Seti, the new king of Egypt, stood surveying his troops at the fortress of Tjaru in the late spring of 1289 BC. Soldiers hurried around him down the cramped streets between workshops, houses, magazines and granaries. They loaded mule trains with jars of olive oil and preserved meats, sacks of emmer wheat, barley and loaves of bread. Scribes sat by the entrance to the armouries supervising the distribution of weapons spears, axes, shields, bows and arrows to the thousands of infantrymen, most dressed only in a linen or leather kilt, the officers with armour made from leather and bronze. Disassembled chariots, transported on ox-carts, along with hundreds of horses were driven past the fort as the Medjay scouts prepared to leave well ahead of the army’s vanguard. Seti’s royal guards, with bronze spearheads and dagger blades engraved with their master’s name and titles, closed ranks around the tall man with the dark auburn hair and the straight, sharply defined nose.
As he looked around at his troop commanders and standard bearers, the young king, not yet out of his twenties, must have felt a pang of realization, that had it not been for an unusual combination of circumstances, he would have been counted among those military officers, rather than commanding them. He had buried his father a mere eight months before, and spent the winter consolidating his powerbase in the courts of Memphis and Thebes. Now, as he set his army upon the road east across the parched terrain of northern Sinai, ready to face rebellious Bedouin and disloyal vassals, he may have felt that his life would have been easier if the burden of the highest command had not been placed upon his shoulders at all.
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Egyptologists are both blessed and cursed when studying the military campaigns and foreign policy of Seti I. On one hand, an immensely valuable source of information exists in the so-called Karnak Battle Reliefs.¹ On the other hand, many of these reliefs are damaged, some are missing entirely and the ordering of the episodes and campaigns they describe remains a subject of intense debate.² Located on the exterior wall on both sides of the northern gateway, these reliefs consist of more than two dozen individual scenes, arranged in three horizontal registers. The upper register has been largely lost, and this has contributed to the lack of apparent unity in the individual scenes, which has exacerbated the inherent problems in establishing a coherent chronology of the events. The scenes themselves are finely carved using raised relief, and many show signs of slight alterations. It is unlikely that they were all carved contemporarily; rather they may have been created throughout Seti’s reign.
Accompanying the reliefs is a series of texts, which describe the individual campaigns in somewhat grandiloquent terms.³ The Battle Reliefs and their associated texts are not a clear-cut and unbiased historical record, and it would be a mistake to interpret them as such. They served a religious and political purpose; by showing Seti fighting against Egypt’s enemies and returning to Thebes with spoil for Amun and his temple, the reliefs underlined Seti’s right to rule. They are part of an artistic tradition showing the king of Egypt smiting foreign lands, which went back thousands of years to the very earliest foundations of Egyptian civilization. However, considered together with contemporary texts and archaeological data from the towns and cities Seti visited and conquered during his campaigns, as well as the forts he founded or expanded, the Karnak Battle Reliefs can nevertheless help to provide a comprehensive overview of how the young king set about restoring Egypt’s imperial control.
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The fortress of Tjaru, where Seti had assembled his army before setting off on his first military campaign as sole ruler of Egypt, had long served as the starting point on the Ways of Horus. The Ways of Horus was in essence a fortified highway running along the north coast of the Sinai Peninsula, connecting the eastern Nile Delta with the area of modern-day Palestine and Israel. Surveys by Ben Gourion University from 1972 to 1982 identified multiple New Kingdom sites, including fortified wells, production centres and larger forts.⁴ Tjaru was well-known to Seti. Both he and his father had at some point in their careers been commanders of the fort; Seti may even have spent part of his childhood living within its walls.
The archaeological remains of this vast fortification were identified in the 1980s by archaeologists from the Ministry of State Antiquities, who conducted extensive excavations at the site for more than twenty years.⁵ The excavations revealed a large mud-brick enclosure wall measuring 500m by 250m, guarded by towers with walls 13m thick. While Middle Kingdom material has been recovered from the area, the initial phase of fortified occupation was in the form of a Hyksos stronghold built during the Second Intermediate Period. During this time, the fortress included several granaries as well as domestic workshop structures. Following the expulsion of the Hyksos, the 18th Dynasty rulers reoccupied and expanded the site, with the most significant building phase dated to the reign of Thutmosis III, who added two large administrative buildings. After his father’s death, Seti set out his own building programme for the fort, probably in preparation for his campaigns in the Near East. This programme saw the refortification and expansion of the fortress’ mud-brick wall, and the rebuilding of one of the original Hyksos granaries as well as long rectangular magazines for the storage of equipment and weaponry. As Seti saw the daunting walls of Tjaru sink into the distance, his first target was the Shasu Bedouin of the Sinai Peninsula and Palestine. The purpose of attacking this loose confederation of nomadic pastoralists is not clear, although a text from the Karnak reliefs suggest that Seti was simply reacting to fermenting rebellion:
‘Then one came to tell His Majesty: “The Shasu enemy, they are planning a revolt! Their chiefs are assembled in one place, upon the ridge of Kharu. They have fallen to confusion and trouble, one slays his ally. They ignore the laws of the Palace.”’⁶
It is perhaps unlikely that the King of Egypt would under normal circumstance be too concerned with the internal tribal politics of the Shasu. However, the Ways of Horus did not simply serve as a military road. It was also a caravan trail and the way by which a great deal of Egypt’s wealth in the form of tribute and trade entered the country. Any banditry on the part of the Shasu could potentially sever Egypt’s link with the markets of the Near East, and also cut off the isolated strings of fortifications stretching across the northern coast of the Sinai Peninsula.
As a sedentary civilization, the Egyptian state traditionally viewed the transhumant pastoralists who occupied the fringes of its empire with deep suspicion, seeing these societies as representatives of instability and chaos. Pessimistic literature, such as The Prophecies of Neferty, written during the Middle Kingdom encapsulates this view. This text is in a sense a piece of historical fiction and royal propaganda, set during the reign of the Old Kingdom King Snefru, several hundred years before it was composed. In the tale, the Lector Priest Neferty makes a series of dire prophecies about the chaotic end of the Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period. A final prophecy predicts the rise of a king in the south by the name of Ameny (Amenemhat I) who would come to restore order to the land. One of the symptoms of the chaotic world described by Neferty is the arrival of nomadic communities within the Nile Valley:
‘He gathered his thoughts on what would happen in the land, and called to mind the chaos in the east, the raids of the Amu with their strength when they disrupt the hearts of those at the harvest, as they take away the teams of oxen who were ploughing.’⁷
Later in the text, when Neferty describes the return of good law and order to the land after the ascension of Amenmehat I, he claims that:
‘They will build the “Walls of the Ruler”, Life, Prosperity and Health, and no Asiatic will go to Egypt, so that they can beg water to water their herds.’⁸
The text alludes to an issue historically present in many societies where nomadic and sedentary cultures come into contact. The basis of the nomadic economy, pastoralism and some limited agriculture, is vulnerable to climactic and environmental changes. In drier years, or during full-blown droughts, the already limited pasture and agricultural potential of the desert is lessened and the nomadic societies are driven to either barter access to sedentary grazing land, or seize the land by force. In extreme cases, nomadic communities may band together into tribal confederations in order to secure more land on which to subsist and pose a direct threat to sedentary communities. Such a situation occurred during the reign of Merenptah, when Libyan nomads invaded the Nile Valley with the aim – according to Egyptian texts – of ‘fighting to fill their bellies’.
The suspicion with which the Egyptian state viewed the nomadic Shasu is even reflected in their name. The Egyptian verb ‘Sjasu’ translates broadly as ‘to wander’ or ‘those who move on foot’, alluding to their itinerant lifestyle, a name which in turn is inspired by the Canaanite verb sasa(h), ‘to plunder’.⁹ The battle between the Egyptian army and the Shasu is not described in detail in the Karnak Battle Reliefs. Rather, the text simply concludes that Seti ‘fell on them like a mighty lion, turning them into corpses throughout their desert wadis, they were prostrated in their blood as if they had never existed’.¹⁰ The fighting style and strategies of the Shasu are difficult to gauge. They were likely outnumbered by the Egyptians and their weapons of inferior quality. There is also no evidence that they owned or used horses in battle. Considering these disadvantages, the Shasu may have preferred to avoid facing the Egyptian army on an open field, relying instead on their knowledge of the desert environment. A contemporary text certainly alludes to the proclivity of the Shasu for ambushes and surprise attacks: ‘The narrow pass is dangerous, with Shasu concealed beneath the bushes.’¹¹
The Karnak Battle Reliefs convey the chaos of the eventual battle between Seti and the Shasu Bedouin. The Egyptian army is nowhere to be found; rather it is Seti alone – a giant figure standing in his chariot, firing arrows at his enemies – who is shown as the single victor of the battle. The Shasu are depicted as an unorganized rabble, fleeing towards a fortified city, desperate to avoid the charging king. Their weapons are comparatively primitive; semi-circular bronze-headed axes, of a type long obsolete in the Egyptian arsenal, and spears. They are dressed only in loincloths and wear no armour. One of the Shasu is shown in a tableau of death, an arrow lodged in his neck, falling forwards. Next to the city, another group of Shasu are feverishly breaking their weapons and flinging themselves on the ground in submission. After securing his victory, the captured Shasu were most likely sent back to Egypt with an escort. They would serve as tribute to Amun of Thebes and spend the rest of their lives working on one of the many estates owned by the Karnak Temple.
This campaign against the Shasu may have amounted to little more than a razzia, or raid for plunder and slaves, and it is unlikely that these nomads could have mounted a particularly formidable opposition to the young king. But his victory nevertheless secured the passage across northern Sinai and may have helped to curb any banditry – at least for a time. In order to further cement his control of the crucial Sinai crossing, Seti ordered the refortification and construction of several waystations and forts along the Ways of Horus. At Haruba, a large enclosure wall was repaired during his reign and several new granaries and storage magazines were constructed. At Deir el-Balah, a citadel was constructed in order to guard a small lake. These forts and their garrisons would both protect commerce and serve as stopping points for the Egyptian army when they crossed the parched terrain, guaranteeing a supply of food and water – alongside the supplies the army itself carried.
All in all, the campaign against the Shasu had been little more than a warm-up act. The enemies Seti faced in the Levant were unlikely to be as easily despatched. Towards the end of June 1289 BC, Seti and his army had crossed the Sinai Peninsula and the young king was ready to face the strife-ridden internal politics and powerful external forces at play in the Near East.¹²
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After the easy victory over the Shasu in northern Sinai and southern Palestine, Seti and his army followed the coastal road, the Via Marris, into the Egyptian province of Djahy stretching from the port of Ashkelon in the south to the Lebanese city-states of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos in the north, all nominally under Egyptian control. Travelling along the Via Marris, the new king and his army would have encountered several major settlements whose rulers were Egyptian vassals, including Ashdod, Ashkelon and the town of Megiddo. The purpose of this northward march was not purely military; it was a Tour de Triomphe, a necessary obligation for the new king in order to ensure the loyalty of his foreign subjects. The surviving documentation does not detail precisely how this was achieved, although the Karnak Stela of Amenhotep II describes the type of political theatricals which accompanied a peripatetic Egyptian monarch:
‘Month 2 of Akhet, Day 10: Turning southwards to Egypt. His Majesty proceeded upon horse to the town of Niy. Now those Asiatics of this town; the men together with the women were upon their wall adoring his Majesty. Their faces were lit because they stared upon the Great God […] Month 2 of Sjemu, Day 20: Now he was in the camp, which was made for his Majesty at the town of Tjerekh. He caused that [the inhabitants] made an oath of allegiance.’¹³
One can imagine the crowds of spectators who rushed to the city walls to gaze in awe at the splendour of the Egyptian army marching below, the king leading the vanguard in a gilded chariot, surrounded by heavily armed bodyguards. Similarly to Amenhotep II, Seti may have demanded submission and oaths of allegiance from the chiefs of the cities, requesting them to join him in his camp and give tribute. According to the inscriptions at the Karnak Temple, Seti’s unnamed fan-bearer spoke out in awe when he had seen the loyalty of these Asiatic chiefs: ‘You are like Montu upon every foreign land! The chiefs of Retjenu behold you! Your renown is in their limbs!’¹⁴
However, in the midst of these protestations of loyalty and the bounty of tribute heaped upon the triumphant king, unwelcome news arrived at the royal camp on the 10th Day of the Third Month of Summer, almost a year after the death of Seti’s father:
‘On this day, one came to speak to his Majesty: “The wretched chief in the town of Hammath has gathered to him many people. He has conquered the town of Beth-Shan, joined by those from Pahyr. The chief of Rebi (Labwi) cannot come out.”’¹⁵
Internal squabbling between the Levantine city-states and various ruling families was endemic. The 18th Dynasty Amarna Letters are filled with pleas for Egyptian military aid by local rulers to be used against rival city-states. Akhenaten appears to have ignored most of these, but Seti was not as complacent. The city of Beth-Shan had long been within the Egyptian sphere of influence, and Seti would not allow a vassal state to be unceremoniously attacked. Even if he may have been irked by the pointless distraction, his reaction was swift. He selected the First Division of Re, named ‘Abounding in Valour’, and despatched them inland to break the siege of Beth-Shan. Simultaneously, he sent the First Division of Amun against the city of Hammath, whose ruler had transgressed against him, and the First Division of Seth against the city of Yenoam, who may have been in allegiance with the ruler of Hammath. Seti himself continued along the coastal road towards the city-states on the Lebanese coast with the bulk of the army.
The battles at Beth Shan and Hammath are not recorded in the Karnak Reliefs, and are only briefly mentioned in the First Beth Shan Stela which – somewhat frustratingly – merely concludes that: ‘Then in one day, they had fallen to the might of His Majesty.’¹⁶ However, the Battle of Yenoam is depicted in greater detail at the Karnak Temple. From this relief it is clear that the Egyptians were facing a very different calibre of enemy from the Shasu. While the Canaanite foe is still depicted fleeing the field of battle in disarray, their equipment was clearly more technologically sophisticated; several warriors are shown on horseback and some carry large circular shields. Next to the chaotic battlefield, several Asiatics depicted stereotypically with pointed beards, shoulder-length hair and hairbands are hiding in a forest. On the parapets of the city of Yenoam, its citizens look on in apparent horror as their host is decimated by the Egyptian forces.
The detachments sent against Beth Shan were similarly successful. A large administrative building was constructed in Beth Shan, from which an Egyptian governor could control the local area.¹⁷ Storerooms were also built, most likely to house supplies for the Egyptian imperial administration. Most notably, two large and finely cut stela were set up within this complex, commemorating Seti and his campaigns in the area during this first year of his reign.¹⁸ But peace had hardly settled and the victorious troops returned, before another distraction arose. According the Second Beth Shan Stela, another messenger came to Seti, still en route to Lebanon, with bad news:
‘[Then] one came to speak to His Majesty, Life-Prosperity-Health: “The Apiru of the Mountains of Yarumtu together with Tiyru tribe, they are mobilizing against the Asiatics of Ruma.”’¹⁹
The Apiru had been a consistent thorn in Egypt’s side since the Amarna Period. Like the Shasu, the Apiru were a nomadic community living throughout the Fertile Crescent. And like the Shasu, banditry appears to have been a profitable line of business for them. During the reign of Thutmosis III, Apiru warriors had attempted to steal horses from the Egyptian army,²⁰ and during the reign of Akhenaten, they had repeatedly attacked Rib Addi, the Mayor of Byblos and a vassal of Egypt. Now they were creating unrest during Seti’s inspection tour of his provinces:
‘Then His Majesty spoke: “What is on the mind of these wretched Asiatics in raising their weapons to bring turmoil again? They shall learn what they do not yet know!”’²¹
Seti’s frustration is almost palpable. The allusion to the Apiru’s ignorance of him is interesting. Seti was after all a new ruler, an unknown quantity. Perhaps the leaders of the Apiru wanted to test Seti, to assess his strength and gauge his response. If they had hoped for another detached ruler in the vein of Akhenaten, they were disappointed. As with the earlier disturbance caused by the ruler of Hammath, Seti simply sent a detachment of his army back along the coastal road to deal with the situation. After only two days, the Egyptian troops returned victorious, bringing prisoners and spoils of war for the king. With the province of Djahy resoundingly subdued, Seti could finally focus his attention entirely on the final stop on his inspection tour: the Lebanese city-states.
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Seti wanted more than oaths of loyalty from the coastal cities of Lebanon. He desired a far more precious commodity: timber. Cedrus libani, or Lebanese cedar, is an evergreen coniferous tree which grew extensively across Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Jordan during the Late Bronze Age. Often growing straight to a height of 30–40m, these trees were highly desirable for the construction of buildings and ships. Most native Egyptian trees, such as sycamores, mulberry trees and tamarisks, are shorter and have more crooked trunks, making the production of long, straight baulks and planks difficult. The cedar forests of Lebanon therefore represented an immense source of wealth, and not only to the Egyptians. As early as 2100 BC, the religious significance (and great value) of Lebanese cedar is described in The Epic of Gilgamesh. In Tablet V, the titular hero and his friend Enkidu go to the Mountain of Cedar and enter a great forest, where Enkidu vows to cut down the mightiest tree to make a door for a great temple of Enlil at Nippur. The two friends battle the guardian of the forest, the fearsome Humbaba, whom they eventually kill. Then they tie the felled cedars into a raft which carries them home.²²
The famous myth finds an echo in multiple sources from the Bronze and Iron Age civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean. Reliefs from the Iron IIb Palace of Khorsabad depict the riverine or marine transport of timber logs strung after ships crewed by Phoenician sailors,²³ and in Kings 5:6, set during Iron Ib, King Solomon requests timber from his ally, Hiram of Tyre. After the trees have been felled, Hiram offers to ‘float them [the timbers] in rafts by sea to the place you specify. There I will separate them and you can take them away.’ In the Egyptian source material, Lebanese cedar appears as a luxury import from the Old Kingdom onwards. During the Middle Kingdom, the nomarch Khnumhotep II of Beni Hasan even boasts in his tomb biography that he used Lebanese cedar in the construction of his tomb, making ‘a door of 6 cubits, consisting of pine of Nega [and] a double door of 5 cubits 2 palms being employed for the shrine of the sacred chamber which was within this tomb’.²⁴ During the New Kingdom, Thutmosis III recorded the receipt of Lebanese cedar from his vassals in Syria on the Gebel Barkal Stela: ‘The princes of Retjenu dragged [timber] flagpoles with oxen to the harbour and they came with their tribute to the place where His Majesty was.’²⁵ A contemporary painting from the Tomb of Senneferi (TT99)²⁶ similarly shows a scene of Lebanese workers hauling cedar down from the forests to the coast, preparing to ship it to Egypt.
Arguably the most famous source for the trade of cedar between Lebanon and Egypt is The Journeys of Wenamun.²⁷ Set at the very end of the New Kingdom when Egypt’s international power was greatly diminished, the story tells of a Priest of Amun, Wenamun, who is sent to the Prince of Byblos to procure cedar wood for the construction of a sacred barge for the transport of the cult statue of Amun. After many misfortunes, Wenamun eventually secures the timber, but the papyrus on which the story is written breaks off before the conclusion to Wenamun’s journey is reached.
Seti’s interest in the submission of the Lebanese chiefs was therefore both political and economic. It is not clear which of the Lebanese city-states he visited, although a commemorative stela was set up during his reign in the town of Tyre. The Karnak Battle Reliefs show the moment the king accepts the submission from the chiefs of Lebanon in great detail. Seti himself, a giant figure towering over the scene, is faced by an Egyptian officer, the Royal Standard Bearer Mehy, and behind him kneel the chiefs of Lebanon, dressed in long robes, with hairbands and pointed beards. Behind them, other locals²⁸ are busily felling tall straight cedar trees to present as tribute to the king. The timber would later be used to manufacture a sacred barge and large flagpoles for the temple of Amun at Karnak.
With his tribute secured from the chiefs of Lebanon and the entire province of Djahy suitably supressed, Seti and his army began the journey back to Egypt. It is unclear whether they followed the coastal road back south, or whether the king went by ship to the Delta. However, by the end of the Fourth Month of Summer 1289 BC, Seti was back in Memphis, where he decreed the establishment of a sacred offering cult for Min-Amun at Buhen and endowed the temple, undoubtedly with some of his recently acquired spoils of war.²⁹ It seems likely that Seti then went directly from Memphis to the southern city of Thebes, where the lion’s share of plunder and booty was donated to the Karnak Temple:
‘His Majesty returned his heart joyful from his first campaign; his attack victorious against every foreign land. He plundered every rebellious foreign land by the power of his father Amun who commanded strength and victories for him.’³⁰
Seti’s baptism of fire, his first campaign as sole ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt, had ended. In many ways he had proved his worth; he had asserted his dominance over various vassal states through shows of force, which served to announce that the somewhat passive foreign policies of the late 18th Dynasty were a thing of the past. The initial inspection tour was followed by intense building activity; the construction of administrative headquarters for Egyptian soldiers and envoys in towns such as Beth Shan, as well as repairs and rebuilding of fortifications on the Ways of Horus.
However, viewed objectively, the military forces Seti had faced did not amount to a truly daunting adversary. Seti had himself only led a minor skirmish against ill-equipped nomads, while his forces had only engaged the armies of squabbling city-states and the Apiru raiders. It is not clear whether Seti engaged more organized enemies, such as the Kingdom of Amurru – a vassal to the powerful Hittite Empire – during his first campaign. He may, as Spalinger argued,³¹ have advanced up the coast of Amurru and conducted limited campaigns in the area. An alternative view, presented by Murnane,³² is that a peace treaty between Egypt and the Hittite Empire was still in effect and that Seti had little to gain from breaking it until securing a greater advantage – as indeed he appears to have done later in his reign.
Excursus: Seti’s Army
While the king figures largely in the accounts of his campaigns, his central role begs the question: who were the men that marched alongside the young king, and who have so ungraciously been left out of the Karnak Battle Reliefs? The monumental and programmatic nature of most of the royal inscriptions from the Ramesside Period makes little or no reference to the structure of the Egyptian army – the primacy of the king is paramount in these depictions. However, administrative documents and private funerary monuments of the period provide a more balanced picture and can more profitably be used to answer the question of who fought in Seti’s army.
Documentation which describes the Egyptian army prior to the New Kingdom is limited. During the Old Kingdom, the biography of Weni suggests that the army sent to campaign against Bedouin on the Sinai Peninsula was largely composed of mercenary or auxiliary troops from Nubia and Libya.³³ Similarly, texts such as the biography of Tjehemau at Abisko³⁴ suggests a strong Egyptian reliance on auxiliary troops, in particular from Upper and Lower Nubia. This reliance continued into the New Kingdom in the form of the Medjay, a Nubian tribe utilized as scouts. However, Egypt’s increasing pursuit of an expansionist and aggressive foreign policy during the 18th Dynasty necessitated both a larger and better-equipped standing army which incorporated recent developments in weapons and armour, along with a much-expanded bureaucratic network for its management. The resurgence of a new military elite – which eventually paved the way for Horemheb and the Ramesside Dynasty – manifests itself in the disappearance of certain scribal and administrative titles during the 18th Dynasty and the appearance of new military titles, which were directly caused by new weapons technologies, such as stable master and charioteer. The army changed, with a greater focus on land-based units, such as chariotry and infantry, and less on riverine naval units. The national trauma caused by the Hyksos occupation of Lower Egypt brought about a marked change in Egypt’s self-image, with a resulting aggressive foreign policy, deemed necessary to maintain the security and stability of Egypt. Within this climate, families whose members served various functions within the military began to emerge and grow in power and prosperity.
Conscription, forced or otherwise, is poorly attested in documentation from the Ramesside Period, and in the few cases where direct evidence can be found, members of the scribal class seem to have ardently challenged the army’s growing authority. In Papyrus Bologna 1094,³⁵ a letter describes how three young priests were seized by officers from the army and forced to join up. An irate scribe of the armoury was despatched after the recruiting party to challenge the conscription. A similar situation is described in Papyrus Bologna 1086,³⁶ wherein a Syrian slave belonging to the Temple of Thoth in Memphis is seized by a high-ranking military officer, Khaemope, and forcibly conscripted. Again, the action is not unchallenged. A table scribe from the temple pursues Khaemope in the law courts of Memphis and eventually the entire debacle is blamed on an administrative error within the office of the vizier. Such documents can hardly be seen as demonstrating an ordered system of conscription – instead, they highlight failed attempts by the army to engage in one.
Instead, the army relied largely on new recruits from among the sons of already-serving soldiers. An 18th Dynasty official, Amenhotep son of Hapu, who served as the Royal Scribe of Recruits, eloquently refers to this practice:
‘I recruited the youngsters of my lord, my reed pen counted them in their millions. I formed them into companies in the place of their fathers, a “staff of old age” as his beloved son.’³⁷
A permanent standing army and a military class also brought with it inherent dangers. Idle soldiers can be perilous to the stability of the state, and the royal court had already seen the army, in the form of Horemheb, conduct what essentially amounted to a military coup. As such, both the military elite and the common soldiers were used in multiple roles during peacetime, both for economic and political reasons.
Because of the inherent bias in the written documentation towards the elite, we have more information about the type of administrative posts they filled within the army. The charioteers in particular are well-attested. Most of them served as Royal Envoys, and were responsible for diplomatic missions abroad. While some of their tasks may have been purely honorary or symbolic, the detailed description of duties undertaken abroad by the Charioteer and Royal Envoy Inuau during the reign of Ramesses II suggests that the majority were not. The need to train horses and practise the arts of chariot warfare is also evidenced by the discovery of stables and an exercise yard at Qantir-Piramesses,³⁸ and textual documentation, such as Pap. Anastasi III,³⁹ makes it clear that charioteers would have spent a great deal of their time practising with their weapons and vehicles and training their horses.
By contrast, common soldiers seem mostly to have been engaged in physical labour of various types. In Papyrus Turin B,⁴⁰ the governor of the town of Haunefer instructs an unnamed scribe to bring a large contingent of 600 infantrymen spread across three companies to the Karnak Temple in Thebes, where they were tasked with dragging three large stone blocks to the House of Mut, a smaller temple within the Karnak complex. A parallel set of circumstances is found in Papyrus Anastasi V,⁴¹ which describes how a squadron of soldiers were used to convey three stelae to the Tomb of Ramesses II in the Valley of the Kings. A final example can be found in Papyrus Leiden 348,⁴² which describes how Egyptian soldiers and Apiru prisoners-of-war were engaged in the transport of stone blocks for a temple pylon south of Memphis.
The majority of soldiers who campaigned with Seti would have been permanent members of the infantry and most likely had fathers, brothers or sons marching with them. In peacetime they served whatever manual roles the state required them to do in whatever geographical location, but when a campaign was ordered, they were mobilized and armed – most likely at the border fortress of Tjaru. Many of the officers who commanded them similarly came from military families, although their peacetime duties were far more diverse and more intrinsically linked to the centres of power in Memphis and Thebes. Many of the charioteers in particular may have had an intimate knowledge of the targets of Seti’s campaigns through their travels as envoys, as would the king himself, whose father and grandfather had both undertaken similar missions. This knowledge of foreign lands and the details of Egypt’s relationship with its neighbours – both historical and current – was crucial as Seti began planning a campaign which would bring Egypt into a direct collision with its most formidable enemy: the Hittite Empire in modern-day Turkey.
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The Hittite Empire was a comparative newcomer to the political poker table of the ancient Near East. The Hittite civilization appeared around 2000 BC in modern-day Anatolia.⁴³ Until 1400 BC, the Hittites did not occupy themselves with Egypt, instead focusing on conquests in the south-east into Mesopotamia and interminable internal struggles for kingship. With the crowning of Tudhaliya I, the concept of Hittite kingship became more formalized, the king transforming from simply being a political leader to a semi-divinity similar to the Egyptian pharaoh. Conquests of Hurrian territory in Mitanni (already weakened by Egyptian campaigns in the area under Thutmosis III and Amenhotep II) soon followed, along with a southward expansion out of Anatolia towards Canaanite lands under nominal Egyptian control. The northernmost of these Egyptian provinces, Amurru (in modern-day Syria and Lebanon), was governed as vassalage of the Egyptian Empire during the Amarna Period. However, sensing growing weakness in Egypt, the vassal king of Amurru, Aziru, sought an alliance with King Suppiluliuma I of the Hittites and defected along with his kingdom during the reign of Akhenaten.
A capable commander and ruler, Suppiluliuma I not only secured the province of Amurru from the Egyptians, but also continued his conquests of the petty kingdoms that had once constituted the Empire of Mitanni. The Egyptian response to Suppiluliuma’s alarming expansionism seems to have been fairly mild. A retaliatory raid against the strategic city of Qadesh was launched, most likely during the reign of Tutankhamun, but was rebuffed by the Hittites, who took revenge for the slight by plundering Amki, a small area of Egyptian-controlled territory in southern Lebanon on the banks of the Litani River.
The continuing ascendency of the Hittites worried the Egyptians, who had chosen to provoke their enemy at the worst possible time. Tutankhamun had died unexpectedly shortly after the campaign against Qadesh and left no obvious successor in the form of a son. The strategically vital settlement of Carchemisch, an independent Hurrian kingdom, had fallen to Suppiluliuma after a short siege, and with its seizure, northern Syria and the mighty Euphrates River lay open to the Hittites. We can envisage the confusion at the Egyptian court: without a clear leader, factionalism would have become a damaging factor and surely only panic can explain the actions of Tutankhamun’s widow, his sister Ankhesenamun.
She wrote and despatched a letter directly to Suppiluliuma, who was so astounded by its content that he exclaimed to his council that, ‘such a thing has never happened to me in my entire life!’:
‘My husband has died, and I have no son. But they say, you have many sons. If you would send me one of your sons, then he would become my husband. I do not want to take a servant of mine and make him my husband. I am afraid!’⁴⁴
The request was unprecedented. By marrying the widowed Egyptian queen, the chosen Hittite prince and his descendants would become kings of Egypt. Egypt would – in effect – become a vassal dominion of the Hittite Empire without a single sword-stroke. Suppiluliuma was naturally suspicious; the offer seemed too good to be true. He cautiously despatched his chamberlain to Egypt to verify the offer, and several months later the chamberlain returned with an Egyptian envoy by the name of Hani. The two men brought another letter from the queen wherein she restated her previous proposal. Suppiluliuma’s suspicions were allayed and he ordered his son, Zannanza, to journey to Egypt and take up the double crown. A de facto Hittite Empire stretching from northern Turkey to Nubia seemed within his reach.
It is impossible to know precisely what happened next. The textual documentation only shows that Zannanza never lived to cross the Egyptian border, but died en route. Ay, Tutankhamun’s vizier, was crowned as pharaoh instead and promptly married Ankhsunamun to legitimize his rule. Suppiluliuma was humiliated and understandably furious. He blamed the Egyptians, accusing them of murdering his son, and declared war:
‘He smote the foot soldiers and the charioteers of the country of Egypt. The Hattian Storm-god, my lord, by his decision even then let my father prevail; he vanquished and smote the foot soldiers and the charioteers of the country of Egypt.’⁴⁵
Little is known about this campaign, which must have taken place during the reign of either Ay or Horemheb. It is likely that the Hittites again launched attacks from their new bases at Qadesh and Amurru against Egyptian vassal states in Lebanon. Suppiluliuma certainly records taking Egyptian captives back to Hatti. It was, however, a pyrrhic victory. The captives were infected with a plague that ravaged Hatti for more than two decades and weakened the burgeoning empire. By the reign of Seti I, Suppiluliuma I had died and his grandson, Muwatallis II, ruled the Hittite Empire. Hatti remained a credible threat, and despite the presence of a possible peace treaty or ceasefire construed by Horemheb and Muwatallis’ father, Mursilis, it was largely a matter of time before a transgression on either side would cause another war.
* * *
During the summer of 1287 BC, Prince Benteshina of Amurru received fearful news. The Egyptian King Seti I had arrived in his lands with a vast force of infantry and chariots and was demanding Benteshina’s loyalty. The Kingdom of Amurru had been a Hittite vassal since the defection of King Aziru to King Suppiluliuma nearly half a century before. Benteshina was now facing an uncomfortable choice. Either he could remain loyal to the distant King Muwatallis of the Hittites and possibly see his kingdom ravaged by the Egyptians, or he could jump ship and swear loyalty to Seti – an action which would surely earn the enmity of the Hittites. A later treaty between the Hittite King Tudhilya IV and one of his vassals, Shaushgamuwa, records Prince Benteshina’s decision:
‘But when Muwatalli, the brother of the father of my Sun became king, the people of Amurru broke faith with him and this is what they had to say to him: “From free entities we became vassals. Now, however we are your vassals no longer!” And they entered into the following of the king of Egypt.’⁴⁶
Shortly afterwards, back in the Hittite capital of Hattusas, Muwatallis received news of Benteshina’s betrayal. But it was too late for him to react. Benteshina’s defection had given Seti the strategic opportunity to take his army against the citadel of Qadesh on the Orontes River. With the city in Egyptian possession, the Hittite aspirations in Syria were curtailed and Egypt restored one of its major imperial possessions – the province of Amurru.
Inscriptions at the Karnak Temple give only a cursory overview of Seti’s attack on the city of Qadesh and are limited to descriptions of the king as the slayer of tens of thousands, one who tramples the Asiatics and brings destruction to Qadesh and Amurru.⁴⁷ The accompanying reliefs show Seti in his chariot trampling a confused grouping of Hittite warriors, while others look on from the ramparts of Qadesh or run for cover in the nearby Labwi forest. The technological sophistication of Seti’s enemies is evident – even in their defeat: horses and chariots are far more prevalent than in depictions of battles against the Shasu and the other Canaanite city-states.
While information about the specifics of the campaign is limited, archaeological evidence has confirmed Seti’s conquest of Qadesh. A stela celebrating Seti’s victory was found at Tell Nebi Mend – the modern designation for the ancient city itself.⁴⁸ The stela is poorly preserved, but it is nonetheless confirmation that Seti was in a position to order it raised on what had been Hittite-controlled territory. After Seti’s death, Qadesh was retaken by King Muwatallis of the Hittites early in the reign of Ramesses II and the stela was taken down. It was, however, not defaced or destroyed, which, as Murnane notes,⁴⁹ is an interesting commentary on the fluidity of political alliances in the Late Bronze Age Near East. The rulers of Qadesh could not – at that time – have known if their city would soon again come under Egyptian domination, and chose to keep the stela intact so it could be quickly raised again to herald a change in political management. As the English rock band The Who noted in 1971: ‘Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.’
With two jewels in Egypt’s imperial crown restored, Seti returned home with his army. It would be another four years before the eastern front troubled him again. In the meantime, he had designs that would take him to the western edge of Egypt’s sphere of interest.
* * *
Of all Egypt’s enemies, the pastoral nomads who inhabited the deserts west of the Nile Valley are the most enigmatic. They are generally called Tjehenu in Egyptian texts until the late Ramesside Period when other Libyan tribes, such as the Meshwesh and Libu, are mentioned. They inhabited an area called Tjemeh, which may have encompassed the eastern portion of the Qatara Depression and Egypt’s northern Mediterranean coast. The near-invisibility of the Libyan nomads and their relationship with the Egyptian state in both textual and archaeological source material is caused by several factors.
Nomadic communities generally leave few archaeological traces, and the Libyans are no exception. They also used no written language amongst themselves, and so left no easily accessible body of administrative documents and literature which could have informed about their society and culture. This dearth has prompted an over-reliance on Egyptian source material – mostly textual and iconographic – to describe the Libyans. However, as the majority of these sources are in the form of royal monumental propaganda, their reliability is uncertain. To compound this issue, the actual amount of Egyptian sources which concern the Libyans is fairly limited, and the Egyptians themselves seem to have been relatively ignorant about Libyan society – or potentially, they simply did not care. A good example of this lack of detail is the so-called ‘Execration Texts’. Execration texts are a specific type of document which usually comprise lists of enemies of the proper order of the world according to the Egyptian state. Once written out, the lists were symbolically destroyed in an execration ritual to nullify their harmful influence. The ritual itself is referenced on Papyrus Bremner-Rhind, a document dating to the Ptolemaic Period and currently held in the British Museum:
‘You will depict every enemy of Re and every enemy of Pharaoh, dead or alive, and every proscribed deed he might dream of, the names of their father, their mother, and their children – every one of them – being written with fresh ink on a sheet of unused papyrus – and their own names being written on their chest, they themselves having been made of wax and bound with bonds of black thread; they will be spat on, they will be trodden with the left foot, they will be struck with a knife and a lance, and they will be thrown into the fire in a blacksmith’s furnace.’⁵⁰
One corpus of texts found at Saqqara was published in the 1920s by the eminent linguist Kurt Sethe and is known collectively as the ‘Berlin Group’. Dated to the Middle Kingdom, the texts list roughly forty individual Nubian or Asiatic rulers and multiple foreign cities or districts that the Egyptians wished to harm with the execration ritual:
‘The ruler of Sai, Seteqtenkekh, and all the stricken ones who are with him. The ruler of Websapet, Bakuayt called Tchay, born of Ihaas, born to Wenkat and all the stricken ones who are with him […] The ruler of Iy-anq, Erum, and all the stricken ones who are with him […] the ruler of Shutu, Zabulanu, and all the stricken ones who are with him […] Their strong men, their messengers, their confederates, their allies, who will rebel, who will plot, who will fight, who will say that they will fight, who will say that they will rebel, in this entire land.’⁵¹
In some cases, such as the chief of Websapet, Bakuayt, the lists include entire genealogies and underline a sophisticated level of knowledge on the part of the Egyptians. The list of Libyan chiefs by contrast is both extraordinarily short and completely devoid of any detail about the names of chieftains, settlements or districts:
‘The chiefs in Libya, all Libyans and their rulers. Their strong men, their messengers, their confederates, their allies, who will rebel, who will plot, who will fight, who will say that they will fight, who will say that they will rebel, in this entire land.’⁵²
This list is so patently generic and so woefully bereft of any details that one wonders whether the Libyans were not simply included out of a sense of symmetry, rather than because they posed any kind of danger to the Egyptian state.
The lack of cogent information may not be entirely ascribable to sluggishness on the part of the Egyptian state, but rather to simple disinterest. Viewed dispassionately, the Libyan nomads represented only a limited threat to the Egyptian state, unlike the greater empires in the Levant and Nubia. Unlike Nubia, the Libyan Desert holds very few mineral deposits; and unlike Canaan and the Lebanese city-states, the Libyans had precious few luxuries and resources to trade. Put bluntly, the Libyans had nothing – for most of Pharaonic history – to interest the Egyptian state in the slightest.⁵³
As a result, evidence for military campaigns against the Libyans from before the New Kingdom is limited. A fragmentary inscription from the reign of Mentuhotep IV suggests that he undertook a punitive raid against a Libyan chief.⁵⁴ According to the Story of Sinuhe, the 12th Dynasty ruler Senwosret I also led a campaign against the Tjehenu, although its scope is unknown.⁵⁵ Instead, as is so often the case with the unknown, the Libyans came to embody chaos. In Middle Kingdom pessimistic literature, such as the Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All,⁵⁶ ‘Libyans watering their herds in the Delta’ is employed as a metaphor for a world turned upside down and the triumph of disorder.
By the 18th Dynasty, the situation changed. The Tjehenu are still occasionally represented in the available source material, but now new tribes – such as the Meshwesh – have appeared in Egyptian documentation.⁵⁷ Some hostility during this period is suggested by an inscription from Soleb dating to the reign of Amenhotep III, wherein the king claims to have seized Tjehenu Libyans in a raid and used the captives as a labour force.⁵⁸ The contact between the two cultures increased during the Ramesside Period until it culminated in several invasion attempts of Egypt by the ‘new’ Libyan tribes, the Meshwesh and the Libu, during the reigns of Merenptah and Ramesses III.
After his successes in the Levant, Seti launched a campaign against the Tjehenu Libyans, most likely around Year 6 of his reign in 1284 BC. The only record of this campaign is found in the Karnak Battle Reliefs, but the accompanying texts are both undated and also highly generic, with little actual information about what prompted the military action, and also what its scale and aims were. The text simply informs the reader that Seti trampled the distant foreign land of Libya and made a great slaughter among its people. The scale of this slaughter is called into question, however, by the admission later on in the text that the Libyans did not in fact face Seti in an open battle, but rather fled and ‘[spent] the day [of battle] in the caves, hidden away like foxes’.⁵⁹ Considering their lack of metal tools and weapons, of chariots and cavalry, the Libyan nomads appear to have made the wise decision of refusing to do open battle with the Egyptian ruler and his armies, and may instead have used their knowledge of the desert to hide and harass the Egyptian troops guerrilla-style.
The Karnak Battle Reliefs are not only silent on the conduct of the campaign, but more importantly on what instigated it. Murnane⁶⁰ interprets the campaign as the starting shot in a much longer conflict that would culminate with the invasions of Egypt during the late New Kingdom. Morris⁶¹ interpreted the Karnak texts and reliefs as indicative of a Libyan invasion attempt of Egypt which Seti defeated. However, while pleasing as a logical narrative, both of these interpretations require the belief that the Egyptian state was aware that relations with Libya would deteriorate to the point of large-scale invasions attempts made against the Nile Valley more than sixty years before the first of these occurred.
Instead, the Libyan campaign should be viewed in the context of Seti’s foreign policy: to re-establish and extend Egyptian imperial control on all three fronts, the Levant, Nubia and Libya. In the Levant, Seti’s campaign not only returned previously lost Egyptian territory, but archaeological evidence from major settlements like Beth Shan also shows that the initial conquest was supplemented by the construction of infrastructure to house a beefed-up Egyptian administration, resulting in a more direct control over the vassal states. In Nubia, a province which had been firmly under Egyptian control for several hundred years, Seti constructed new fortified settlements at Amara West and Akhsha, cementing Egyptian dominance in the area. The Libyan campaign was no different. It represented an attempt to pacify the Marmarican coast and the Libyan tribes who inhabited the area to pave the way for the construction of several centres of Egyptian administration in the area. The construction of these centres was not undertaken in Seti’s lifetime. Rather, it was his son, Ramesses II, who early in his reign capitalized on his father’s preparatory work by constructing a line of fortified settlements stretching from the Delta along the coast to the modern town of Mersa Matrouh. Among these fortifications, only two – Kom Firin⁶² and Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham – have been extensively excavated in recent times.
The most isolated of these forts, Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham,⁶³ is located nearly 320km from Alexandria and is an architectural copy of forts which Seti I built in Nubia, such as Amara West. It is composed of a large mud-brick enclosure wall, a limestone temple, magazines and domestic areas. The fortress was not only a military installation, but a functioning settlement in its own right, dependent both on cooperation with local tribes and local production of food and goods.⁶⁴ It is reasonable to assume that this level of self-sufficiency could not have been achieved without the pacifying actions taken by Seti in the area during Year 6 of his reign.
Viewed in isolation, Seti’s change in focus from the growing threat of the Hittite Empire to the Libyan nomads occupying the very fringes of his empire may appear peculiar. However, if considered in concert with Seti’s other ventures abroad, the Libyan campaign fits neatly within a defined foreign policy: first to re-establish control of the territory lost during the Amarna Period (primarily in the Levant), and secondly to create a more direct imperial administration in the Levant, Nubia and Libya, expanding Egypt’s sphere of influence in all directions.
* * *
Even though Seti took time to campaign in Libya in Year 6 of his reign, developments in the Near East could not be ignored for long. In the year following his Libyan foray, Seti was back in Syria with his army and facing an old enemy: the Hittite Empire. It is curious perhaps that some time seems to have passed since Seti’s blatant annexation of the Hittite province of Amuru and the vital city of Qadesh. One might have imagined that the Hittites would have reacted swiftly to the loss of their southern dominions, and struck back in force. Instead, the Karnak Battle Reliefs paint a different picture. The scene is a familiar one: the Egyptian king is in his chariot, trampling Hittite warriors. The enemy commander – shown standing in front of Seti’s chariot – has been hit by several arrows fired by the king. This commander is unnamed, and the description of the battle is somewhat nonspecific. However, when Seti presents the prisoners from his campaign at the Karnak Temple to Amun, they are described as ‘the great chiefs of despicable Retenu [Syria], whom his Majesty has brought off by his victories from the land of Hatti’.⁶⁵ This mention of Syria has led both Murnane⁶⁶ and Spalinger⁶⁷ to conclude that Seti did not in fact fight a Hittite army, but rather an army composed of Hittite vassals and levies from northern Syria. It is reasonable to assume that this army would have been led by the main figure of Hittite authority in the area, the viceroy of Carchemisch, Sarruma. Perhaps it is he who lost his life on the battlefield in front of Seti’s chariot.⁶⁸
Both the depictions and the accompanying texts in this scene are not helpful in the construction of a logical narrative. They are – like many royal monuments from Pharaonic Egypt – full of formulaic bombast and light on actual detail. Nor do the reliefs and inscriptions answer two central questions: why, having been slighted by Seti’s capture of Amuru and Qadesh, did the Hittites not respond sooner; and why, when they eventually did, was their response so decidedly tepid, relying on vassal troops rather than the Hittite army itself?
The most reasonable explanation is that the Hittite Empire was distracted by political and military developments elsewhere. The break-up of the Mittanian Empire allowed the Hittites to secure vast territories in northern Mesopotamia, primarily the district of Hanigalbat.⁶⁹ However, this expansion brought the Hittites into contact with an ascendant force in the area – the Assyrian Empire. Assyria had grown out of the Sumerian Empire and become a powerful state in its own right during the Late Bronze Age. Bordered by Babylon in the south, the Assyrians – like the Hittites – had designs on securing more territory and trade routes within the former Mittanian territory. This naturally brought the two countries into an extended conflict, and King Adad-Nirari I of Assyria forced the Hittite-held territory of Hanigalbat to switch its allegiance to him, also raiding the area to put down a rebellion against his authority during the same period when Seti was campaigning against the Hittites in northern Syria. Pressed on two fronts, King Muwatallis of the Hittites appears to have sent his main force to deal with the Assyrians, despatching a vassal army to face the Egyptian king.
Seti’s second victory in northern Syria can then be explained more as the result of Muwatallis underestimating his Egyptian enemy, rather than by Seti’s own strategic brilliance. But even though Seti returned home to Thebes loaded with captives and the spoils of war, the theatre of reciprocal warfare in northern Syria was far from over. After Seti’s death, the city of Qadesh renounced its loyalty to Egypt and swore fealty again to the Hittites. This in turn prompted Seti’s son, the young Ramesses II, to pursue an ill-advised campaign against the city.⁷⁰ The campaign nearly turned into a disaster when Ramesses underestimated King Muwatallis, who – perhaps learning from his previous mistake – had not despatched another vassal army, but rather the full military force of the Hittites and their allies. Only the timely arrival of Egyptian reinforcements prevented Muwatallis’ troops from overrunning the Egyptian encampment on the plain below Qadesh and killing Ramesses. Instead, the battle ended in a grudging stalemate, but the campaign cost Egypt any hope of retaking the city of Qadesh and holding onto the province of Amuru, which reverted to Hittite control after the battle. In this way, Seti’s hard work in northern Syria was undone by the folly of his son.
* * *
Of all the jewels in Egypt’s imperial crown during the New Kingdom, Nubia was the least fractious, and also, in some ways, the most valuable. Nubia had played host to Egyptian raids or occupations from the very beginning of the Pharaonic civilization, with campaigns being launched to secure cattle, slaves and gold from the Old Kingdom onwards, in combination with more diplomatic trade missions, such as that undertaken by the 6th Dynasty official Harkuf to the court of the King of Yam in modern-day Sudan.⁷¹ After the decentralized interlude of the First Intermediate Period, a more formal arrangement was sought. Initially this new arrangement manifested itself during the late 11th Dynasty in the construction of small drystone forts at strategic points, from where they could control valuable resources, such as the amethyst mines of Wadi el-Hudi.⁷²
The advent of the 12th Dynasty and the ascension of powerful Middle Kingdom pharaohs saw a frenzied construction programne of vast mud-brick fortresses along the banks of the Nile in Lower Nubia. Some of these fortifications, in particular the great fort at Buhen, continued in use into the New Kingdom, and were still manned by Egyptian troops during the reign of Seti I and his dynastic successors. These forts functioned as traditional barriers or border posts, protecting Egypt’s southern front from riverine expeditionary forces from the powerful kingdom of Kush which lay beneath the Third Cataract. But they also monitored activities among the pastoralist nomads who roamed the deserts around them and facilitated trade with exotic goods from Sub-Saharan Africa to the courts at Memphis and Thebes. A Middle Kingdom stela erected as a border post at the fortress of Semna, built immediately above the Third Cataract, records how this trade relationship was conducted:
‘The Southern Boundary, made in Regnal Year 8 under the Majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Senwosret III, who is given life forever and ever; to prevent any Nubian crossing it by water or by land, with a ship or any herds of the Nubians; except a Nubian who has come to do trade at Mirgissa or on a diplomatic mission. Every good thing shall be done with them, but without allowing a ship of the Nubians to pass by Semna going downstream, forever.’⁷³
The text highlights how the border was not hermetically sealed to Nubians, but was left open to merchants and diplomats who could travel past the border fort at Semna and quarter at the fortress of Mirgissa closer to Egypt, where they could presumably barter their goods.
As the power of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom waned, the fortresses fell under the command of the ruler of Kush, based in the city-state of Kerma. The resurgent Egypt of the New Kingdom retook the fortresses without much bloodshed, but remembered the fickle loyalty of their Nubian province. In response, 18th Dynasty rulers like Amenhotep III ordered the construction of vast temple towns throughout Nubia at Soleb, Wadi es-Sebua, Aniba and Sai.⁷⁴ These temple towns served as trade hubs, bases for gold mining and other quarrying expeditions, and also as points of cultural contact between Egypt and Nubia. The policy was overwhelmingly successful, and the indigenous culture in Upper and Lower Nubia – archaeologically identified as the C-Group during the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period – had all but vanished by the mid-New Kingdom.
By the time of Seti’s ascension, serious military threats in the Nubian province were very much a thing of the past. Always eager to emulate Amenhotep III, Seti continued this ruler’s policy in Nubia. At the fortress of Sesebi,⁷⁵ located near modern Delgo in Sudan, he repurposed a temple built early in the reign of Akhenaten and expanded the settlement and its fortifications. The discovery of large amounts of distinctive schist grindstones and spoil heaps of crushed gold-bearing quartz suggests that processing of the precious and sought-after mineral was conducted at the site.
But Seti was not content with merely repairing grand structures built on the orders of his predecessors. During his reign at least two new major fortified bases of operation in Nubia were built, one at Amara West,⁷⁶ which became the new administrative centre of Upper Nubia, and another at Aksha.⁷⁷ Amara West has been particularly well explored in recent years, archaeological excavations revealing that it comprised a sprawling settlement inside and surrounding a large mud-brick enclosure. Clear evidence of Nubian material culture and architecture inside the Egyptian settlement also suggests interrelations between the Egyptian administrators and settlers and their indigenous Nubian neighbours. Investigations of the nearby cemeteries have also provided a glimpse of the Egyptians stationed in the town, which included military officers, scribes, soldiers and their families. For Seti, Nubia embodied economic wealth, from its gold mines to the trade routes bringing ebony, ivory and other exotic goods to Egypt from further south in Africa. The importance of the region was such that no Egyptian pharaoh could tolerate rebellion or dissent.
But rebellion did come to Nubia during Seti’s reign. After his adventures in the Near East and Libya, rumours of a small-scale insurgence at Irem reached the ears of the king as he held court in Thebes:
‘One came and spoke to His Majesty: “Enemies in the foreign land of Irem have planned a revolt!”’⁷⁸
The story of this rebellion and Seti’s response to it has not been preserved on the walls of the Karnak Temple, like his campaigns against Amurru and Libya have. Instead, modern scholars know of the Irem rebellion from two stela set up at Amara West and Sai, most likely shortly after the rebellion was concluded.
As is customary with Egyptian monumental texts, it is difficult to discern practical considerations and military strategies in the stream of overwrought royal terminology. According to the stela from Amara West, Seti did not respond immediately to the growing rebellion: ‘His Majesty waited to take action against them, to first hear their plans in their entirety.’⁷⁹ What might Seti have hoped to gain by his reticence? One explanation can be found by considering the location of the Irem rebels. Even though the geographical location of the land of Irem is still debated – with some scholars suggesting it should be found near Kawa, south of the Third Cataract,⁸⁰ while others have maintained that it was located further north and closer to the Kurkur Oasis⁸¹ – the texts claim that the Irem rebels had set up their base of operations around several desert wells. While the precise aims of the rebellion are unclear, it is likely that they used this position to strike out at Egyptian settlements – and in particular against gold mining facilities – closer to the Nile. Without an immediate reaction from Egypt, the rebellion grew in scale, more rebels joining their comrades at the desert wells. Eventually, Seti responded.
‘His Majesty spoke to all the noblemen, courtiers and followers: “What is wretched Irem that they should transgress in the time of My Majesty? It is my father, Amun-Re who will make them fall upon the sword of my Majesty! I caused every land to retreat before my Majesty!”’⁸²
He despatched a large military force south to Nubia, most likely under the command of one of the two viceroys of Kush, a former general by the name of Amenemope,⁸³ who was also the son of Seti’s vizier, Paser. It is also possible that Seti’s own son and crown prince, the later Ramesses II, accompanied the army. The Egyptian army mustered on a fortified hill, positioning themselves between the Irem rebels in the desert and the River Nile. There they waited.
The Irem rebellion had soon grown so large that the water in the desert wells could no longer sustain the host. The Egyptian decision to remain in a fortified position rather than chase off into the desert, fighting on the enemy’s terms, eventually forced the rebels to abandon their base of operations and strike out for the fertile river plain and the crucial water source of the Nile. Seti’s initial hesitation was not born of cowardice or indecision. Rather, it appears to be a deliberate strategic move: the king had given his enemies enough rope with which to hang themselves. The Irem host was forced to move through the desert with limited resources and little or no water in a desperate attempt to secure access to the river. They arrived right under the noses of the Egyptian army comfortably encamped on high ground, no doubt both well-rested and well-watered. In a single decisive battle, the exhausted and dehydrated rebels were destroyed.⁸⁴
After the battle, Seti’s army took away 434 people including fifty-four young men. They also went into the desert and captured the five desert wells, along presumably with those rebels who had elected to remain behind rather than participate in the battle against the Egyptians. The captives from Irem were transferred to work on the properties owned by the various Egyptian temples in Nubia or royal estates throughout Egypt. Order was restored in Nubia, and the province would offer no more rebellion during Seti’s reign.
Excursus: Conquering Every Foreign Land
As with many aspects of Seti’s reign, his policy towards Egypt’s neighbours was defined by a far more proactive approach than that of his Amarna Period predecessors. But despite this proactive attitude, there is none of the brash impetuousness that characterized the early forays of his young successor Ramesses II. ‘Reaffirmation and reclamation’ seems to have been the watchwords of Seti’s actions in the early half of his reign: reaffirming Egyptian dominance over the Canaanite city-states and the Lebanese coast, and reclaiming the province of Amurru and the city of Qadesh. But Seti was not content with the (relatively speaking) simple act of conquest. On all fronts there is evidence of a deliberate long-term policy of consolidation, evidenced by the expansion of the imperial administration in the southern Levant, the construction of new fortified bases in Nubia and even the pacification of the Marmarican coast, which would pave the way for his son to extend Egyptian control of the Tjehenu Libyans to unparalleled levels with the construction of a chain of fortified settlements early in his reign.
The Karnak Battle Reliefs are undoubtedly a valuable source of information regarding Seti’s foreign policy, even if their language and structure is extraordinarily programmatic in nature. There is, however, one crucial question which the reliefs do not satisfactorily answer: what was the role of the young prince Ramesses in his father’s many campaigns? Considering the role that Seti played as commander-in-chief of Egypt’s armies during the reign of Ramesses I, a similar role for his own son might have been envisaged. If this was the case, the reliefs are relatively silent on the matter. It is true that Ramesses appears in several of the reliefs and is named and given the titles ‘Hereditary Prince, Eldest King’s Son of his own body’. However, in most of these cases careful examination of the carvings have revealed that the figure Ramesses was simply carved on top of an earlier figure of an official, whose own titles have been nearly obscured by those of the prince. This modification seems to have been done after Seti’s death, when Ramesses had become king.
The deleted official, whose name was Mehy and who held the high-ranking titles Troop Commander and Fan-bearer on the King’s Right Side, appears with Seti in several different campaigns and clearly had a close relationship to the king. Sadly, he appears in no other official records, indeed his absence is so complete that some scholars have suggested that Ramesses – concerned about Mehy’s closeness to his father – had him removed from all official records after Seti’s death, and even ordered him executed. While this is without doubt a gripping narrative, there is not enough evidence to categorically suggest foul play. A more likely scenario is that Ramesses ordered the reliefs recarved to include his own person early in his reign as a way of establishing his legitimacy to rule – and perhaps also to appear a more experienced military man than he truly was.⁸⁵
While much of Seti’s time and energy was undoubtedly taken up with campaigning and managing Egypt’s burgeoning empire, it was not the only central duty he had as a monarch. An equally important task was to build, enlarge and endow temples and chapels throughout the Two Lands of Egypt.