SiTU Museum of Mysteries

The Merneptah Stela

The Merneptah Stele—also known as the Israel Stele or Victory Stele of Merneptah—is an inscription by the Ancient Egyptian king Merneptah (reign: 1213 to 1203 BC) discovered by Flinders Petrie in 1896 at Thebes, and now housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.^[1][2] The text is largely an account of Merneptah's victory over the Libyans and their allies, but the last 3 of the 28 lines deal with a separate campaign in Canaan, then part of Egypt's imperial possessions.

While alternative translations have been put forward, the majority of biblical archeologists translate a set of hieroglyphs on Line 27 as "Israel", such that it represents the first documented instance of the name Israel in the historical record,^[2] and the only mention in Ancient Egypt.^[3] As a result, some consider the stele to be Flinders Petrie's most famous discovery,^[4] an opinion with which Petrie himself concurred.^[5]