Endnote 14 – 3,200-Year-Old Picture of Israelites Found in Egypt

For example, Raphael Giveon, Les Bédouins Shosou des documents egyptiens Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Antiqui, vol. 18 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1971), pp. 267–271, Manfred Weippert, “Canaan, Conquest and Settlement of,” in Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible Supplement (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1976), p. 129; Wieppert, “The Israelite ‘Conquest’ and the Evidence from Transjordan,” in Symposia Celebrating the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1900–1975), ed. Frank Moore Cross, (Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1979), pp. 32–34; Donald Redford, “The Ashkelon Relief at Karnak and the Israel Stele,” Israel Exploration Journal (IEJ) 36 (1986), pp. 199–200; Redford’s assumption that the Shasu in the Merenptah reliefs are the Israelites because Israel is not named elsewhere in the reliefs ignores the battle relief in scene 4, where the top is lost. His glib assertion that all the other names on the reliefs (except the Shasu) are also found on the Israel stele overlooks the plain evidence from the walls—only Ashkelon, in scene 4, is named; the fortresses in scenes 2 and 3 are unnamed, Yurco, “Merenptah’s Palestinian Campaign,” pp. 196 and 199–201; Kitchen, KRI, vol. 2, p. 165, lines 4–7. This position, again taken by Israel Finkelstein, “Searching for Israelite Origins,” BAR 14:05, uncritically following Redford, and without reference to either my paper (“Merenptah’s Palestinian Campaign”) or to that of Lawrence Stager, “Merenptah, Israel and Sea Peoples: New Light on an Old Relief,” Eretz Israel 18 (1985), pp. 56–64. From Papyrus Anastasi I (Wilson, “An Egyptian Letter,” ANET, p. 476), where the Shasu are described as uttering Semitic phrases as they furtively watch an Egyptian divisional camp, one may conclude that like other Canaanites the Shasu were Semitic peoples; it is not impossible that they were related to the Israelites, but Merenptah’s reliefs, particularly scene 4 of the battle reliefs, make it quite clear that the Shasu were not Israelites.