3200-Year-Old Picture of Israelites Found in Egypt

Canaanite towns. However, it is also possible they got them through an alliance with
some of the Canaanite towns that Merenptah attacked or that feared such an attack.
These battle reliefs not only corroborate the historicity of Merenptah’s campaign into
Canaan, but they also shed some light on the precise date of that campaign. Scholars have
of course considered these questions on the basis of the Merenptah Stele alone, and, as I
have said, have raised some questions as to whether the campaign actually took place.
The passage referring to Merenptah’s campaign in Canaan is at the very end of the text,
in the poetic conclusion of the stele. That this conclusion is so carefully laid out and very
precisely arranged geographically also supports the conclusion that the text indeed has a
historical basis. The outer verses refer to the broader international situation involving
Libya (Tehenu) and the Hittite empire (Hatti). The inner verses balance a description of
Canaan and Hurru, the two major components of Egypt’s Syro-Palestinian realm. † The
text for Canaan is further broken down into the three city-states and Israel. So, the
breakdown neatly delimits the area of Merenptah’s military activity—it is all within
Canaan. Finally, Canaan and Hurru are poetically couched in terms of husband and wife.
Such careful and neat geographical structure does not usually appear in fictional military
campaigns.
The Merenptah Stele also contains a date for the inscription of the stele, the fifth year of
Merenptah’s reign. Merenptah ruled between 1212 and 1202 B.C.E., so his campaign into
Canaan must have occurred between 1212 and 1207 B.C.E., the latter being the date of
the Merenptah Stele.
Remember that the main subject of the Merenptah Stele is the Libyan campaign and his
battle with the Sea Peoples. His Canaanite campaign is mentioned in the stele only
retrospectively. This Libyan campaign too must have occurred by 1207 B.C.E. This
campaign is also commemorated on a wall of the Karnak temple, but only with a long
text and a triumphal scene, † and even these appear on an interior wall. War scenes
generally occupied external walls of temples. The reason Merenptah’s important Libyan
campaign is depicted only with a triumphal scene and even this only on an interior wall,
despite the fact that the Libyan campaign was a far more momentous victory than his
Canaanite campaign, is that Merenptah had already used the last exterior space of the
temple for the scenes of his Canaanite campaign. This confirms that the Canaanite
campaign occurred before year five of his reign. In a lengthy, technical discussion based
on a change in Merenptah’s prenomen, I have excluded year one of Merenptah for this
Canaanite campaign. † In another somewhat technical paper, † I concluded that the
Canaanite campaign took place in year two, or early in year three. Briefly, no document
† In Merenptah’s reign, Gaza, capital of Canaan, was called Gdt (Gaza) and not Pa-
Canaan, as in some other reigns. See Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica , 2 vols.
(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press 1977), vol. I, p. 191, no. 624; and Caminos, Late Egyptian
Miscellanies , pp. 108–110 ( Papyrus Anastasi III, verso 6, 1 and 6, 6).
† 6 Kitchen, KRI , vol. 4, pp. 2–12; and Kitchen and Gaballa, “Ramesside Varia II,”
Zeitschrift für Agyptische Sprache 96 (1969), pp. 23, 25, 27, and table 8, also, Kitchen,
KRI , vol. 4, pp. 23–24.
† Yurco, “Merenptah’s Canaanite Campaign,” p. 213 and n. 55.
† Yurco, “Once Again, Merenptah’s Battle Reliefs at Karnak,” IEJ , forthcoming.