Beisan steles

The Beisan steles are five Ancient Egyptian steles from the period of Seti I and Ramesses II discovered in what was then known as Beisan, Mandatory Palestine by Alan Rowe in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

First stele and second stele
They are known as
 * "First Stele": COS 2.4B / ANET 253-254 (A Campaign of Seti I in Northern Palestine)
 * "Second Stele": COS 2.4D A badly damaged and weathered stele / ANET 255 (Stelae of Seti I and Ramses II)
 * Ramesses Stele: ANET 255 (Stelae of Seti I and Ramses II)

The First Stele of Seti I has been described as "the most impressive find from Egypt’s rule over Canaan".

The first stele is considered to testify to the presence of a Hebrew population: the Habiru, which Seti I protected from an Asiatic tribe.

Today they are in the Penn Museum, Philadelphia, and the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, East Jerusalem.

Other Egyptian / Canaanite steles
Two other important steles from the same period were found in the same area. Today these are both at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Mekal Stele
One of the steles, discovered in 1928, states that the temple was dedicated to “Mekal, the god, the lord of Beth Shean”; an otherwise unknown Canaanite god – the stele itself is our main source of knowledge about Mekal.

Mekal is seated on a throne, receiving lotus flowers from the builder Amenemapt and his son Paraemheb, holding an ankh and was-sceptre.

Lion Stele
A Canaanite stele showing a lion and lioness at play was found in the excavation of the "governor's house".