Anson Rainey’s article is most welcome. He presents strong support for my overall interpretation of the battle reliefs on the western outer wall of the Cour de la Cachette in the Karnak temple in Egypt. He has interpreted the evidence much as I did, including an overall consideration of Merenptah’s work in the decoration and inscribing of these reliefs.
He disagrees, however, with my interpretation of what I called scene 4 and its identification with Israel. As Rainey acknowledges, the parallels and precedents for my reinterpretation of the sequence of the battle scenes are valid, but he doubts that the Canaanite dress and chariot in possession of pharaoh’s foes in scene 4 could be Israelite.
First, on the order of the scenes, since Ashkelon is the first among the defeated enemies named on Merenptah’s Israel Stele—and is the southernmost geographically—I took it to be the first place pharaoh attacked, and that accordingly establishes the flow of the battle reliefs. Pharaoh’s direction of attack shows the direction of the action, and it is to the left (northward). The next scene to the left is the one I called Gezer. Yano‘am then must lie above Gezer, as it has a fortress. Israel can only be scene 4, above Ashkelon, for that is the only remaining battle scene.
The use of the determinative with the seated man and woman (the three hash marks denoting the plural) in the writing of “Israel” on the stele does not absolutely require that the people described be pastoralists and nomads. It might also refer to a population grouped in small, unfortified settlements without a city-state capital. This seems to be the nature of the earliest Israelite settlement in the hill country, as proposed by Professor Lawrence Stager.1
If the Israelites were settled and prospering in the hill country, I propose that they could have acquired a few chariots from raids on the Canaanites, or from allies among them. Scene 4 shows exactly one enemy [Israelite] chariot, with the other figures fleeing on foot from pharaoh’s onslaught. I assessed this situation carefully, in consultation with Dr. Stager. Rainey’s attempt to interpret scene 4 as Canaan based on the Israel Stele inscription fails to suit the poetic symmetry of the stele’s retrospective passage. There Canaan is coupled with Khor (Syria), which “has become a widow” as a result of Canaan’s despoiling. These are the overall regions of the Egyptian Asiatic realm. Israel, by contrast, is coupled with Yano‘am, and with Ashkelon and Gezer, in poetic couplets describing the actual places Merenptah had attacked.
Yes, there are Shasu in the battle reliefs, or rather, in the return-to-Egypt scenes. My explanation stated that they were not as important in this campaign as the three city-states and Israel, as indicated by the relegation of the Shasu to a conventional prisoner-binding scene, with no site-specific references, and by their inclusion among the captives marched back to Egypt in much-destroyed scenes located farther to the right along the wall. I interpret rhe Shasu as minor actors in the campaign, an element that harried the Egyptians as they proceeded north. As such harriers, they are found in almost every Ramesside battle relief series commissioned to depict Syro-Palestinian wars. If these Shasu represented Israel, why didn’t Sety I, Ramesses II or Ramesses III call them “Israel”? No, only Merenptah refers to Israelites, and they hold a prominent place, alongside Ashkelon, Gezer and Yano‘am, both in the reliefs and on the Israel Stele inscription. Indeed, if one assesses Merenptah’s campaign carefully, Israel was probably the main foe that had disturbed the long peace that had obtained since Ramesses II’s Peace Treaty with the Hittites.
In my original analysis, I did not pursue deeply the question of who these Israelites were. Clearly, this is where Rainey’s discussion leads. Conservatively, I estimated that at least some of the Israelites had coalesced out of Canaanite society. This is hardly a wholesale endorsement of the peasant-revolt theory. I also am not comfortable with an image of Israelites derived entirely from dissident Canaanites. Hardly anyone would doubt the pastoral, nomadic image of the proto-Israelites of Abraham’s or Jacob’s time. The strongest Egyptian parallel to those times is found in the Story of Sinuhe. If one regards the Book of Judges as descrthing the situation in the 13th and 12th centuries B.C.E., however, Israel then was partially settled and partially pastoral, and partially involved with Canaanites and even Sea Peoples. Deborah (Judges 4–5) could summon only five tribes to support her war.a Archaeology attests that some of the early Israelites were settled in the hill country of Canaan in the late 13th and early 12th centuries B.C.E.2 Pastoralists and nomads don’t build farmsteads, complete with terraced fields and cisterns for collecting water during the dry season. It is those settled Israelites in the hill country whom I proposed that Merenptah had attacked.
The Egyptian sculptors carved the enemies in scene 4 in Canaanite dress, and I feel that the evidence that they represent Israel is stronger than that for such an iclentification for Shasu in scene 5 and farther right along the wall. Certainly, the destruction of scene 4’s upper part has denied the positive evidence for this identification. Nonetheless, as I’ve shown above, the layout of the battle scenes and the disposition of the poetic retrospective section of the Israel Stele, balancing Ashkelon and Gezer and Yano‘am and Israel in couplets, and on the wall in four battle scenes, including one without a fortress, match precisely. Scene 5, showing pharaoh binding a pair of Shasu, however, is more generic in nature and has no specificity of locale in its associated text. This suggests that the Shasu played a minor, harassing role in the campaign, much as in the campaigns of other Ramesside pharaohs. The Israel Stele does not mention the Shasu, supporting my view that they played a minor role. But the Israel Stele does make clear that Canaan and Khor are seen as parallel—the regions that formed Egypt’s western Asiatic realm. That view is supported by other documents. In conclusion, I still feel that scene 4 of the battle reliefs best suits Israel and its description in Merenptah’s stele, as a people without a city-state, akin to Ashkelon, Gezer and Yano‘am. That is about as far as the existing Egyptian evidence takes us.3
Anson Rainey’s article is most welcome. He presents strong support for my overall interpretation of the battle reliefs on the western outer wall of the Cour de la Cachette in the Karnak temple in Egypt. He has interpreted the evidence much as I did, including an overall consideration of Merenptah’s work in the decoration and inscribing of these reliefs. He disagrees, however, with my interpretation of what I called scene 4 and its identification with Israel. As Rainey acknowledges, the parallels and precedents for my reinterpretation of the sequence of the battle scenes are valid, but he doubts that […]
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Lawrence Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 260 (Nov 1985) 1–35.
2.
Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel.”
3.
In the return-to-Egypt scenes, the fragmentary texts do mention the Shasu, but not Israel. Traces of prisoners in Canaanite dress are also preserved. While Other evidence may point to some Israelites as pastoral, or derived from pastoral society, what survives of Merenptah’s reliefs does not add to that evidence.
