The find
In 1896, the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie was digging at Thebes, the old royal city of Egypt. He found a slab of black granite, more than three metres tall, covered in hieroglyphs.
It was a victory monument of Pharaoh Merneptah, son of Ramesses the Great. It dates to the fifth year of his reign, around 1208 BC. It now stands in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The line
Most of it celebrates a war against the Libyans. Then, near the end, the Pharaoh lists the peoples he crushed in Canaan. Ashkelon, Gezer, Yanoam. And one more:
"Israel is laid waste, its seed is no more."
It's the first time the name Israel has ever been found outside the Bible.
A people
Egyptian writing adds a small sign to a name to show what kind of thing it is. Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam get the sign for a city. Israel gets a different one: a man and a woman, the sign for a people.
Around 1208 BC, Egypt knew Israel as a people living in Canaan. Israel had already left Egypt and settled in the land.
Its seed is no more
Seed means descendants. Pharaoh was boasting that Israel had no future.
God had told Abraham the opposite:
"I will bless thee, and I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that is by the seashore."
Genesis 22:17
An earlier Pharaoh had tried the same thing, back in Egypt. He set taskmasters over the Hebrews to crush them. "But the more they oppressed them, the more they were multiplied, and increased" (Exodus 1:12). So he ordered their baby boys thrown into the river. Out of that river, God saved Moses.
Why this is a big deal
Egypt carved the name of Israel into granite more than 3,200 years ago, to announce that it was finished.
Merneptah's empire is a museum exhibit. The seed of Abraham is still here. And Paul says the promise to Abraham was always about one seed in particular, "to thy seed, who is Christ" (Galatians 3:16).