Passage from the Merneptah Stele Inscription showing the word "Israel" (this is the oldest reference to Israel in a text outside the Bible). From 4th year of Pharaoh Merneptah (1212-1202 BCE), possibly the pharaoh under whom the Exodus took place (his father Ramesses II [1279-13] may have been the pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites). The passage reads as follows:

            The princes are prostrate, saying: "Mercy!"
 
            Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows. 
 
            Desolation is for Tehenu; Hatti is pacified; 

            Plundered is the Canaan with every evil; 
 
            Carried off is Ashkelon; seized upon is Gezer; 
 
            Yanoam is made as that which does not exist; 
 
            Israel is laid waste, his seed is not;18
 
            Hurru is become a widow for Egypt! 

            All lands together, they are pacified; 

            Everyone who was restless, he has been bound.

 
 	The three characters on the left [woman, man, bent throwstick],
 	along with the three vertical strokes beneath the first two,
 	indicate that "Israel"  refers to a people, not a land or a city
 	like Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yanoam.  In other words, Israel was an 
 	unsettled people in or near Canaan at this time.
 
         Translation by John Wilson in J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Near
 	Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Princeton, 1969, 
 	p. 378. 


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