event · E0410
Berlin Pedestal Relief תבליט בסיס הפסל מברלין
A granite fragment of an Egyptian statue pedestal, about 46 × 40 cm, carrying a topographical list of bound captives in name-rings; two rings clearly read Ashkelon and Canaan, and in 2001 Manfred Görg proposed that the damaged third ring is an archaic writing of the name Israel. Purchased on the antiquities market in 1913 (Ludwig Borchardt, from the dealer M. Nachman) with no findspot, it is held with its companion slab ÄM 21688 in the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin — the Egyptian collection, not the Vorderasiatisches Museum that holds the Amarna letters. If the reading held, it would name Israel a century or more before the Merneptah Stele; the reading is contested, and the atlas grades it accordingly.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- תבליט בסיס הפסל מברלין
- Also known as
- Berlin Statue Pedestal ÄM 21687, Berlin Pedestal Relief 21687
- Era
- bible
II. When
- Traditional
- ≈2361–2511 AM if the proposed academic window is laid onto the AM scale — schematic only, since the object's own date is disputed
- Civil (computed)
- 2361–2511 AM · 1400–1250 BCE (trad.)
- Academic
- c. 1400–1250 BCE (proposed; disputed)
- Date range
- proposed c. 1400–1250 BCE — an unprovenanced fragment dated only by style and epigraphy, and the dating is itself part of the dispute
- Duration
- ≈150 years
- Precision
- disputed
IV. What
- Events
- Merneptah Stele
Why it matters
This broken slab is the challenger for the title the Merneptah Stele (Merneptah Stele) holds: the oldest surviving object that names Israel. Görg and his colleagues read its third name-ring as an archaic "Israel" and dated the list even earlier than Merneptah — which would push Israel's first appearance in writing back a century or more, deep into the era the Torah itself covers. But the ring is damaged, the reading is disputed among Egyptologists, and the stone was bought from a dealer, so no excavation anchors it. The atlas shows it for exactly what it is: a serious, published, contested possibility — and the reason the Merneptah line is always called the earliest *undisputed* mention.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| The fragment — a granite statue-pedestal relief, c. 46 × 40 × 7.5 cm, showing bound captives with topographical name-rings, two of them reading Ashkelon and Canaan — was purchased in 1913 by Ludwig Borchardt from the dealer M. Nachman, with no recorded findspot, and is held in the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin, as ÄM 21687. Its companion slab ÄM 21688, with further West Asiatic name-rings, is published alongside it and serves as control evidence for the format and sequence of the rings.
Location honesty: the pedestal is in Berlin's Egyptian Museum collection, not the Vorderasiatisches Museum. ÄM 21688 is tracked here as a claim, not a separate entity — alone it carries no Israel connection.
|
archaeology external | ★★★★★ | |
| In 2001 Manfred Görg proposed that the damaged third name-ring is an archaic writing of "Israel"; van der Veen and Theis joined him in a fuller 2010 argument dating the list to the 14th–early 13th century BCE, possibly copied in the 19th Dynasty from an earlier original. If the reading and dating held, the pedestal would attest the name Israel in Canaan a century or more before the Merneptah Stele (Merneptah Stele). | archaeology external | ★★★☆☆ | |
| The reading is genuinely contested: James Hoffmeier rejected it on linguistic grounds, Bryant Wood accepted it, and the object's unprovenanced market acquisition means no excavation context can arbitrate. Both the reading of the ring and the date of the slab remain open; the Merneptah Stele's Israel line therefore keeps its standing as the earliest undisputed extrabiblical mention, and this atlas grades the pedestal "debated." | archaeology reconstruction | ★★★★☆ | |
| The AM band (≈2361–2511) simply lays the proposed academic window onto the AM scale (3761 − year BCE), as the atlas does for the Merneptah Stele (Merneptah Stele) — here doubly schematic, since the object's own date is part of the dispute. On the traditional count the window straddles the Exodus (2448 AM) and the entry into the land (2488 AM); the pedestal adjudicates nothing.
Schematic overlay for the atlas timeline only; the object is unprovenanced and its academic date disputed.
|
tradition reconstruction | ★★☆☆☆ |