Before the Church · 1208 BC
The Merneptah Stele
The Israel Stele
The court of Merneptah
What it is
A victory hymn on a granite slab listing what the pharaoh has destroyed in Canaan — Ashkelon carried off, Gezer seized, Yanoam made non-existent — and then, written with the determinative for a people rather than a place, Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.
Why it lasted
The earliest mention of Israel anywhere outside the Bible, and the fixed point every reconstruction of Israelite origins has to accommodate: by 1208 BC there was a people of that name in Canaan, and no land yet attached to it.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
Read next