"THE SEED OF YSIRAAL.

Only one mention of the people of Israel occurs by name on all the monuments of Egypt. This was discovered a few years since by Professor Petrie on a stele erected by the King Merenptah II. Not that there is any possibility of identifying these with the Israelites of the biblical exodus. The “people of Ysiraal” on the monument belong to those who were amongst the confederated Nine Bows, the marauders, North Africans, the Kheta, the Canaanites, the Northern Syrians, and others with whom they are classed. “Every one that was a marauder hath been subdued by the King Merenptah, who gives life like the sun-god every day”. This inscription gives an account of the Libyan campaign, and concludes with the following description of the triumph of King Merenptah: “Chiefs bend down, [Page 688] saying, Peace to thee; not one of the Nine Bows raises his head. Vanquished are the Tahennu (North Africans); the Khita (Hittites) are quieted; ravaged is Pa-kanana (Kanun) with all violence; taken is Askadni (Askelon?); seized is Kazmel; Yenu (Yanoh) of the Syrians is made as though it had not existed; the people of Ysiraal is spoiled — it hath no seed (left); Syria has become as widows of Egypt; all lands together are in peace (Petrie, Contemp. Review, May, 1896). The people of Ysiraal (Israel) are here included, together with the Syrians, and amongst the confederated ”Nine Bows” who made continual incursions into Egypt as invaders and marauders, and who are spoken of as having been exterminated. Hence it is said, “The people of Ysiraal is spoiled; it hath no seed”. But there is nothing whatever in the inscription of King Merenptah corresponding to or corroborative of the biblical story of the Israelites in the land of Egypt or their exodus into the land of Canaan. The campaign against the Libyan confederacy had been undertaken by Merenptah, who, according to the inscription, was born as the destined means of revenging the invasion of Egypt by the Nine Bow barbarians. In proclaiming the triumph of the monarch the inscription says, “Every one that was a marauder hath been subdued by the King Merenptah”. The people of Ysiraal in this inscription are identified by the Pharaoh with the nomads of the Edomite Shasu or shepherds, and are classed by him with the confederate marauders who invaded Egypt with the Libu, and were defeated with huge slaughter at the battle of Procepis (Pa-ar-shep, which is also recorded on the monuments. They were a tribe or totemic community of cattle-keepers, one of “the tribes of the Shasu from the land of Aduma” who went down into Egypt in search of grazing ground to find sustenance for their herds in the eastern region of the Delta. At this very time, when the people of Ysiraal and their seed were being “wiped out” or annihilated as the Israelites in Syria, there was an exodus of the Edomite Shasu which has been pressed into the service of false theory on behalf of biblical “history”. These tribes had considered the eastern region of the Delta, as far as Zoan, to be their own possession, until they were driven out by Seti I. Now they bestirred themselves anew, under Meneptah II (Merenptah), but “in a manner alike peaceful and loyal”. “As faithful subjects of Egypt, they asked for a passage through the border fortress of Khetam in the land of Thuku (Heb. Succoth), in order that they might find sustenance for themselves and their herds in the rich pasture-lands of the lake districts about the city of Pa-Tum (Pithom)” (Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. tr., one vol., p. 317). An Egyptian official makes the following report on the subject. He says: “Another matter for the satisfaction of my master’s heart: we have carried into effect the passage of the tribes of the Shasu from the land of Aduma (Edom) from the fortress (Khetam) of Merenptah-Hetephima, which is situated in Thuku (Succoth), to the lakes of the city Pa-Tum, of Merenptah-Hetephima, which are situated in the land of Thuku, in order to feed themselves and to feed their herds on the possessions of Pharaoh, who is there a beneficent sun for all peoples. In the year 8 . . . Sut, I caused them to be conducted (according to the list of the days on which the fortress was opened for their passage)”. (Brugsch, citing Pap. Anastasi; 6). Merenptah also had his royal seat in the city of Ramses. Here we meet with the field of Zoan and the store-cities of Pithom and Ramses which have been imported into the second book of Moses, and futile efforts have been made to show that this record corroborated the biblical version of the exodus. But in this exodus we find the Shasu or shepherds are peaceful and loyal people, faithful subjects of the Pharaoh, who are politely conducted from the land of Edom through the fortress (Khetam) to the lake-country of Succoth (or Thuku), the first encampment assigned to the Israelites, where they would find abundance of food and fodder for themselves and their flocks and herds instead of wandering in the wilderness for forty years, according to the other story. At the same time, or thereabouts, the people of Ysiraal in Syria were cut up root and branch by Merenptah. The passage through the land of Thuku, Hebrew Succoth, here described is apparently the route adopted by those who converted the “coming forth” from Amenta into the biblical exodus from Egypt, and it tends to affiliate the cattle-keepers in the land of Goshen to the nomadic tribes of the Edomite Shasu (Gen. XLVI. 32). But we shall not overtake the children of Israel as an ethnological entity on this line of route, nor as the people who perish by the million in the wilderness of sand that formed the land of graves in the desert domain of Sekari. For that we shall have to “turn back” and encamp before Pi-ha-hiroth, and pass through the mouth of the cleft into the wilderness of Amenta. But it is useless trying any further to confuse the Jewish exodus with the [Page 689] mythical “coming forth” from the lower Egypt of Amenta, with intent to reestablish a falsely-bottomed history. The eruption of the Libyans and their confederated invaders in the time of Merenptah is a matter of historic fact. That they were vanquished and driven back by Merenptah is equally historical. They at least made no triumphant exodus from Egypt as 600,000 fighting men, for they never got there, but were fatally defeated on the borders of the land. The only people, then, known by the name of Israel to the Egyptian monuments are the people of Ysiraal who had their very seed destroyed, as claimed by the Pharaoh beloved of Ptah. These can be identified as a North Syrian contingent of fighting men who had joined the Libyans, or the old confederation of the Nine Bows, in their attacks on Egypt, and were hunted back in wreck and ruin, if not entirely destroyed, by Merenptah, the so-called “Pharaoh of the exodus”. Thus, if these were the same people as those of the Hebrew exodus, the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt would be turned into the deliverance of Egypt itself from the Libyan confederacy of raiding barbarians amongst whom the Israelites were a hardly distinguishable unit. What then was “the seed of Israel” as an ethnological entity in the eyes of Merenptah, or the writer of his inscription? They fought as mercenaries and marauders for the Libyan king, who had made war on Egypt collectively, and were driven backward all together in one common, overwhelming rout. They came and went, and left no record of their past. Israel in Syria was not Israel in Egypt. Israel in Egypt is not an ethnical entity, but the children of Ra in the lower Egypt of Amenta, who are entirely mythical."

from Gerald Massey - "THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA"