Did the Egyptians Record the Israelites? The Truth Behind the Merneptah Stele and Ancient Egypt’s Historical Censorship

“Are the Israelites mentioned in ancient Egyptian records? The Egyptians documented everything in writing, so wouldn’t they have recorded the escape of millions of Hebrew slaves?”

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It’s true that the ancient Egyptians were prolific record keepers.  They wrote on papyrus scrolls, carved inscriptions into temple walls, and documented royal deeds in painstaking detail.

But what many people don’t realize is that Egyptian records were not objective history — far from it. The Egyptians systematically erased, distorted, or ignored any event that portrayed them in a negative light.

A striking example is the Hyksos period — a time when a Semitic people invaded and ruled Egypt for about 500 years. These foreign rulers built cities, temples, and a political system, yet Egyptian historians completely omitted them from their official record. They simply pretended that five centuries of history never happened.

The only Egyptian mention of the Hyksos appears incidentally — in the Tomb of Beni Hasan. Archaeologically, we know the Hyksos ruled because of their buildings, pottery, and other artifacts, but no official hieroglyphic record acknowledges their reign.

If the Egyptians could erase half a millennium of their own history because it was embarrassing, it’s easy to understand why they wouldn’t document a humiliating defeat — such as the miraculous Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, accompanied by plagues and the collapse of Pharaoh’s army in the sea.

The “Israel Stele” — Pharaoh’s Lie About Destroying Israel

Remarkably however, ancient Egypt does mention Israel, in one of its most famous archaeological artifacts: the Merneptah Stele, dated to around 1208 BCE — more than 3,200 years ago.

Pharaoh Merneptah, son of Ramses II, erected this monumental inscription to boast of his military campaigns in Canaan. Toward the end of the text, he declares triumphantly: “Israel is laid waste — his seed is no more.”

This is the earliest known non-biblical reference to Israel anywhere in the world. Ironically, the very first time “Israel” appears in Egyptian history is in a false claim of their total annihilation.

It’s telling that Merneptah made such a claim only about Israel — not about any other Canaanite people he mentioned. Of all his enemies, he reserved his most emphatic boast for the Israelites: that he had “wiped them out completely.”

The likely reason is deep resentment — a national humiliation still echoing from the Exodus story. Merneptah, being the son of Ramses II — the Pharaoh traditionally associated with the oppression of the Israelites — had every motive to “defend his father’s honor” and rewrite the story as one of Egyptian victory.

What Historians Say

Even modern secular sources acknowledge this distortion.
As stated on Wikipedia: “Pharaoh Merneptah boasts of having annihilated Israel, yet later inscriptions — such as the Mesha Stele and the Kurkh Monolith from 300 years later — clearly attest to the ongoing existence of Israel as a nation. Therefore, the claim ‘Israel is laid waste, his seed is no more’ is a clear exaggeration, typical of Egyptian royal inscriptions that glorify victories and fabricate total conquests.”

Why Egyptian Silence Speaks Volumes

The Merneptah Stele thus proves two key things:

1. The Israelites were known in Egypt over 3,200 years ago.

2. They were already settled in Canaan, recognized as a distinct people.

At the same time, it shows how unreliable Egyptian “history” was. If a Pharaoh could lie about having exterminated an entire nation — one that would go on to thrive for millennia — then clearly, the absence of earlier records tells us more about Egyptian propaganda than about historical truth.

Just as one wouldn’t rely on Nazi archives to tell the honest story of the Jewish people, so too one cannot rely on the anti-Semitic distortions of ancient Egypt, Greece, or Rome.

Ancient writers like Manetho, Diodorus, Trogus, Apion, and Tacitus all produced hateful myths and falsehoods about the Israelites. Yet, ironically, through all these fabrications, we glimpse the unmistakable truth: Israel existed, survived, and endured — despite every empire that tried to erase it.