MENEPTAH, INSCRIPTIONS OF.
Modern scholars agree with Manetho in the opinion that Meneptah, the son and successor of Rameses II, was the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Manetho calls him "Amenephthes, the son of Rameses," and in the inscriptions found at Bubas tis he is represented as the general of the in fantry during the reign of his father. The view that he was the Pharaoh of the Exodus is also confirmed by an inscription which was recently discovered.
(1) Concerning the Israelites. In the winter of t895-6, Dr. W. Al. Flinders Petrie was work ing among the ruins of Thebes, and discovered there the remains of a temple which belonged to the Nineteenth Dynasty. Among the inscribed stones he found a large. stela of black granite upon which was an inscription, which proved to be a hymn of victory, reciting the glories of Meneptah and his triumphs over his enemies. The record seems to have been made in the fifth year of his reign, and it reads as follows: "Vanquished is the land of the Libyans, and the land of the Hittites tranquilized. Captured is the land of Pa-kana'na with all violence. Carried away is the land of Ashkelon. Overpowered is the land of Gezer. The Israelites (I-s-y-r-a-e-l-u) are minished, so that they have no seed. The land of Kharu is become like the widows of Egypt. All lands are at peace." Kharu was the southern part of Palestine, and the name was identified by Prof. Maspero with that of the Horites of the Scriptures.
The name of Israel is most distinct, and has been accepted by Prof. Maspero, Dr. Neville, Dr. Spiegelberg and others. This alone of all the people mentioned in the inscription, had no word of explanation concerning the country to which they belonged. They must therefore have been at that time either bond slaves in Egypt, or, as is more probable, they were wanderers in the wil derness, the Exodus having already taken place when the hymn of victory was written.
The word which is here rendered "minished" has the determinative for badness or smallness attached, but it is met with here for the first time. The word which is rendered "seed" is used elsewhere in the sense of offspring. Attempts have been made to explain this statement as re ferring to the crops in a hypothetical land of Israel, which are supposed to have been destroyed by the Egyptians. But the Israelites were herds men, and not agriculturists, and the supposition is also rendered impossible by the fact that they are expressly marked out as having no land of their own upon which crops could be cultivated. The word "seed" must therefore have the mean ing which it often bears in other inscriptions— "posterity."
(2) Invaders. One of the inscriptions of Meneptah also tells us that a flood of barbarians penetrated as far as Belbeis. in the southern ex tremity of the land of Goshen. where the coun try had been "handed over from old kings to foreigners as pasturage for their cattle." These "foreigners" must have been the Israelites. in whom the invaders found sympathizing friendc. They are associated also with the land of the Horites, who are said to have become "widows" on account apparently of the destruction of the male seed of Israel. Therefore the author of the poem must have been aware of the fact that Israel had fled towards Edom, which was the territory of their kin.
The cutting off of the male seed lest Israel might ally themselves with an invader was the act of Rameses II, the father and predecessor of Meneptah, but in order to glorify the reigning king, the poet does not hesitate to ascribe to him the deeds of his father, and indeed this was often the custom among the Egyptian kings. They were very willing to erase the inscriptions of their predecessors and inscribe their own victories upon the same stela, or to claim the triumphs for them selves. (See RAMESES II.) (3) Political Conditions. The narrative in Exodus harmonizes exactly with what we know of the political condition of Egypt in the fifth year of Meneptah, and the geography of the age of Meneptah also harmonizes with the geography of Exodus. For instance, the road from Goshen to the desert at that time lay past Thuku or Suc coth and the "Migdol of King Meneptah." Suc coth was one of the names of the city of Pithom, and even Baal-Zephon (Ex. xiv :2) is mentioned in a papyrus of the same age. The district whioh included the land of Goshen appears to have been comparatively unoccupied for a time after it was evacuated by the Israelites, but we have a clay letter which was addressed to the Egyptian court in the eighth year of King Meneptah in which the writer claims that Bedouin tribes from the land of Edom had been allowed to settle and pasture their herds there.
.We may therefore conclude that Egyptian tra dition is correct in claiming that Meneptah was the Pharaoh of this period, but we need never expect to find any Egyptian monuments recording the escape of the Israelites. The old kings of Egypt and Assyria were enough like modern poli ticians to preserve a dead silence concerning their defeats and record only their victories. (See PI-BESETH ; SENNACHERIB ; NEBUCHADNEZZAR.) (Lectures before Univ. Coll., London, by W. M. Flinders Petrie.)