jan 1, 1289 BC - List of Seti Noting Asher

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The Tribe of Asher in the Exodus Date Debate
The 3,300-year-old evidence for the establishment of an Israelite tribe
By Christopher Eames • February 27

There is, however, another series of inscriptions that preclude a 13th-century b.c.e. Exodus and conquest, and point to Israel—or more specifically, the tribe of Asher—as an already-established entity on the scene within their territorial allotment.

Pharaoh Seti i (1294–1279 b.c.e.) was the father and predecessor of Ramesses ii. A fragmentary list of his, within the Temple of Amenhotep iv, includes a reference to a strikingly similar entity in this region, í-s-r. The name reappears in inscriptions dating to the reign of Ramesses ii.

Dr. S. Douglas Waterhouse summarizes these inscriptions in his 2001 Journal of the Adventist Theological Society article, “Who Are the Ḫabiru of the Amarna Letters?”: “[L]ate-Egyptian texts and inscriptions from the time of Seti i (1294–1279 b.c.) and Ramses ii (1279–1213 b.c.) speak of the Western portion of Galilee as ʾIsr, a seeming reference to territory settled by the Hebrew tribe of Asher [ʾšr, אשר]. In Papyrus Anastasi i (the so-called ‘Satirical Letter’), composed during the reign of Ramses ii, the Asherites evidently were long enough in Canaan to have given rise to a folk-tale about a ‘chief of Aser’ who escaped from an angry bear by climbing a tree somewhere near the region of Megiddo.”

Israeli archaeologist and first director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Shemuel Yeivin... wrote the following in his 1971 tome, The Israelite Conquest of Canaan, arguing the “Asher” identification as “quite certain”:

[W]ith the xixth dynasty one begins to feel changed conditions. With Seti i a new name makes its appearance, namely Í-Ś3-RW. Now this place-name has been the subject of a heated controversy. Some scholars maintain its identity with the Hebrew Asher (‘Asher), one of the Zilpah tribes; while others have as resolutely opposed this identification, insisting that this name equals Assur. The latter equation is improbable, since Assur appears in Egyptian topographic names as Í-Ś-SW-R(3) …. The spelling with a ś3 sign makes the etymological derivation of Asher from the original Canaanite ‘Atra(t) quite certain …. The same Asher figures also in one of Ramses ii’s lists, spelled Í-Ś-RW.

According to Yeivin, Eduard Meyer was “apparently the first to suggest the identification of this name with the Israelite tribe of Asher” in W. M. Mueller’s 1893 Asien und Europa. This identification was considered so certain that it became “accepted by scholarly consensus of opinion, with few exceptions.” This was later challenged by the prominent late-date proponent Albright, who offered an alternative explanation based on a slightly different name-spelling he believed to represent “Asher” within the 18th-century b.c.e. Brooklyn Papyrus. Yet Yeivin believed this particular Middle Kingdom Period name “has nothing to do with the biblical Asher” and has no bearing on these mid-late New Kingdom Period texts. He concluded that “the appearance of the name of Asher in Canaan in the early years of Seti i, i.e. in any case before the close of the xiv century b.c.e. … hit against a snag” for “the protagonists of the theory of a late Exodus,”—Seti i’s list thus “point[ing] towards an early entry into Canaan.”

Diana Edelman expounds on the Asher link further with relation to the territory involved, writing the following for The Anchor Bible Dictionary (1992, Vol. I, A-C, entry “Asher”):

The territory traditionally associated with Asher is located in the W Galilean hills …. The association of the name Asher with the W portion of Galilee tends to be supported by Egyptian texts. The name appears with the determinative for foreign land as early as the reign of Pharaoh Seti i (1291–1272 b.c.e.) (Simons 1937: 147). Two additional occurrences are known from the reign of Rameses ii (Simons 1937: 162; ANET 475-79), and an additional unpublished reference appears in the Golenischeff collection (Gauthier 1925: 105). The occurrence of Asher in the list of Seti i provides the clearest indication for the name’s connection with W Galilee. It appears in a geographical sequence between Kadish, probably representing the Syrian city-state of Kadesh on the Orontes River with its surrounding domain, and Megiddo, the city-state that controlled the NW portion of the Megiddo Plain-Jezreel Valley corridor. Asher seems to represent the hinterland of Phoenicia at the time of Seti i, the W Galilean hills N of Megiddo, as far as Lebanon (Müller 1893: 236).

The “Asher” inscriptions, then, provide good grounds to situate the Exodus and settlement prior to the 13th century b.c.e.—at least, prior to the reign of Seti i, at the start of that century. They also would align well with the biblical description of this Asherite region.

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