265 “ WHY TARRY THE WHEELS CHARIOT ? ” (JUDG 5,28) OF HIS of Tiglath Pileser I (late 12th-early 11th centuries BCE) provide a fairly proximate parallel to this propagandistic strategy, delineating that ruler’s accomplishments in a way that exaggerates the historical reality. Notably, Tiglath Pileser’s scribes attribute to him an accomplishment rather similar to Merneptah’s claim regarding Israel’s “seed”, when he claims to have utterly demolished the fields of Kummuhu upon his first campaign there 25. The trope of burning farmlands in the Assyrian chronicle becomes a metaphor for the complete conquest of a people, though it is clear from the various chronicles of this same king that there was, indeed, no such complete conquest. Rather, Tiglath Pileser had to return to the same region several times before subduing its population. The Merneptah Stele’s use of similar language and imagery is suggestive of a similar manipulation or exaggeration of the reality regarding his interaction with Israel. Whatever skirmish transpired between him and the early Israelites of the late 13th century BCE, his success must have been embarrassingly protracted 26. The lack of an outright boast of domination over the totality of Israelite territory suggests that his chariot forces were unable to penetrate the hilly terrain these Israelites claimed as their homeland 27. Consequently, the survival of the hinterland villages against the efforts of later lowland Canaanites such as Sisera may similarly be credited to the ineffectual nature of chariots as instruments of warfare in the highland hills. Even if (as the poem suggests) some The stele appears to declare victories in a succession of battles, and the allusion to an already enslaved people seems out of place with the rhetorical aims of such military propaganda. The text appears in A.K. GRAYSON, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles 25 (Locust Valley, NY 1970) 189. There are some indications that his campaign met with some degree of 26 success, but was by no means a sweeping victory. The extent of his success in the region appears to end just south of the central-northern highlands, which supports the view espoused here that his chariot brigades were unable to penetrate the hinterland hills north of the region of Benjamin. On the evidence suggesting a limited scope to Merneptah’s successful efforts in this part of Canaan, see RENDSBURG, “The Date of the Exodus”, 519-520. A later parallel utilizing a similar rhetorical strategy is that of 27 Sennacherib’s famous claim that Hezekiah was kept “like a bird in a cage” during the former’s Judahite campaign of 701 BCE. Sennacherib’s words suggest victory, though this contrasts the strategy deployed at Lachish and elsewhere in the same campaign of destroying the city, suggesting a stalemate.