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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Meneptah Biography MENEPTAH, or MERNEPTAH (Egypt. Meri-en-Ptah, Beloved of Ptah; Lat. Amenephthes; Gk. Ammenephthis). A king of Egypt, the son and successor of Ramses II (q.v.). He reigned for some 20 years about the middle of the thirteenth century B.C. and, in the fifth year of his reign, repelled a formidable invasion of Libyans and pirates. He built largely at Tanis and left monuments in various parts of Egypt. Formerly there seemed to be good grounds for identifying this King with the Pharaoh of the Exodus, but an inscription, discovered in 1896, mentions Israel as settled in Palestine in the fifth year of Meneptah's reign, and the identification is therefore impossible. The text of this interesting inscription, which contains the only mention of Israel to be found on the Egyptian monuments, was published with a German translation by Spiegelberg, in the Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, vol. xxxiv (Leipzig, 1896), under the title "Der Siegeshymnus des Merneptah auf der Flinders Petrie Stele." The mummy of Meneptah was found at Thebes in 1898, and is now in the Museum of Cairo. Consult E. A. T. W. Budge, A History of Egypt (New York, 1902), and J. H. Breasted, A History of Egypt (2d ed., ib., 1909. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XV (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 399. |