ANCIENT STEPS IN ISRAEL

The Kingdom of Israel occupied that part of the land on the Mediterranean Sea known as the Levant which corresponds roughly to the State of Israel of modern times. The region was known, historically, as part of Canaan, as Phoenicia, as Palestine, Yehud Medinata, Judea, and, after the Romans destroyed the region in 136 CE, as Syria-Palaestina. According to the Bible, the region was named after the Hebrew patriarch Jacob, also known as Israel and, by extension, his nation. Israel was the region colonized by Abram (later Abraham), developed by his son Isaac and grandson Jacob, and later allegedly conquered by the Hebrew General Joshua around 1250 BC, following the Exodus from Egypt under Moses. Israel as a cultural entity is first mentioned in the stele of the Egyptian pharaoh Merenptah (1213-1203 BC) in which he states that “Israel lies devastated, bereft of its seed”. The reference seems to be to a people, not a kingdom, but no scholarly consensus has been reached on a final meaning nor even why Israel should be mentioned on a stele that celebrates an Egyptian victory over the Libyans unless the Israelites were part of the coalition known as the Sea Peoples, which is improbable. By 1080 BC the Israelites had established kingship in the land and developed a culture that drew on earlier civilizations.