Talk:Merneptah Stele

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I'm aware that this Stele is widely known as "The Israel Stele", but, considering its content, it is more accurate to call it "The Merneptah Stele". Thus, the revision. -RomeW

Fair enough. While personally I believe most users will come to Wiki and search for "Israel Stela" (right or wrong), you are correct. However, there are also lots of other stelae of Merenptah, but only one Victory Stela. —Nefertum17 09:26, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe Merneptah 'had' a lot of stelae- he was ill for most of his life, and really went on just one campaign (the Libyan campaign depicted here) as a Pharaoh (the other known Stela from him is a direct copy of this Stela at Karnak). Having looked at the text further (in Miriam Lichtheim's book), it should probably be more correctly called the "Victory Hymn of Merneptah" because that's what it is- a hymn. I believe that's what the title *should* be, but I'm not sure if we absolutely *need* to be that accurate. -RomeW

[edit] Name

I have moved the article to "Merneptah Stele" as Wikipedia official naming policy is that articles have the "most common name" rather than any technical definition - see Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Use common names of persons and things.

Also note that it requests the titles be simple (in the "specifics" of that part of the policy). ~~~~ 18:59, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] -

Ancient propaganda? Israel's seed could definitely not of been laid to waste. It still exists today. Possible motives? Maybe a connection to the leagond that Israelite women were giving birth to 7 babies at once.

[edit] Michael G. Hasel's theory

The article contains this paragraph about a theory of Michael G. Hasel of Southern Adventist University:

Another explanation offered by Michael G. Hasel, director of the Institute of Archaeology at Southern Adventist University, is that Israel was already a well established political force in Canaan in the late 13th century BCE: "Israel functioned as an agriculturally based or sedentary socioethnic entity in the late 13th century BCE one that is significant enough to be included in the military campaign against political powers in Canaan. While the Merneptah stela does not give any indication of the actual social structure of the people of Israel, it does indicate that Israel was a significant socioethnic entity that needed to be reckoned with."[7]

I have no idea who Michael G. Hasel is, or how much authority he cqarries in Egyptological circles, I'm inclined to suspect any church-based US university, as many of them are quite mediocre. On the other hand, I don't want to make judgements when I really know nothing of the subject. But my problem with Hasel's theory is this: the line about Israel in the stele, as quoted in this article, gives no indication that Israel was agriculturally based or sedentary, yet here Hasel says that what it was - his conclusion is not supported by the evidence. So I'd be strongly inclined to delete But I leave it to others to decide. PiCo 06:56, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I am inclined to believe that possibly they mistranslated or are attempting to make it into something it's not. Another possible meaning is that Israel was barren of seed. It's fields wasted. If they are not listed as a country it's possible that it's referring to the status of the land. If they were nomadic the Egyptians may have chosen to destroy the fields of the Israelites in order to get them to move or as a punishment for the alliances.71.62.197.151 (talk) 19:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)