welcome to expedition bible in this video i travel to egypt to explore one of the most significant discoveries ever made in biblical archaeology flinders petrie is considered the father figure of the field of archaeology and in his book 70 years in archaeology he tells the story of a discovery that he made in egypt back in 1896. petrie wrote to the astonishment of the rest of our party i sat at dinner that night this will be better known in the world than anything else i have found he was right 70 years in archaeology and this was his greatest find so i’m here at the tel aviv airport i’m getting ready to leave the modern state of israel to go explore evidence for ancient israel my first stop in egypt is luxor ancient thieves where across the nile river lay the ruins of the mortuary temples where the pharaohs of old were once worshiped as gods this one is the mortuary temple of pharaoh mernepta who ruled egypt from about 1213 to 1204 bc and this is where on a winter day in 1896 flinders petri was excavating petrie wrote the site of myrnepta’s temple was disastrously dull i was tempted to leave it as fruitless then in the last corner to be cleared there lay a black granite steely over ten feet high and five wide i’m standing in the mortuary temple of the pharaoh mernepta and this is where flinders petri was excavating when he found this inscription today you can go to the cairo museum and see the uh the real steely that this is a replica of the mernepta steely a steely is a stone shaped to stand upright and barren inscription we still use them today in cemeteries petri wrote on looking beneath it there was the inscription of mernepta i had the ground cut away below blocking up the steely on stones so that one could crawl in and lie on one’s back reading a few inches from one’s nose the excavation’s epigrapher was a man named spiegelberg and petrie wrote about him when he says he lay there copying for an afternoon this just cracks me up because i mean think about that think about what they did in 1896 where a hole is dug under an inscription and an epigrapher goes into that hole like a gopher and then spends a whole afternoon with the inscription literally this far away from his face with a candle you know translating all of these words i mean that is one tough epigrapher he lay there copying for an afternoon and came out saying there are names and one i don’t know is syrah why that is israel said i so it is and won’t the reverence be pleased was his reply this is a replica of it here in the place of its discovery the real one we can now go see in the cairo museum [Music] so here we are in the egyptian museum this is the mernepta steely i’ve done a lot of digging and found a lot of things but if i found something like this ten and a half foot inscription i would freak out because i mean look at this thing can you imagine ten and a half foot steely covered with an inscription on both sides so on this side is the most famous name found in this entire inscription which is right down here the name israel it’s agreed upon that this says israel and this is the earliest mention of the name israel found outside of the bible the inscription of murnepta dates to around 1210 bc the inscription describes who mernepta and his army fought with in kanan the translation reads kanan is plundered ashkelon is conquered gezer is seized you know him is made non-existent israel is a laid waste ashkelon gezer and yunoam are followed by the city-state symbol these three city-states were ruled by kings there is no city-state symbol shown for the name israel instead the symbol for a foreign people is shown this means that in 1210 bc israel is described as a people that has not yet formed into a nation and therefore is without a king according to biblical chronology the date 1210 bc falls in the judges period where we find in the book of judges this repeating phrase in those days israel had no king so we have here this huge inscription uh ten and a half feet high five feet wide inscribed on both sides and yet what makes this find so significant is the discovery on it of a single word the name israel found in the bible over 2 400 times and this wasn’t even the first time that had been found in an inscription through archaeology but this was the earliest mention of the name israel outside of the bible this is yet another example of the details in the bible being verified through the details of an inscription dug up through archaeology if you enjoyed this video please give it a like and you’ll want to watch this related video where i travel to sudan to see another inscription that is the earliest mention of the name of the god of israel the name yahweh