Abstract

The presence of the name Israel on the Merneptah Stele is often the starting point of Israel’s histories, but it is also the only attestation in Egyptian sources. The news of the discovery of the stele spread rapidly and the Flinders Petrie’s proposal to read Israel was not questioned. Returning to the moment of the discovery, we see that there were no philological arguments, but rather emotional arguments that prompted the discoverer to popularize and defend this identification at all costs. Any historical reconstruction based on this source is totally hypothetical.