemies is discussed.
A paleographic analysis of the final text fragment has allowed the
mistakes occurring in the earlier hieroglyphic transcriptions authored bythe foreign researchers to be improved. Thus, a newly constructed hieroglyphic
transcription and Russian translation of the colophon is supplied.