and NO. 43.—JANUARY, 1898. I. THE ISRAEL TABLET OF MERNEPTAH. EVER since the Rosetta Stone unlocked the Egyptian hieroglyphs scholars have eagerly searched these ancient records for some mention of the Israelites, who, according to their own Scriptures, sojourned in the land of the Pharaohs for four hundred and thirty years, being cruelly oppressed during a portion of this period, and forced to build for the government the great store cities of Rameses and Pithom, and who then marched out of the country under the human leadership of Moses and with the miraculous assistance of the Almighty. But, although Pithom itself has been unearthed and identified beyond question by its own inscriptions found on the spot, and although the monuments papyri have given us abundant proofs of the correctness of the biblical references to Egyptian manners and customs, once impeached by a rash criticism, and although the political conditions of the country in the several stages of its history were closely connected with the fortunes of Israel for several centuries and with the outworking of its predicted destiny (Gen. xv. 13–16), yet until last year there has never been found a single clear reference in the Egyptian records to the children of Israel. Neither the brick-makers, who are represented on the well-known wallpainting of a Theban tomb, and who were once supposed to be the enslaved Hebrews, nor the Habiri of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, who are described as having stormed various cities of Southern Palestine in the time of Khuenaten (fifteenth century, B. C.), and whom Haynes and Conder still take to be the invading He brews under Joshua, nor the people whom the inscriptions call "Aperu," and who were employed in conveying stone from the desert quarries for the public buildings of Egypt under the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, can with any certainty be identified with the Hebrews of the Book of Exodus. It was, of course, not at all likely that the Pharaohs would record on their monuments such an event as the exodus itself, since that was to them a personal humiliation and a national disaster. It is well known that misfortunes and reverses find no place, in their boastful inscriptions, but only such events as they can in some way twist to their own credit. But why should there not be reference to the Hebrews as one of the subject races of the kingdom? The answer to this is, that the Egyptian records, which are, for the most part, inscribed on the walls of tombs and temples, and are of a religious or funerary character, contain very little historical matter of any kind. Therefore, while scholars did not abandon the search, but continued to scrutinize carefully every inscription that was brought to light, it was with no real expectation that they would find any reference to a people whom the Egyptians must have regarded as only a body of despised serfs. Last year, however, Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie, while working at Thebes, had the extraordinary good fortune to discover a monument on which there is an unmistakable reference to the Israelites by The interest of this discovery is enhanced by the fact that the king who made this inscription is no other than Merneptah, who for some time has been regarded by nearly all Egyptologists as the Pharaoh of the exodus. At the time of Merneptah's accession half of Egypt was overrun by the Libyans, and all his resources were required to rid his territory of these invaders, so that neither men nor means could be spared to quarry and convey stone for the building of splendid temples, such as had been reared in great numbers by his father, Rameses II., and his more remote predecessor, Amenophis III., the two most sumptuous of Egypt's monarchs and builders. In this strait Merneptah, when erecting his funeral temple, such as every Pharaoh built for himself, selected a site quite near the magnificent funeral temple of Amenophis III., and proceeded to demolish that for material to name. build his own, destroying ruthlessly the most beautiful statues, sphinxes, sculptured blocks and inscribed columns, either pounding them to pieces for his foundations or splitting them into slices and laying them down in the ground, or, as in the case of the tablet under consideration, turning them face inwards, and using the outer surface for inscriptions of his own. On a splendid slab of black syenite which he thus stole from the temple of Amenophis, Merneptah placed a long inscription, which makes fourteen hundred words in the translation. The opening lines of it inform us that it was set up in the fifth year of Merneptah's reign. It is a triumphal hymn, written by some court poet, and gives a glowing account of the overthrow and expulsion of the invading Libyans, of the consternation and dejection in Libya, and of the consequent security and tranquillity in Egypt, and winds up with a description of the relations existing after Merneptah's conquest of the Libyans between Egypt and a number of her former enemies and dependencies. It is in this closing paragraph that the matter of chief interest is found: 1. "For the Sun of Egypt has wrought this change; 2. "He was born as the destined means of avenging it, the King Merneptah; 3. "The chiefs bow down, making their salutations of 'Peace'; 4. "Not one of the peoples of the bow lifts up its head; 5. “Vanquished is the land of the Tahennu (North Afri cans); 6. "The land of the Khita (Hittites) is quieted; 7. "Ravaged is the land of Pa-Kanana (in South Palestine)' with all violence; 8. "Carried away is the land of Ashkelon (on the Philis tine coast); 9. "Seized upon is the land of Gezer (in Northern Phi listia); 'Petrie says Pa-Kanana appears most likely to be the modern Deir Kanun, five miles southeast of Tyre, or else the village of Kana, a little further southeast. But Conder, Sayce, and Maspero (Struggle of the Nations, p. 370), all agree that it was Khurbet Kanaan, south of Hebron. 10. "The land of Yenuam (near Tyre) is brought to nought; 11. "The people of Isiraal is spoiled; it hath no grain (or seed, or exodus);1 12. "Kharu (Southern Palestine) has become as (helpless) widows before Egypt; 13. "All lands-together they are in peace; 14. "Every one that was a rebel is subdued by the King Merneptah, who gives life like the snn every day.' As to the meaning which we are to attach to the statement concerning Israel, there are seven possible interpretations, the first two of which, however, are so improbable as to be hardly worthy of mention: 1. The view that the name should be read Jezreel, and not Israel, so that after all there is no reference to the chosen people. 2. The view that the inscription describes an early subjugation of Israel in Palestine by the Egyptians, out of which the later Israelites spun a legend concerning a long bondage of their forefathers in Egypt, no actual sojourn there having ever occurred. 3. The view that it refers to the destruction of the male children of the Israelites in Egypt. 4. The view that it refers to a military conquest of the Israelites as a nation long after their sojourn in Egypt and their settlement in Canaan (both of which, according to this theory, occurred in the fifteenth century B. C.). 5. The view that it refers to a defeat inflicted upon a portion of the Israelites, who had either (1) remained in Canaan when the main body of the people went down into Egypt with Jacob, or 1 This important line is variously translated: Sayce, "The Israelites are minished so that they have no seed "-similarly Griffith and Petrie; Budde, "Israel is a eunuch without posterity"; Spiegelberg, "Israel is a barren land without fear"-whatever that may mean; Müller, "Israel hath been torn out without offshoot"; J. Hunt Cooke, "The Israelites are crushed; they will have no exodus." " The inscription is given in full in Prof. Petrie's article on "Egypt and Israel" in The Contemporary Review for May, 1896. The introductory statements above made are mostly taken from my article on "The Latest Light from Egypt in The Union Seminary Magazine for September, 1896. But the discussion of the inscription here given is entirely different. (2) who had returned thither before the exodus, or (3) who, after the exodus, but before the general invasion, had penetrated and conquered a portion of the country on their own hook. 6. The view that it refers to the suppression of an incipient revolt of the Israelites in Goshen in connection with the Libyan invasion shortly before the exodus. 7. The view that it refers to a defeat inflicted upon the Israelites within the first two or three years after the exodus in the Sinaitic peninsula, or while they were threatening the southern frontier of Canaan. I. That the first view is wrong, and "that the name here is that of the people Israel, and not of the city Jezreel, is shown by the writing of it with S, and not Z," and by its having the expressly added word "people," unlike the other names in the passage, which are those of places, as the determinative shows. gave II. The second view is equally wide of the mark. According to it, the early Israelites in Palestine suffered a great defeat at the hands of the Egyptians under Merneptah, the memory of which rise to the legend concerning a sojourn in Egypt. Merneptah is the king during whose reign Old Testament scholars, after weighing all the probabilities, had fixed the exodus. If this same king defeated the Israelites in Palestine, as the inscription seems to state, is it not clear that the Israelites were never in Egypt at all? So the advocates of this view would reason. And it is well known that Stade, Meyer, Winckler and others do deny that Israel ever sojourned in Egypt, and hold the biblical account to be purely legendary. Heretofore it has been argued against their hypothesis that "it could not show a plausible genesis of such a legend. But now it would seem to have such an one.' Out of this crushing defeat which the Israelites suffered at the hands of Merneptah, out of the slaughter of their young men in battle, and out of the carrying away of some of the people as captives of war from their own country to Egypt, the Israelitish romancers spun their legend that the whole people had once been in bondage in Egypt, and that their male children had been killed by order of the Pharaoh. To some this may seem too absurd for discus 1 Sellin, Neue Kirch. Zeitsch., VII., p. 507. 991 |