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Merneptah in hieroglyphs: the king whose stela names Israel
25 October 2026
Merneptah's birth name is mr-n-ptḥ, "beloved of Ptah". In his cartouche the god comes first, out of respect: the stool p, the loaf t and the twisted wick ḥ spell Ptah, then the hoe writes mr, "beloved", and the water ripple n, "of".
He was the thirteenth son of Ramesses II and already over fifty when he became king in 1213 BC. He ruled about ten years. A granite stela of his victories, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, holds the oldest known mention of Israel.
Ptah stands first in the cartouche
Read the cartouche in sound order and you get mr-n-ptḥ. Written order puts the god first: the stool (Q3) is p, the loaf (X1) t, the twisted flax wick (V28) ḥ. Then the hoe (U7), mr, "to love", and the water ripple (N35), n. Scribes moved a god's name to the front of a name or phrase as a mark of honour. The same thing happens in Tutankhamun, where Amun's signs come first.
On his monuments the birth name usually runs on: Merneptah Hotephermaat, "beloved of Ptah, content with Maat". Ptah was the creator god of Memphis, where the king spent much of his reign.
His throne name is Baenre
Merneptah's other cartouche reads bꜣ-n-rꜥ mry-nṯrw, Baenre Merynetjeru, "the soul of Ra, beloved of the gods". The sun disc of Ra crowns it, as it crowns most throne names of his dynasty.
Twelve of Ramesses II's sons died before their father, who reigned 66 years. Merneptah, a son of the queen Isetnofret, served as crown prince for the last twelve. When he came to the throne he was an experienced administrator and soldier.
He beat a Libyan invasion in his fifth year
In 1208 BC Libyan tribes, joined by groups of the Sea Peoples, pushed into the western Delta. Merneptah's army met them at a place called Perire and won after a six-hour battle. His texts claim 6,000 enemy dead and 9,000 captives.
The war is told in a long inscription on a wall of Karnak near the sixth pylon, now missing about a third of its text. It names the Sea Peoples who fought for the Libyans: the Ekwesh, Teresh, Lukka, Sherden and Shekelesh.
The Israel line stands near the end of his stela
Flinders Petrie found the victory stela in 1896 in Merneptah's funerary temple at Thebes. It is black granite, over three metres high, with 28 lines. Its back carries an older text of Amenhotep III: Merneptah reused the stone. Most of it praises the Libyan victory. The last lines turn to Canaan.
Line 27 reads, in the usual translation, "Israel is laid waste, its seed is not". The towns beside it, Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam, end with the sign for a foreign land. Israel ends with the throw stick for foreigners, a seated man and woman and three strokes, the signs for a people. Egyptian scribes knew Israel as a group of people in Canaan. A few scholars read the name differently, but most accept Israel.
His names spread over older monuments
Merneptah carved his cartouches onto statues and temples of earlier kings, a common habit of the time. A granite sphinx from Tanis in the Louvre carries his names beside those of Ramesses II and Shoshenq I. At Abydos he finished the carving of the Osireion, behind his grandfather Seti I's temple, with the Book of Gates on its entrance corridor. In Philadelphia, the Penn Museum's red granite sphinx of Ramesses II carries Merneptah's cartouches on its shoulders, and the museum holds door jambs and columns from his palace at Memphis, dug by a Penn team from 1915.
He was buried in tomb KV8 in the Valley of the Kings. His mummy was later moved by priests and turned up in 1898 in the tomb of Amenhotep II, among other royal mummies. It is now in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo.
Questions
Is Merneptah the pharaoh of the Exodus?
The Bible does not name the pharaoh, and no Egyptian text records the Exodus. Merneptah's stela shows a people called Israel already living in Canaan in his reign.
What does Merneptah mean?
"Beloved of Ptah", the god of Memphis. His full birth name, Merneptah Hotephermaat, adds "content with Maat".
Where is the Merneptah Stele?
In the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square in Cairo, catalogue number JE 31408. A broken second copy was found at Karnak.
Glossary
- birth name
- The name a king was given at birth, written in the second cartouche after the title "son of Ra". Egyptologists also call it the nomen.
- cartouche
- An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
- dynasty
- A line of kings counted together, usually one family. Egyptologists number Egypt's kings in about 30 dynasties, following the priest Manetho.
- Maat
- Truth, justice and the right order of the world, shown as a goddess with an ostrich feather on her head. Kings claimed to uphold it.
- pylon
- The huge gateway of a temple: two sloping towers with a door between them, carved with scenes of the king.
- scribe
- A person trained to read and write, who kept accounts, wrote letters and copied texts. Few Egyptians could write, and scribes were well respected.
- sphinx
- A statue with the body of a lion and the head of a king, a guardian of temples and tombs. The Great Sphinx at Giza is the largest.
- stela
- An upright stone slab carved with words and pictures, set up in tombs and temples or to mark a border.
- temple
- The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.
- throne name
- The name a king took when he came to the throne, written in the first cartouche after the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt". Egyptologists also call it the prenomen.
- tomb
- A burial place: a pit, a mastaba, a pyramid or rooms cut into rock. Its chapel was where the family brought offerings.
- Valley of the Kings
- A desert valley on the west bank at Luxor where the New Kingdom kings were buried in tombs cut into the rock, Tutankhamun among them.
People in this article
Where to see it
- Egyptian Museum, Cairo museum
- Karnak Temple site
- Osireion monument
- Louvre, Paris museum
- Valley of the Kings site
- National Museum of Egyptian Civilization museum
- Penn Museum, Philadelphia museum
Sources
More to read
- Horemheb in hieroglyphs: the general who wrote his name over others Horemheb's name in hieroglyphics, read sign by sign: "Horus is in festival", the general who became king and carved his cartouche over Tutankhamun's.
- Amenhotep I in hieroglyphs: the king the tomb builders made a god Amenhotep I in hieroglyphics: Djeserkare and Amenhotep read sign by sign, the king worshipped at Deir el-Medina, and the one royal mummy left unwrapped.
- Thutmose II in hieroglyphs: Hatshepsut's husband and his lost tomb Thutmose II in hieroglyphics: Aakheperenre and Thutmose read sign by sign, the husband of Hatshepsut, and the tomb in the Theban hills confirmed in 2025.