3200-Year-Old Picture of Israelites Found in Egypt

Frank J. Yurco
Were Shasu Israelites? In scene 7, Shasu prisoners
march off to Egypt; as enemies of Egypt, they are
conventionally represented diminutively, dwarfed by
the colossal legs of their captors’ horses, center and
right.
Some scholars have identified the Shasu with the
Israelites, but the Merenptah reliefs at Karnak
contradict that conclusion. The Israelites in scene 4
dress like the Canaanites, wearing ankle-length clothes,
whereas the Shasu wear short kilts and turban-like
headdresses, visible in the figures in scene 7.
The Shasu were not the major focus of Merenptah’s campaign in Canaan, and so they
were given a secondary representation in the Karnak reliefs of the campaign, and they are
not referred to at all in the Merenptah Stele.
According to some scholars, the Shasu formed the core of the people who became
Israelites when they settled in the hill country of Canaan beginning in the late 13th to the
12th centuries B.C.E. The evidence from the Karnak reliefs contradicts the position taken
by scholars who have tried to identify the Israelites with the Shasu. † The Karnak temple
reliefs seem to suggest that at least some of the early Israelites coalesced out of Canaanite
society, albeit Canaanites who did not live in the cities but who had withdrawn to the hill
country, precisely where archaeological remains as well as Biblical texts place them. *
The attribution of these battle reliefs at Karnak to Merenptah puts Merenptah’s campaign
into Canaan on a firm historical footing. Moreover, the reliefs provide striking
confirmation of accumulating archaeological evidence that the initial Israelite settlements
† For example, Raphael Giveon, Les Bédouins Shosou des documents egyptiens Documenta et Monumenta
Orientis Antiqui , vol. 18 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1971), pp. 267–271, Manfred Weippert, “Canaan, Conquest
and Settlement of,” in Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible Supplement (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1976), p.
129; Wieppert, “The Israelite ‘Conquest’ and the Evidence from Transjordan,” in Symposia Celebrating the
Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1900–1975), ed. Frank Moore
Cross, (Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1979), pp. 32–34; Donald Redford, “The
Ashkelon Relief at Karnak and the Israel Stele,” Israel Exploration Journal ( IEJ ) 36 (1986), pp. 199–200;
Redford’s assumption that the Shasu in the Merenptah reliefs are the Israelites because Israel is not named
elsewhere in the reliefs ignores the battle relief in scene 4, where the top is lost. His glib assertion that all
the other names on the reliefs (except the Shasu) are also found on the Israel stele overlooks the plain
evidence from the walls—only Ashkelon, in scene 4, is named; the fortresses in scenes 2 and 3 are
unnamed, Yurco, “Merenptah’s Palestinian Campaign,” pp. 196 and 199–201; Kitchen, KRI , vol. 2, p. 165,
lines 4–7. This position, again taken by Israel Finkelstein, “Searching for Israelite Origins,” BAR 14:05,
uncritically following Redford, and without reference to either my paper (“Merenptah’s Palestinian
Campaign”) or to that of Lawrence Stager, “Merenptah, Israel and Sea Peoples: New Light on an Old
Relief,” Eretz Israel 18 (1985), pp. 56–64. From Papyrus Anastasi I (Wilson, “An Egyptian Letter,” ANET ,
p. 476), where the Shasu are described as uttering Semitic phrases as they furtively watch an Egyptian
divisional camp, one may conclude that like other Canaanites the Shasu were Semitic peoples; it is not
impossible that they were related to the Israelites, but Merenptah’s reliefs, particularly scene 4 of the battle
reliefs, make it quite clear that the Shasu were not Israelites.
* See “Israel’s Emergence in Canaan—BR Interviews Norman Gottwald,” BR 05:05.