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(1234?-1214 B.C.), the fourth king of the nineteenthEgyptian dynasty and the supposedPharaoh of the Exodus, was the thirteenth son of Rameses II whom he succeeded in or about 1234 B.C., being then long past middle age. His rule lasted some twenty years, during which he carried on considerable building operations in the Delta, and notably atTanis (Zoan), where, indeed as elsewhere, he usurped a number of some of his predecessors' monuments. His original works are comparatively few and insignificant. His name is constantly found on the monuments of hisfather; it appears also inNubia, and in the old quarries in the Sinaitic peninsula. In his third year, he quelled a revolt to the northeast, possibly excited by theHittites' and in his fifth year, he repelled an invasion ofEgypt by the Lybians and their allies, which victory is boastfully described on a black granite stela found in 1896 in his funeral temple atThebes, and bearing the earliest known reference toIsrael. He is commonly regarded as thePharaoh of the Exodus on the following grounds.
The chief objection to this view is that it seems to contradict the final strophe of Merneptah's "Hymn of Victory" over the Lybians inscribed on the granite stela already referred to. After relating the subjection ofChanaan and ofAscalon by the Egyptians, this inscription adds: "Israel is spoiled, his seed is not; Palestine has become awidow forEgypt." How can Merneptah I be thePharaoh of the Exodus since according to the obvious meaning of this passage, theIsraelites when defeated by him were already settled in Palestine, a settlement which as weknow from theBible was effected only after a forty years' wandering and therefore after Merneptah's death? This difficulty has led many scholars to consider an earlier king as thePharaoh of the Exodus, while others have answered it in various ways.
The following is its most probably solution. Scholars not expecting the exacttruth to be told in anEgyptian inscription concerning the Exodus disaster, and noticing that in the final strophe of Merneptah's "Hymn of Victory" an actual boastful misrepresentation of his relation to the Hittittes, precedes almost immediately the distinct reference toIsrael as "spoiled", will readily think that the glory therein claimed by Merneptah over theIsraelites is to be taken as a boastful misrepresentation of what really happened to him as thePharaoh of the Exodus. Merneptah's mummy was discovered in 1896 and identified in 1900. The find does not disproved the identity of that monarch with thePharaoh of the Exodus, for nothing in the Sacred Text requires the admission thatPharaoh pursued theIsraelites in person, or was drowned as a result.
APA citation.Gigot, F.(1911).Merneptah I. InThe Catholic Encyclopedia.New York: Robert Appleton Company.http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10208b.htm
MLA citation.Gigot, Francis."Merneptah I."The Catholic Encyclopedia.Vol. 10.New York: Robert Appleton Company,1911.<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10208b.htm>.
Transcription.This article was transcribed for New Advent by Andrew T. Green.
Ecclesiastical approbation.Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor.Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
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