So the question that we're now asking is,

how did it all begin?

Where does Israel come from and how did
the states of Israel and Judah develop.
Okay, so.
Let's ask first, what is the first
historical reference to Israel, outside
the Bible?
That is, what is the first reference to
the name, Israel, explicitly in a text.
That is in Egypt, Mesopotamia, wherever.
And many of you may know the answer to
this question already.
The date is about 1200 BC.
And the place where it was discovered, the
text, is the town of
Thebes, way down in southern Egypt, about
800 kilometers south of the Mediterranean
coast.
Now before I describe this remarkable
reference
to Israel, I want to point out that
that we have much older Egyptian texts
that
mention the names of places that would
become.
Important towns in Israel's history.
These are the names of places in Canaan,
Israel
had not yet developed, but in Canaan, in
Southern Canaan.
And that will endure for many centuries
thereafter, in
the times of the Biblical kings and so
forth.
So one source for these references is the
Execration Texts, dating
to Egypt's twelfth dynasty, that is about
the nineteenth century B.C..
The Execration texts are really
fascinating, really fascinating.
Some are on pottery shards, like broken
pieces
of pottery and others are on figurines and
as a kind of sympathetic magic the names
of the enemies of the individual peoples,
places, whatever.
In this case the towns of Canaan.
Were written upon these objects and then
they were ceremonially
destroyed as curses were pronounced over
their names and crashed down.
The idea is that the ritual and the
curse would ensure that these Canaanite
towns would not
pose a threat to the Egyptian ruler, and
one
did that through this curse and through
these ceremonies.
You might be thinking of similar practices
when you hear about this.
That you know of in other cultures, in
other times and places.
And if you do, please mention them in the
discussion.
I would love to hear about them.
So one of these texts, one of
these execration texts, mentions the word
ushalim.
And some scholars identify it with the
name.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem in hebrew is
[FOREIGN].
And [FOREIGN] do sound similar.
Others.
however, are not convinced by this
reading.
So we shouldn't make too much of it.
So what's interesting for our course is
the context of these
first references to important towns from
the land of the Bible.
And the context is defeat.
And curses calling for the destruction of
these places and their inhabitants.
It's quite fascinating.
Now, the second corpus of Egyptian text
mentions
places we know from the Bible as well.
And this corpus is in fact our more
important source
of knowledge of activities in Canaan in
the period directly before.
The many historical changes that gave rise
to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
We call this text the Armana Letters after
the
town of L Armana in Southern Egypt, the
Armana Letters.
It was there that this guy the
thing which Egyptologist and archaeologist
Flinders Petrie.
Found a collection of about 350 letters.
The year was 1887 and in these letters,
several
Egyptian rulers from Amenhotep III, the
King Tut who reigned
in the fourteenth century, correspond back
and forth with powerful
rulers in the areas of what are now modern
Syria.
Turkey and Iraq.
However, the Egyptian kings also write to
their town mayors.
That is, men whom they had appointed to
oversee numerous towns throughout Canaan.
And, they're kind of their governors, or
in their provinces, kind of thing.
In their epistle to the Egyptian court,
these local rulers, these mayors.
And towns such as Shkem, Shkem or
Jerusalem, Makido, Gezer, Hebron or Hebron
report many
juicy details about their struggles with
mayors in
competing towns, and they're very fun to
read.
We'll return to them [INAUDIBLE] letters
later since
they help us imagine what would have
happened.
When Egypt relinquished its attempt to
exert control over Canaan, the
land of the Bible, and it's very important
for that point.
So now, what about the most important
reference to
Israel, which was discovered at the town
of Thebes?
The reference is found on a royal monument
of victory.
Called the Merneptah Stele.
A stele is a big stone that is erected.
And it's named after the Egyptian king
Merneptah, who ruled until about 1203 BC.
The monument is inscribed with a text.
And the text is an account of this ruler's
military campaign.
Against Libya in the south of Egypt.
Now at the end of the text are three lines
that treat another military campaign.
This one into Caanan, in the north.
Now, let me read for you the culmination
of the
section of these three lines as translated
by Miriam Lichtiem.
The princes are prostrate saying, Shalom.
Not one of the Nine Bows lifts his head.
Tjehenu is vanquished, Khatti at peace,
Canaan is captive with all woe.
Askelon is conquered, Gezer seized, Yanoam
made nonexistent and here.
Israel is wasted, bare of seed, and then
Khor is become a widow for Egypt.
All who roamed about have been subdued by
the king of upper and lower Egypt.
Now, the first thing to notice is that
when we examine the hieroglyphs, that is
the Egyptian
writing signs, we can see that Ashkelon,
Gezer and
Yanoam have a marker or what's called a
determinative.
That is used before cities.
It's a throw stick plus three mountains.
In contrast the determinative the sign
used for Israel, right before
Israel is a throw stick followed by a
sitting man and a
sitting woman above the plural marker, the
three vertical lines, but
it does not have the three mountains, as
you can see here.
This determinative appears before foreign
peoples
who are typically nomadic, rather than
urban.
That is, they're not city dwellers.
So Israel is not being noted here as a
city, but rather as a people without a
urban center.
Okay?
Now second.
What we're told about this nomadic
population
called Israel is that they are defeated.
Literally, they are wasted, their seed is
not.
The word for seed, [FOREIGN] could refer
either to Israel's corn and
crops, or it could be a way of describing
their biological seed.
Either way, the point is the same, that
the Egyptian King had destroyed their
means of survival.
We probably should not take the phrase too
literally, since the scribe
was likely attempting to find a poetic way
of des, of describing conquest.
It would be similar to the following in
line that
I just read, whore has becomes as a widow
for Egypt.
This poetry 'Kay?
And the describer's trying to find
different ways of describing conquest.
Less it would be too much to claim as
some have, that is, rural is being
describe here
as quote, a rural or sedentary group of
agriculturalists,
that is, farmers, without its own urban
city-state support system.
This is a quote from Michael Hasel.
We also can not say where these people,
where these the people of
Israel are located other than that they
are somewhere in the southern Levant.
That is, in the land of the Bible, but
even that is not for sure.
They could have been in the trans Jordan
that is the
modern Jordan, and so we really don't even
know where they're located.
But what's interesting for the theme of
our course, which is how Israel reinvented
itself after defeat is, number one, the
name of Israel is attested for
the first time outside the Bible in an
inscription from 1200 B.C.E. Number
two, the inscription refers to Israel as a
non-urban population, not yet a state.
Perhaps nomadic in lifestyle, and most
importantly number 3, this
first reference to Israel claims that it
has been defeated.
That it's seed is no longer.
If this last point were taken at face
value, then we can stop the course right
here.
But, the historical facts prove to be much
more complex.
than the monument to King Ramentes
Triumph.
Israel was not wiped out.
It survived.
And as we shall see in coming lectures, it
went on to thrive.
And to build a state in a society that
lasted for several centuries.
Before another foreign empire destroyed
it.
But even then, conquest was not the final
word.