3200-Year-Old Picture of Israelites Found in Egypt

highlands of Canaan; it also tells of the arrival of a military commander at Sile, coming
from “the Wells of Merenptah-hotphima‘e which are in the hills.” †
The spring referred to in Joshua 15 and 19 is probably the same place: The Egyptian
papyrus indicates there was a place in the highlands of Canaan that included the name
Merenptah. Is the spring of Nephtoah, as referred to in Joshua, the same as the Well of
Merenptah in the Egyptian papyrus? Remember, Merenptah is written in consonants, as is
the Hebrew text. In the equivalent in Latin letters, Merenptah would be spelled MRNPTH
; Nephtoah would be spelled N(PH)TH . The signs P and PH are identical in Hebrew. So
the only difference in the two names is that the MR seemingly has dropped out of the
Hebrew. † In the Hebrew Biblical text, “spring of the waters” is redundant. “Waters” in
the Hebrew text is MY , but if this was originally MR , it would supply the missing letters
of Merenptah’s name and the Hebrew text would no longer be redundant; it would read
simply the “Spring of Merenptah.” Indeed, such naming of geographical features for the
currently ruling pharaoh was a common practice in Ramesside Egypt.
If MY Nephtoah is indeed a garbled form of Merenptah, then we have further
corroborating evidence from the Bible regarding the presence of Israelites in Canaan
during Merenptah’s reign.
Thus, in the last decade of the 13th century B.C.E., some of the Israelites in the highlands
were already using the name Israel to designate their premonarchic tribal confederacy.
This usage is its earliest occurrence and appears again only in the Song of Deborah (
Judges 5 ), which scholars now date some three-quarters of a century after Merenptah.
† Caminos, Late Egyptian Miscellanies , p. 108, and Wilson, “Journal of a Frontier Official,” ANET p. 258
and n. 6.
† That the Hebrew is a garbled version of Merenptah was already suggested by Franz Prh. von Calice,
“König Menephthes im Buche Josua?” Orientalistische Litteratur-Zeitung (May 1903), p. 224