The Merneptah Stele
A people called Israel existed in Canaan by about 1208 BC — named by a hostile Egyptian king with no interest in flattering them.
Lave'i 'i tu'a mei he Tohi TapuTohi tongi makac. 1208 BC
A black granite victory stele of the pharaoh Merneptah. Its closing lines list places and peoples defeated in Canaan — Ashkelon, Gezer, Yanoam — and among them "Israel", written with the hieroglyphic marker for a people rather than a settled city-state. It is the earliest known mention of Israel anywhere outside the Bible.
Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.
- Na'e 'ilo'i
- Merneptah's mortuary temple, Thebes, Egypt, 1896 — W. M. Flinders Petrie
- 'Oku tauhi 'i
- Egyptian Museum, Cairo (JE 31408)
- Lea
- Egyptian (hieroglyphic)
Hono lahi 'o 'ene fakamo'oni
The reading "Israel" is near-universally accepted. What the stele does not tell us is Israel's size, origin or organisation; those remain debated.
Founga hono ngāue'aki 'e he kau hisitōlia
Standard fixed point in the archaeology of Late Bronze Age Canaan, cited in secular handbooks as the terminus ante quem for Israel's presence in the land.
'I he Folofola
Fekau'aki mo
Ngaahi ma'u'anga fakamatala
'Oku 'i he lea faka-Pilitānia 'a e ngaahi fakamatala ko 'eni he taimi ni. 'E muimui mai 'a e liliu.