hjelm & thompson – the victory song of merneptah, israel and the people of palestine

[JSOT 27.1 (2002) 3-18] ISSN 0309-0892

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX and 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA.

The Victory Song of Merneptah, Israel and the People of Palestine

Ingrid Hjelm and Thomas L. Thompson

Strandvejen 143A, 3060 Espergærde, Denmark

Abstract

This article discusses the nature of the association that can be established between the Merneptah stele and the later history of the region of Palestine and biblical Israel. This study examines aspects of the hymn’s rhetoric and literary metaphors, and discusses, among other things, the themes of Merneptah’s tran-scendent greatness and his mythic roles as savior of Memphis, universal media-tor of divine grace and guardian of peace in terms of his divine ability to control destiny. In the hymn’s central movement, these stock tropes center on the theme of renewal. The � nal movement is not a song recounting Palestine’s conquest, but rather closes the hymn of victory over the Libyans with an idyllic portrayal of the ‘peace’, with which Merneptah has reestablished creation. His song of the nine bows celebrates the pharaoh’s universal patronage with illus-trative reference to the region and towns of Palestine: Gaza, Ashkelon, Gezer and Yeno’am, which now belong to Egypt. Israel, metaphorically portrayed as the land of Hurru’s former husband, has been replaced by Merneptah’s patron-age in a manner comparable to the well-known role that Yahweh plays in Hosea and Ezekiel as Jerusalem and Samaria’s Ba’al. Regionally, the geo-graphical region referenced by the eponymic use of the name Israel in the stele corresponds with the Saul tradition’s Philistine area.

[The Merneptah stele] renders for us only the earliest known usage of the name ‘Ysr’el’. This gentilic in Merneptah’s list, however, does not correspond with the usage of the name as a reference to the Assyrian period state, to the clan shr’l of the Samaria ostraca or to any biblical use of the term. One cannot thus af� rm the existence of the Israel of the Bible [at this early period] solely on the strength of the Israel stele.1

1. Th.L. Thompson, The Early History of the Israelite People from the Written and Archaeological Evidence (SHANE, 4; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), p. 311.

4 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27.1 (2002)

© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.

This was written in 1992, and seemed to be the sum of what could be said concerning Merneptah and the origins of biblical Israel. The name ‘Israel’, like other early gentilics that occur in the Bible, such as Philistines, Amorites, Hebrews and Canaanites, has a variety of referents, depending on date and context. The earliest extra-biblical use of the name Ysr’el in the Bronze Age—as of the names Peleset, Amurru, Habiru/Hapiru and Kinahhi—cannot be entirely identi� ed with the referents of such names in the Bible. One might say that the names have had a greater continuity and longer history than the collective entities of their referents. In 1998, Niels Peter Lemche wrote of this same inscription:

In his inscription, Merneptah describes how he vanquished the Libyans to the West and the peoples of Asia, including Israel, to the East. For one hundred years, this document has been considered correctly as concrete proof of an Israel in Palestine around 1200 BCE. Clearly, the Merneptah inscription represents the earliest extrabiblical hint of Israel’s dim begin-nings.2

It could well be asserted that the debate about the Merneptah stele and the question of the history of Israel in Late Bronze Palestine lies some-where between these two statements. Few would disagree with the accuracy of the way these statements read and interpret the text; that is, that it can be read just so. Most other interpretations move in the direction of as yet uncon� rmed speculation from such conservative reading. ‘An Israel’ may possibly imply a people, or even an ethnic group, those living in the highlands, up to and including a reading of this ‘Israel’ as ancestors of biblical authors under Joshua’s leadership. However, the debate about the stele’s historical value as direct evidence lies somewhere between the negative statement of Thompson, setting a distinction between the Late Bronze usage and that of later texts, and the more positive statement of Lemche, marking clearly the continuity of the names. Before we go on to

2. N.P. Lemche, Prelude to Israel’s Past: Background and Beginnings of Israelite History and Identity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998), p. 75. In the German edition (Vorgeschichte Israels: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ausgang des 13. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. [Biblische Enzyklopädie, 1; Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1996], pp. 81-82), Lemche had written: ‘Diese Inschrift, die von ungefähr hundert Jahren gefunden worden ist, gilt seitdem—und mit Recht—als der endgültige Beweis dafür, dass es um 1200 ein Israel in Palästina gegeben hat. Darum ist Merneptahs Inschrift zweifelsohne der wichtigste Hinweis auf das frühe Israel, der ausserhalb des Alten Testaments jemals gefunden wurde.’

HJELM AND THOMPSON The Victory Song of Merneptah 5


create our more expansive histories, this debate about the stele as evidence needs to be addressed: what is the nature of the association that can be established between the Merneptah stele and the later history of the region and with a biblical Israel? One needs do little more than turn to the text in Pritchard’s anthology (ANET), and one is faced with John Wilson’s caution:

the text is not historical…but is rather a poetic eulogy of a universally victorious pharaoh. Thus it was not out of place to introduce the real or � gurative triumph over Asiatic peoples in the last poem of the hymn. In that context we meet the only instance of the name ‘Israel’ in Egyptian writing.3

Such caution is to be commended. There is no place here for readings of naive realism. Especially, Wilson’s distinction between a ‘real or � gura-tive triumph over Asiatic peoples’ is most troublesome, especially for those who might wish to date destruction levels in Palestine on the basis of this text. Although we have other texts that give us ample evidence to believe in Merneptah’s victory over the Libyans, our problems relate to the read-ing of this text, whose last song sings not directly of Merneptah’s Libyan victory, but of celebrating peace among the ‘nine bows’, illustrated with the help of regional, place and gentilic names from Asia. The questions of the text’s genre and of its rhetoric, therefore, must play a central role. The dating of the inscription to the third day of the eleventh month of the � fth year of Merneptah’s reign refers to the victory over Libya.4 The date and victory is con� rmed by three other inscriptions. The Great Karnak Inscription gives us an account of the battle. The announcement of the Libyan invasion is dated by the Cairo Column (� lling a lacuna of ll. 12-13 in the Great Karnak Inscription) to the second month of the third season of Merneptah’s � fth year, and the decisive victory is dated by the Athribis stele to the ‘third day of the third month of the third season’.5 While in the Great Karnak Inscription, Merneptah announces that the army will be ‘ready to march in fourteen days’6 one should read this as his response to the invasion, within the rhetoric of the military metaphor of semper � delis, celebrating the precision and ef� ciency of Merneptah’s defense system. 3. ANET, p. 376. 4. J.H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt (4 vols.; New York: Russell & Russell, 1906), III, p. 259. 5. For the lacuna of the Great Karnak inscription, see Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §579, p. 243, and for the Cairo Column, §595, p. 253; for the Athribis text, §598, p. 254. 6. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §582, p. 245.



Similarly, the description of the six-hour battle from the � rst dawn, fol-lowing the night of the second day of the eleventh month,7 has such con-siderable dramatic value that we should see this as an idealistic rendering appropriate to the announcement of victory on the third day. Given the recognition of such artistic Tendenz in the Great Karnak Inscription’s description of the battle, we nevertheless grant that there is reason to accept that the invasion of the Libyans and their subsequent defeat by the Egyptian army can be understood as important historical events of Mernep-tah’s � fth year. That is to say, the ‘essential historicity’ and dating of the Karnak inscription can in all probability be con� rmed. The greater our inclination to grant historicity to the Great Karnak Inscription, however, the greater our dif� culties with the ‘Israel Stele’. While the date given to the inscription at its opening is keyed to the day of the great slaughter of Libyans in the Athribis stele,8 one � nds that the de-scription not only expands on the Athribis text and Great Karnak Inscrip-tion and seems frequently to cite and paraphrase them, it also presents the Libyan victory as primary evidence for the theme of the song’s celebra-tion, namely, Merneptah’s strength and greatness. However recent one must judge it, the victory belongs to the past; it establishes the king’s glory. ‘He has become the striking of a proverb for Libya’ whose youth say ‘It has not been done to us [before] since the time of Re’…every old man says “Alas for Libya!…” They [namely, the Libyans] have ceased to live [as they did before]…’ And then most notably the conquest is set in the past: ‘The Tehenu have been consumed in a single year. Their settle-ments have been desolated.’9 Similarly, as it turns towards closure, the stele speaks of the rejoicing that has come to Egypt, with emphasis on the pharaoh’s fame.10 The victory over the Libyans in the stele does not function simply as a record of a recent victory, or even as a celebration of that victory. The stele serves the larger function of extolling the transcendent greatness of the king by recalling a recent example of his might. Our text has mythic qualities. Echoing the Great Karnak Inscription’s dream of the statue of Ptah giving Merneptah the sword that banishes all fear,11 as well as the

7. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §583, pp. 245-46. 8. Compare Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §607, p. 259, with the opening phrase of Athribis in §598, p. 254. 9. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §611, p. 261. 10. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §616, p. 263. 11. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §582, p. 245.



scene on the Cairo Column showing a deity giving him a sword to destroy the chiefs of Libya,12 the ‘Israel stele’ places the magic sword together with recognition of his role as god’s son, sitting on the throne of Shu.13 The opening of this movement makes clear the dramatic rather than an historically descriptive presentation: the now-desolate Rebu are set in contrast to the secure and rejoicing Egyptians. The mythical quality of the presentation is also conveyed in the opposition between the Libyan chief and the pharaoh. The Libyan chief is the cause of uproar and the object of the king’s anger. His fate is that of a desert. His humiliation is complete. Fleeing in darkness, without a feather to cover his head, his women are taken from him while he looks on [sic]. As the Karnak stele declares: ‘He is fallen, and every god is for Egypt’.14 In the Israel stele, the Libyan prince is portrayed as attacking ‘every god who is in Memphis’. The gods have found him guilty of his crimes.15 Memphis is returned to the protec-tion of their own son. The depiction of the pharaoh is thus couched in terms of myth. He is the mediator of divine grace, savior of the people and guardian of peace, all expressed through his divine control of destiny. He reverses the suffering and ill-fortune of his people. He opens gates that were closed. He gives breath to those who had been smothered. He controls fate, re-establishing justice as the mark and sign of a peace that heralds his coming in a man-ner that is remarkably close to the song sung at his accession to the throne.16 The exhortation of the Israel stele in which the hymn � nds its thematic closure is put in the traditional phrasing of royal ideology’s ‘poor-man’s song’: he opens what was closed, sets free those who were bound; lets princes recover their wealth and the poor to re-enter their cities.17 This thematic element recurs in the song sung for Merneptah’s acces-sion to the throne and also in a similar song for Ramses IV’s accession.18

They who were � ed have come back to their towns; they who were hidden, have come forth again. They who were hungry are sated and gay; they who were thirsty are drunken; they who were naked are clothed in � ne linen;

12. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §594, p. 253. 13. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §§612-13, pp. 261-62. 14. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §586, p. 247. 15. ANET, p. 377. 16. ANET, p. 378. 17. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §613, p. 262. 18. ANET, pp. 378-79.



they who were dirty are clad in white; they who were in prison are set free; they who were in chains are in joy. The troublemakers in this land have become peaceful.19

This parallel is pertinent not only because of similar phrasing, but for its analogous context. Ramses IV came to the throne through a palace strug-gle for power, involving conspiracy and disorder. His accession to the throne—like Merneptah’s repelling of the Libyan invasion—restores the good order of creation. Political events are read in the context of the tran-scendent. The purpose implicit in the Merneptah inscription’s presentation of the pharaoh in this stock role of divine savior—a role that plays so centrally in hymns of this type since at least the time of Thutmosis III20—is ex-pressed explicitly in a rhetorical petition of Heliopolis’ gods in the central movement of the hymn.21 The hymn is oriented to the renewal of the king in his rule and has an ideology similar to that of the Sed festival.22 ‘Give him duration like Re.’23 The orientation of Merneptah’s future is universal and imperial. The seat of Merneptah’s strength is from Egypt, but he becomes the savior and patron of the oppressed in all lands; all � nd their breath from him.24 One of the clearest expressions of this trope—as an expression of divine salvation—can be found in Akhenaten’s ‘long hymn’ to the Aten.25

19. For an idea of the range of this language in the ancient world, see Th.L. Thompson, ‘Kongedømme og Guds vrede eller at lære ydmyghed’, forthcoming in Forum for biblelsk eksegese 11 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2000); revised English version: ‘Kingship and the Wrath of God: or Teaching Humility’, RB 109 (2001), pp. 161-96 (190-91). 20. ANET, pp. 373-75; of Amenophis III, in ANET, p. 376; of Seti I in Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §116-17; for the relationship of such thematic elements in these texts with Mesopotamian texts and the David tradition in Ps. 2 and elsewhere, see Thompson, ‘Kingship and the Wrath of God’. 21. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §614, p. 262. For the structure of the hymn in three major movements, see G. Fecht, ‘Die Israelstele, Gestalt und Aussage’, in M. Görg (ed.), Fontes atque Pontes: Eine Festgabe für Hellmut Brunner (Ägypten und Altes Testament, 5; Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1983), pp. 106-38. 22. See Thompson, ‘Kingship and the Wrath of God’. 23. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §614, p. 262. 24. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §614, p. 262. 25. For a discussion of this trope generally in ancient Near Eastern literature, cf. M. Liverani, Prestige and Interest: International Relations in the Near East, ca. 1600–1100 B.C. (History of the Ancient Near East Studies, 1; Padua; Sargon SRL, 1990), pp. 44-65, 135-43, 187-96; idem, ‘Ideology of the Assyrian Empire’, in M.T. Larsen (ed.),



The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt; you set every man in his place; you supply his necessities… You make a Nile in the underworld; you bring it forth…to maintain the people (of Egypt)…the lord of every land, rising for them… All distant foreign countries, you make their life; for you have set a Nile in heaven, that it may descend for them and make waves upon the mountains…to water their � elds in their towns.26

The thematic element of peace for all men, the idyllic picture of the pharaoh as universal patron, of Egyptians and foreigners alike, dominates the � nal third part of Merneptah’s victory song. This closing act begins with the classic proclamation of ‘good news’ that belongs to the theme of the king re-establishing the order of creation. ‘Great Joy has come to Egypt; rejoicing comes forth from the towns of Tomeri!’ This is the same ‘good news’ announcing a new day for Egypt that had � rst brought Merneptah to the throne: ‘Be glad, the entire land! Good Times have come’,27 a declaration whose more cosmic expression opens the song for Ramses IV’s accession: ‘Oh Happy Day. Heaven and Earth are in joy, for you are the great lord of Egypt.’28 In the Israel stele, peace is celebrated as happy gossip in praise of the king. There is no fear. All are happy and calm; there is not even a need to take care. Peace is celebrated as the return of Re to the land. Following this description of idyllic peace that has come to Egypt, the Merneptah song follows the pattern used for the life-bringing Nile in Akhenaten’s hymn to Aten: the divine gift of peace, like the Nile, comes � rst to Egypt and then to the ‘foreign peoples and the beasts of every desert’. The pharaoh is ‘the lord of every land…for all distant countries he makes life’.29 Merneptah’s hymn closes with a short song celebrating peace among the ‘nine bows’:

Power and Propaganda (Mesopotamia, 7; Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1979), pp. 297-317; B. Oded, War, Peace and Empire: Justi� cation for War in Royal Inscriptions (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 1992); Thompson, ‘Kingship and the Wrath of God’, pp. 186-88; I. Hjelm, Jerusalem’s Rise to Sovereignty in Tradition and History: Zion and Gerizim in Competition (forthcoming), Chapter 2. 26. See J.H. Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), pp. 366-70; text from ANET, pp. 369-71. 27. Papyrus Sallier I. Cf. R.A. Caminos, Late Egyptian Miscellanies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), pp. 323-25; ANET, p. 378. 28. ANET, p. 379. 29. ANET, pp. 370-71.



The kings lie prostrate, saying shalom! Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows. A desert is Libya, Hatti is scorched.30

Plundered is Gaza, with every evil, Carried off is Ashkelon, Bound is Gezer, Yenoam is as one not existing.

Israel is laid waste, his seed is no more; Hurru has become a widow for Egypt.

All lands are united, they are in peace; Everyone that was in uproar is bound by King Merneptah; they are given life like Re, forever.

This closing movement is not a song of conquest—though it does not exclude it. It begins and closes on the thematic element of shalom. ‘The princes are prostrate, saying shalom. Not one raises his head among the nine bows.’ It is a mistake to read this metaphor of the prostrate princes as one implying the humiliation of enemies, their blessing of peace implicitly undermined by an authorial scorn. Prostration before the king is the normal position of any client before his patron. A very similar metaphor is found on the Halfa stele celebrating the rule of Ramses I: ‘All the gods of Egypt (are)…united with one heart; all lands, all countries, the nine bows are prostrate…’31 The nine bows represent foreign lands who are seen ideally, as clients of the king. In his coronation inscription, Haremheb’s career as vizier is described: ‘He administered the two lands during a pe-riod of many years…there came to him the chiefs of the nine bows, South as well as North’.32 Later in the ceremony, he is ‘assigned the circuit of the sun. The nine bows are beneath his feet.’33 In another inscription, celebrating an expedition to Punt, the following words are put into the mouths of chiefs of Punt, pictured offering tribute. They address Harem-heb as ‘Sun of the nine bows’ and beg of him ‘the (life-giving) breath that is yours to give. All lands are under your feet.’34 Such language of patron-age does not contradict other, more military and fear-inspired metaphor:

30. Fecht, ‘Die Israelstele’, p. 129. 31. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §77, p. 36. 32. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §26, p. 16. 33. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §30, p. 18. 34. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §38, p. 21; also see §44, p. 22.



‘you have set the chiefs in tumult…fear has entered their bodies, your terror (is) in their hearts…great is your might in every country’.35 In an inscription about prisoners of Seti I at Karnak, not only is Retenu given the stock description ‘wretched’, but the captive chiefs themselves declare: ‘The countries rejoice to be subject to you; those that transgress your borders are bound’,36 using a phrase signifying ties of fealty. The pharaoh, as sun shining over the nine bows, binds the foreigner ‘beneath the two feet of Horus’.37 The picture of Merneptah as patron over the nine bows, their princes prostrate before him, not one raising his head, is one with which we are very familiar in Biblical Studies, as, for example, is expressed with the thematic element of the divine king as son of God, which we � nd in Psalm 2. ‘The nations in uproar’, who plot to break the chains that bind them to Yahweh’, play the same role as the nine bows of Egyptian mythology. David too is given the ends of the earth for his possession and foreign rulers are admonished by David—as by Seti’s scribes—to be wise and to serve the king with fear and trembling: ‘kiss his feet, lest he be angry and you perish’. And what is our text’s message? For Merneptah’s nine bows as for David’s nations in uproar: ‘Blessed are all who take refuge in him’.38 The opening lines of Merneptah’s closing stanza is one of peace: no one rebels, they are bound and say shalom. Like ‘the nations’ of the Psalter (e.g. Ps. 18.43-50), the ‘nine bows’ is a comprehensive term. The whole of the world outside Egypt is implied. The imperial ideology of our hymn is illustrated by a text of the same genre from Thutmosis III.

I set the glory of you and the fear of you in all lands, the terror of you as far as the four supports of heaven… I set the battle-cry of your majesty throughout the nine bows. The great ones of all foreign countries are gathered together in your grasp. I stretch out my own arms and I bind them for you.39

35. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §§35, 36, 39, pp. 20-21. 36. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §107, p. 53. 37. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §§150-53, pp. 74-75. 38. In Merneptah’s soliloquy in the Great Karnak Inscription, not only is the role of the king to bring unity among his subjects, but the motif of conspiracy as in the biblical reference to the nations in uproar occurs. Kush is also subjected to tribute, and he speaks of the ‘Libyans plotting evil things’ against Egypt as well as of the defeat of their protectors (Breasted Ancient Records, III, §591, pp. 251-52). 39. ‘The Hymn of Victory of Thutmosis III’, ANET, pp. 373-75, citing from p. 374. Cf. Breasted, Ancient Records, II, §655-62, pp. 262-66.



The text continues by describing the pharaoh’s rule: over the Djahi in Egypt, over the north and the ‘ mw of Retenu, over the east and the west, including the Keftiu and all ‘in the midst of the Great Green Sea’, closing � nally with the southland, both sand-dwellers and Nubians. Just so is the king ‘established on the throne of Horus for millions of years’.40 Like the Israel stele’s praise of Merneptah, this hymn of Thutmosis celebrates more the king’s rule over the nine bows than any speci� c conquest. Amenhotep III’s ‘Hymn of Amon’ presents a similar picture of the pharaoh as ‘ruler of the nine bows’. Amenhotep, is, in fact, described as having been raised by the ‘mistress of the nine bows to be the sole lord of the people’. The four traditional corners of the world: the South (Kush–Nubia), North (Retenu–Palestine–Syria), West (Tehenu–Libya) and East (Punt–Arabia) are pre-sented as craving peace. Most interesting is the description of the ‘ mw as ‘they present themselves to you with their children, that you might give them the breath of life’.41 This inscription too closes with the wish for this peace forever. The next lines of Merneptah’s hymn give an inclusive listing of names of regions and places among the nine bows. The � rst is Tehenu or Libya, both the traditional West of the nine bows and the subject of the � rst two major sections of the hymn. Then follows Kheta (that is, Hatti, or Syria) and Pekanan (‘the Canaan’). This is either a reference to the region as a whole or to the town of Gaza, which had a port and, as the entry to Canaan, had been occupied by the Egyptians and garrisoned since Thutmosis III.42 Ashkelon, which may have boasted a temple dedicated to Ptah already from the mid-� fteenth century,43 was a vassal of Egypt, sending a courier to the Egyptian court in the reign of Amenhotep II,44 and continued under Egyptian patronage through the Amarna period.45 A rebellion of Ashkelon

40. ANET, p. 374. 41. Breasted, Ancient Records, II, §§890-92, pp. 360-62; ANET, pp. 375-76. 42. D.B. Redford, History and Chronology of the Egyptian 18th Dynasty: Seven Studies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), p. 60; idem, ‘The Ashkelon Relief at Karnak’, IEJ (1986), pp. 188-99 (190). This may perhaps be a reference to the region itself. However, this reading implies a redundancy with the regional name H rw (‘Palestine’) also listed. 43. On this issue, see especially Redford, ‘Ashkelon Relief’, pp. 190-91 n. 21. 44. C. Epstein, ‘A New Appraisal of Some Lines from a Long Known Papyrus’, JEA 49 (1963), pp. 49-56. 45. EA 320-322; Redford, ‘Ashkelon Relief’, p. 193.



was put down under Ramses II.46 The town Gezer should perhaps also be identi� ed as a vassal of Merneptah, since an inscription in the temple of Amada, dated from Merneptah’s � fth year, gives the king the honori� c title ‘Binder of Gezer’.47 Yenoam in upper Retenu had been given as a gift by Thutmosis III to Amon’s temple at Karnak.48 We now come to the vexing question of the name ‘Israel’. This element has several possibilities in transcription from West Semitic. The regional name Sharon and the biblical Yeshurun cannot be excluded. The name of the biblical tribe and son of Jacob, ‘Asher, is certainly a strong possibility. Papyrus Anastasi I49 describes the thirteenth-century people of ísrw.50 ‘Asher is also known in the reigns of Seti I and Ramses II.51 The scribe of the Israel stele, however, may possibly distinguish, albeit inconsistently, the initial yod from an aleph in transcribing Semitic toponyms, as for example between Yanoam and Ashkelon.52 A related possibility is the name ‘Asher’el or Asri’el mentioned as a clan in the Samaria ostraca.53 46. See the arguments of Redford, ‘Ashkelon Relief’, pp. 192-96, who argues con-vincingly that evidence of an attack under Merneptah comes only from the reference in the ‘Israel stele’. 47. G.W. Ahlström, The History of Ancient Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period to Alexander’s Conquest (JSOTSup, 146; Shef� eld: JSOT Press, 1993), p. 283; R.O. Faulkner, ‘Egypt from the Inception of the Nineteenth Dynasty to the Death of Ramses III’, in CAH, XI.2, p. 234. A portable sundial was found with the name Merneptah on it at Gezer: E.J. Pilcher, ‘Portable Sundial from Gezer’, PEFQS (1923), pp. 85-89. The Annual of the Hebrew Union College Biblical Archaeological School in Jerusalem (5 vols.; Jerusalem: Hebrew Union College, 1970–88) dates the destruction of stratum XV to a campaign into Palestine in the pharaoh’s � fth year (II, p. 50). Breasted sug-gests that there had been a campaign to Palestine in Merneptah’s third year (Ancient Records, III, §605, p. 258). This, however, is quite uncertain. See already Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §§633-35, p. 272. 48. ANET, p. 237 n. 42. Yeno’am apparently had the status of being a possession of the Ammon Temple throughout the 18th Dynasty. See Ahlström, History of Palestine, p. 249. 49. ANET, pp. 475-79. 50. Ahlström, History of Palestine, p. 278, identi� es these as ‘Canaanites’. 51. J. Simons, Handbook, p. 174, list 17.4, and p. 162, list 25.8. 52. L. Stager (‘Merenptah, Israel and the Sea Peoples: New Light on an Old Relief’, Eretz Israel 18 [1985], pp. *56-*63 [*64 n. 12]) exaggerates the � rmness of this distinction considerably in his rebuttal to A. Lemaire’s argument (‘Asriel, sr’l, Israel et l’origine de la conféderation d’Israelite’, VT 23 [1973], pp. 239-43). 53. See also Josh. 17.2 and 1 Chron. 7.14; further W. Helck, Die Beziehungen Ägyptens zu Vorderasien im 3. und 2. Jahrtausend (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1962), p. 289 n. 24; Lemaire, ‘Asriel’.



The possibility of Jezreel is dif� cult, but also not to be excluded. While the ‘ayin of the Hebrew (rz is not always distinguished in Egyptian transliterations of West Semitic names and a bilingual pun with the phrase ‘his seed is no more’ is literarily attractive, the name does not occur else-where in 18th-19th Dynasty inscriptions and the phrase ‘his seed is no more’ seems to be a stock Egyptian epithet for foreigners, without West-Semitic punning. It occurs � ve times in texts from the reign of Ramses III, in four cases referring to Libyans and the � fth to Asiatics.54 The thematic element of seed as a divine gift of offspring, descendents and fertility is ubiquitous in the Bible. In Egyptian texts, the related phrase ‘his seed is no more’ seems connected to the campaign motif of cutting off the penis of the uncircumcised enemy dead in contrast to the hands of the circum-cised dead, who, perhaps, have had their seed committed to a divine patron. In one inscription, the seed of the king is preserved in heaven55 and in biblical royal ideology, God’s ‘raising the horn’ of the king is a sign of cosmic peace and life-giving fertility.56 What might be of some help in identi� cation is the personal pronoun. Given the much-discussed Egyptian determinative of a people,57 one expects the use of their rather than his seed. The use of the masculine sin-gular supports therefore an understanding of Ysr’el as an eponymic � gure, personifying the distinctive ‘people’, designated by the hieroglyphs.58 Ysr’el, whose seed is no more, seems to be paired with Hurru, who has become a widow.59 Hurru as a land of Hurrians, like Ysr’el, is also

eponymic.60 While the biblical Hurrians are cave-dwellers and given the

54. Breasted, Ancient Records, IV, §§39, 43, 66, 87, 91; also pp. 257-58. 55. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §486, p. 208. 56. Here we might not only note Yahweh’s rejection of Israel in Lam. 2.2: ‘…in glowing anger, he chopped off every horn in Israel’, but also Jer. 9.25’s more theologi-cal interpretation of this trope. 57. See on this discussion H. Engel, ‘Die Siegestele des Merenptah: Kritischer Überblick über die verschiedenen Versuche historischer Auswertung des Schlussab-schnitts’, Bib 60 (1979), pp. 373-99. 58. For related suggestions, see A.H. Edelkoort, En Geschiedenis van het Volk Israel van den Uittocht uit Egypte tot de Vestiging in Kanaan (Utrecht: Oesthook, 1924), pp. 55-57, and Engel, ‘Die Siegesstele des Merenptah’, pp. 388-89. 59. Against G.W. Ahlström and D. Edelman, ‘Merneptah’s Israel’, JNES 44 (1985), pp. 59-61; G.W. Ahlström, Who Were the Israelites? [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1986], p. 39—who read the name ‘Israel’ within a ‘ring structure’, balanced with the name Canaan’—but agreeing with Stager, ‘Merenptah’. 60. Redford, History and Chronology, pp. 137, 201.



Edom region in Deuteronomy 2, the man Hori plays a role of eponym in Gen. 36.22 and 1 Chron. 1.39, as, of course, does the patriarch Asher in Genesis’s stories of Jacob’s sons. The stele states: ‘Israel is no more’ and ‘Hurru has become a widow for Egypt’. Hurru’s widowhood allows Egypt to assume the guardianship of the land. Similarly, Ramses II had been given the epithet ‘husband of Egypt’ on his Tanis stele.61 Ysr’el is, therefore, best understood not as a place name in line with the Palestinian towns of Gaza, Ashkelon, Gezer or Yeno’am mentioned previously in the inscription, but—whether or not it may bear implicit reference to either the Jezreel Valley or the geographi-cal region of Asher62—an eponym, personifying the people of Hurru as a whole, including Gaza, Ashkelon, Gezer and Yeno’am. The role of David—the possibly eponymic founder of the dynastic name in Judah, the ‘House of David’63—as personi� cation of the people is a well-known interpretive function in the Psalter.64 Similarly, the role of the pharaoh as new husband of a foreign land is an essential metaphor of patronage, and seems to be engaged here. The pharaoh’s role is comparable to Yahweh’s in both Hosea and Ezekiel as Jerusalem and Samaria’s Ba’al. This is similar to the role assigned to the Assyrian and Babylonian kings by

61. Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §490, p. 210: ‘husband of Egypt, rescuing her from every country’. See Breasted, Ancient Records, III p. 264 n. a. A similar motif is found also in the Accession Speech of Ramses III, in Breasted, Ancient Records, IV §63: ‘I surrounded her, I established her by my valiant might. When I arose like the sun as king over Egypt, I protected her, I expelled for her the nine Bows.’ Similarly, the Great Karnak Inscription gives the same function to the pharaoh’s role as ‘father’ who keeps his children alive (Breasted, Ancient Records, III, §580, p. 243). 62. Not only does Asher appear in a text of Ramses II (as Ishr), but the town of Yenoam also lies within the region of Asher in the Saul stories; adjacent to the Jezreel (2 Sam. 2.8-9). See J. Strange, Bibelatlas (Copenhagen: Det Danske Bibelselskab, 1998), p. 34, Map 36. 63. N.P. Lemche and Th.L. Thompson, ‘Did Biran Kill David? The Bible in the Light of Archaeology’, JSOT 64 (1994), pp. 3-22; Th.L. Thompson, ‘ “House of David”: An Eponymic Referent to Yahweh as Godfather’, SJOT 9 (1995), pp. 59-74. For a similar understanding of Omri as eponymic founder of the ‘House of Omri’, see recently Th.L. Thompson, ‘Problems of Genre and Historicity with Palestine’s Inscrip-tions’, in A. Lemaire and M. Sæbø (eds.), Congress Volume; Oslo 1998 (VTSup, 80; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000), pp. 321-26. 64. Th.L. Thompson, ‘Salmernes bogs “enten-eller” spørgsmål’, in T. Jørgensen and P.K. Westergaard (eds.), Teologien i Samfundet: Festskrift til Jens Glebe-Møller (Frederiksberg: ANIS, 1998), pp. 289-308.



Jeremiah.65 The role of Ysr’el as personi� cation of the people of Palestine and late husband of Hurru—a regional name that from the 18th Dynasty designates Palestine and Coele-Syria66—embraces no distinct ethnic entity within Palestine, but the whole of the people referred to in the region which Merneptah’s scribe had understood as Egyptian Palestine, that is, the lowland region from Gaza to Yeno’am.67 This eponymic role � ts struc-turally well the eponym ‘Israel’ in Genesis and Joshua, which, however—together with his 12 sons as tribal eponyms—embraces the whole of the ‘land of Canaan’, including the highlands. The statement of the stele, ‘Israel is laid waste, his seed is no more’, is not an exaggeration about the defeat of an enemy. The scribe is telling the truth.68 It is not for Israel that Hurru will bear children—the people of the land—but for the pharaoh, Hurru’s new husband. ‘Israel’s seed is no

more.’ The listing of Israel and Hurru as a pair introduces the thematic element of fertility as well as matrimony. The text implicitly links the emascula-tion of Israel and the widow’s role for Hurru with the desert images of Hurru’s towns, creating a single song of promise, celebrating Egyptian patronage over its clients. The purpose of the destruction and desert

65. Thompson, ‘Kingship and the Wrath of God’; idem, The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past (London: Cape, 1999) (= The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel [New York: Basic Books, 1999]), p. 280; I. Hjelm, ‘Tabte drømme und nye begyndelser: Bibelsk tradition som reiterativ diskurs’, in G. Hallbäck and N.P. Lemche (eds.), ‘Tiden’ i bibelsk betydning (Forum for bibelsk eksegese, 11; Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2000), pp. 48-64. 66. D.B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 137, 201. 67. A region that seems to have been closely related to the later ‘Philistine’ hegemony in the lowlands. (See here the important article of J. Strange, ‘Etnicitet i arkeologi. Filisterne som eksempel’, in N.P. Lemche and H. Tronier [eds.], Etnicitet i Bibelen, Forum for bibelsk eksegese [Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 1998], pp. 43-51.) It is important to point out that the Egyptian use of the term Hurru as a geographic name, like the Egyptian use of the term ‘Canaan’, is quite � exible, with a wide range of variance between texts. See, most recently, N.P. Lemche, The Canaanites and their Land: The Tradition of the Canaanites (JSOTSup, 110; Shef� eld: JSOT Press, 1991); also N.P. Lemche, ‘The Implications of a Correct Reading of EA 151: 49-51’, BASOR 310 (1998), pp. 19-24, against A.F. Rainey, ‘Who is a Canaanite? A Review of the Textual Evidence’, BASOR 304 (1996), pp. 1-15. 68. On this question, see K.W. Whitelam, ‘ “Israel is laid waste; his seed is no more”: What if Merneptah’s Scribes were Telling the Truth?’, in J.C. Exum (ed.), Virtual History and the Bible (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000), pp. 8-22.



motifs which dominate this song and its genre, whenever it addresses the thematic element ‘the nine bows’, is to mark the contrast between the presence and absence of the pharaoh’s grace. The pharaoh is a god who determines destiny. He holds creation fast; he destroys and gives the breath of life. Apart from the divine pharaoh’s patronage, all is in ruin, a desert and a wasteland. This is not a language of event but of transcendent status. Apart from the pharaoh is a cosmic desert of nothingness; bound to him is peace and life.69 This is both opening and closure for our � nal song. So too, the Rabshakeh’s speech in 2 Kings 18 to the people of Jerusalem, presenting himself as one commanded by Yahweh to make the city into a desert (2 Kgs 18.25), opens with an offer of peace and closes with a promise of life: ‘Make peace with me… So will you live and not die’ (18.31-32). In closing, we should return to the question with which we began: what is the nature of the association that can be established between the Merneptah stele and the later history of the region and with a biblical Israel? The stele gives us our earliest evidence of the use of the name ‘Israel’ as an eponym: as a literary reality. It does not refer directly to a speci� c people in history, but metaphorically as an eponym for the popu-lation of Hurru. It is also our earliest evidence for the biblical manner of seeing the patriarch Israel, re� ecting the people, wedded to the region of Palestine as a whole.70 We can af� rm the stele’s reference as analogous to Genesis’ Israel: the patriarch of all Palestine’s peoples who wrestles with the night daemon. This thematic element of our texts, however, certainly does not refer to a particular people or ethnic group. Nor does its use imply any evidence of the origins of an Iron II state of Israel to the north

69. Th.L. Thompson, ‘Historiography in the Pentateuch: Twenty-Five Years after Historicity’, SJOT 13 (1999), pp. 258-83. 70. The variant perspectives of ‘Palestine as a whole’ which we � nd in the Bible, which are comparable to the Israel/Hurru of Merneptah’s stele, embracing the lowland towns of Gaza, Ashkelon, Gezer and Yeno’am, and corresponding to 1–2 Samuels’ Philistine regions, deserve further research. The Asher of 2 Sam. 2.8-9, de� ning the region around Yeno’am, in contrast to the picture of the tribes of Israel in Josh. 13–19, in which Asher is placed in Alexander Janneus’ Phoenicia (see Strange, Bible Atlas, maps 33 and 51), though far from each other in an historical-geographical perspective, may be mere variants of a single literary trope. Of particular importance is the synonymic progression of eponymic play between Asher, Yeshurun and Israel in Deut. 33.26, 27 and 28, in which a thematic identity between Asher and Israel is implicitly recognized.



of Jerusalem. If we were to identify the geographical region referenced by the eponymic use of the name Israel in the stele with biblical usage, we would need point out that the region of Hurru/Israel corresponds with the Saul tradition’s Philistine areas [sic]. We cannot af� rm that we have a reference giving evidence for ‘an Israel in Palestine’ nor that we have ‘the � rst reference to early Israel’. Rather, the paradigmatic biblical Israel we can associate with the Merneptah stele is the literary one of Genesis’ eponymic traditions.

hjelm & thompson – the victory song of merneptah, israel and the people of palestine

Documents

continuum publishing group

merneptahs fth year

ramses ivs accession

great karnak inscription

geographical region referenced

ethnic group

cairo column

con rmed