The First Historical Record of a Solar Eclipse

The Merneptah Stele, an engraved granite block in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It contains an inscription carved at the time of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah who reigned from 1213 to 1203 BCE. It was discovered at Thebes in 1896 and is housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It is an account of Merneptah’s victory over the Libyans. However, the last three of the 28 lines describes a campaign in Canaan, part of Egypt's imperial possessions. The hieroglyphs in line 27 have been translated as “Israel”. This is the earliest textual reference to Israel and it is, sometimes, referred to as the Israel Stele. It is one of four inscriptions that mention Israel by name; the others being the Mesha Stele, the Tel Dan Stele, and the Kurkh monoliths, all during the period referred to as the Iron Age beginning circa 1200 B.C.E.

First published Nov. 1, 2024

The solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 captured the attention of the nation, but, particularly, of those in the path of totality as the eclipse crossed Mexico, moved through Texas, the midwestern and eastern United States, eastern Canada and, finally, out over the north Atlantic. In the days before the event, it was the focus of attention of news media, the scientific community and the public at large. Some took their families from around the United States by car, train or plane to see the eclipse in the path of totality. Indeed, totality would last twice as long in certain locales as in the prior eclipse in 2017. It was also the longest period of totality on land for over a decade. Eclipse-chasers around the world travelled long distances to be in the path of totality. The next total solar eclipse seen from continental United States will be on August 23, 2044.

Historians interested in “firsts” have pondered when earthlings first recognized and documented a solar eclipse. Colin J. Humphreys and W. Graeme Waddington, an engineer and an astrophysicist, explored this question. They concluded that the first solar eclipse recorded by observers occurred in 1207 BCE. It was the first eclipse described prior to the year 1000 BCE and, thus, the oldest such description. The eclipse was described in the Book of Joshua at the time of the entry of Joshua into Canaan. This conclusion required a reinterpretation of a passage in the Book of Joshua (Joshua 10:12–13 in the New Revised Standard Version of The Bible), which was translated in a passage in the Hebrew Biblical text as, “the sun had stopped”. The Hebrew word “dôm” was translated as “stopped”. Humphreys and Waddington were uncertain of that translation in this context and pursued its accuracy. They consulted a professor of Hebrew and ancient Semitic languages who thought it could mean the sun “stopped shining”, compatible with an eclipse. This event was likely an annular solar eclipse.

Humphreys and Waddington dated the eclipse to 30 October 1207 BCE. To arrive at that date, it required them to undertake a complex astronomical analysis of the earth’s rotational speed over millennia, which is influenced by such dynamic factors as the thickness of the earth’s ice shelf. They also relied on the Egyptian calendar and stone hieroglyphic engravings. If the Exodus was the traditional 40 years before the entry of the Israelites into Canaan, then the Exodus, they deduced, was in 1247 BCE, consistent with the c.1250 BCE date of one school of scholars. The text in Joshua indicated that the eclipse was observed by the Israelites in Gibeon in Canaan. That date of the exodus jibed with the Merneptah Stele, an engraved granite block in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, prepared during the reign of the pharaoh Merneptah, who succeeded his father Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great). The hieroglyphic engraving noted a campaign in Canaan in which the Egyptians defeated the Israelites. Egyptologists date the reign of Merneptah to c1213-1203 BCE. Scholars believe that the final few lines of hieroglyphics in the Merneptah Stele that refer to a battle with the Israelites in Canaan is the first known written use of the word “Israel”, as written by Egyptian documentarians of the Merneptah period. In Jewish texts during the Second Temple period and in Christian Greco-Egyptian texts, Israel was understood to mean "a man seeing God": from ʾyš (man) rʾh (to see) ʾel (God).

Although deductions regarding the first time and place of the eclipse, have a probability estimate as to likelihood, the paper by Humphries and Waddington in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2017 is well reasoned and contains some objective historical findings, especially the content of the Merneptah Stele, and a reasonable calculation of the earth’s rotational speed during different eras. Moreover, the path of totality would have passed over ancient Canaan. Thus, their evidence regarding this apparent first description of a solar eclipse and its date of occurrence has gained traction in the astrophysics scientific community.