Image Details

Maryl Levine
On the second line from the bottom of the Stela is the earliest known non-Biblical reference to Israel (see detail): “Canaan has been plundered into every sort of woe … Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.” An unpronounced sign, called a determinative, indicates that the word “Israel” denotes a people, not a place. Was Israel a clearly defined nation at the time the stela was made? No, says Finkelstein: “I don’t believe in a functioning, coherent ethnic entity named Israel as early as the 12th century [B.C.].” He suggests instead that “Israel” in the late 13th century B.C. may have referred to a group of people in the Canaanite highlands, who may have called themselves Israelites. Finkelstein thus differs markedly from the so-called Biblical maximalists, who take the Merneptah Stela as proof that Israel was a nation as early as the late 13th century B.C.