Birch, Samuel [Hrsg.]: Facsimile of an Egyptian Hieratic papyrus of the reign of Ramses III, now in the British Museum: [bekannt unter dem Namen. Der große Papyrus Harris] (London, 1876)

these had been confederated Lubu, or Libyas, the Libyans, Shaiape, the Hasa, and
the Batana, all Gsetulian or Numidian tribes. Over these Rameses states that he
obtained a most signal success, expelling them from the confines of Egypt, slaughtering
great numbers of them, and taking prisoners their captains, chiefs, women and children,
who were reduced to slavery. He appears to have followed up this success by making
the adjacent countries of the west tributary, and they sent annually clothes and corn
to the Egyptian treasuries and magazines. After the expulsion and submission of
the west, Rameses turned his attention to the eastern frontiers, and fell upon the
foreigners closest at hand, the Saaru and the Shasu. He plundered the camp
of these people, and brought, according to the account of the Papyrus, a
considerable spoil of prisoners, treasure, and cattle as booty and tribute to Egypt. The
captives were presented to the gods for slaves. It appears from the description of the
papyri of the time of Meneptah that the Shasu were a predatory race, like the modern
Bedouins, on the frontiers of Egypt. They also appear in the campaigns of Barneses II,
and at an earlier period were known as the Shasu, or Shepherds, their name meaning
" nomads." The other races allied with them, and mentioned among the conquests of
Rameses, were either tribes of the same family or else of inferior importance. The
Shasu, it will be seen, were allied on this occasion with the Egyptians against the other

Asiatics.

Subsequent to the defeat of the Asiatics, Rameses had again to contend with the

Mashuasha, who appear at this time to have risen to such power and importance as

to cause serious trouble, if not actually to almost conquer the Delta. Allied with

the Lubu or Libyes, they had invaded Egypt from the west, and had conquered

from Memphis to Karbana, reaching to both banks of the Nile, and laying waste

the district of Ragau, or the Fayoum. For many years Rameses turned his attention

to these dangerous enemies of Egypt. He overthrew the Mashuasha, the Lubu,

the Sabata, the Kaikasha, the Shaiapu, the Hasa, and the Bakana, and drove

them from the frontiers. The conquered nations were reduced to slavery or military

service ; the women, children, and cattle became the spoil of Rameses ; their princes

were shut up or imprisoned in fortresses ; and the common people conscribed into

the military service of Pharaoh, and some compelled to embark as sailors in the

Egyptian fleet. The women and children, along with the cattle, were given as

offerings to the temple of Amen at Thebes. These people, the Mashuasha and

the Lubu, appear on the left side of the temple of Amen at Thebes. Of these

nations the Mashuasha were considered to lie most south, as they are tied with a

cord terminating in a lotus flower, while the Lubu were placed north, with the cord

terminating in the flower of the papyrus. Their physiognomy and dress resembled that

of the Mashuasha,1 and they arranged their hair with the same lock on the right side,

but the Lubu more resembled the type of Juba and the Numidians, while the Mashuasha

inclined rather to the Semitic races. It was not the first time that these Libyan people

had invaded Egypt ; they had done so in the reign of Meneptah, and, assisted by the

Sharutana, or Sardinians, and the maritime people of Greece and Italy, had laid waste

the country. Their defeat by Rameses in a great battle perhaps freed Egypt for awhile ;

but in the reign of that monarch, or his weak successors, they had overrun the country

and reduced it to subjection and anarchy. These events, as will be subsequently seen,

happened in the eleventh year of Rameses, a proof of the weakness of the empire at

the time. Egypt in fact was unabLe to protect itself against these incursions, and, even

at the time of Meneptah, the brunt of the battles and campaigns was borne by the

Brugsch, Geographie, II, taf. viii, fig. 20; ix, fig. 21.

foreign mercenaries or conscripts in its service. It is hardly possible to conceive that
Rameses had not cleared the Delta of these invaders till his eleventh year, but it will
be observed that no Apis was buried in the Serapeum2 at Memphis after the fifty-fifth
year of Rameses II till the twenty-sixth year of Rameses III, which shows that some
disturbance had taken place in the succession of these bulls, such as might have been
caused by the anarchy caused by a foreign invasion, and the neglect, as mentioned by
Rameses III, of the worship of the gods during the interval. After narrating the

m

successful war, the expulsion of enemies, guarding the frontier by fortresses, and
imprisonment of the hostile chiefs of neighbouring countries, Rameses describes the
works of internal administration which he had executed. He had made, he says,
a great well or reservoir in the land of Aina, surrounded with walls like a
mountain, with a foundation of thirty blocks of stone under the earth and thirty
cubits high, its folding doors and cross beams were of ash3 wood, its bolts or locks
and keys of brass. The land of Aina and its position are unknown. Several
places of the name Ain or Aina, the " source " or " fountain," are known, especially
in Palestine, one in the tribe of Simeon south of Hebron. This may be one of the
tanks either in the peninsula of Sinai, in the direction of the turquoise mines at
the Sarabit el Khadim, or one of the tanks near Redesieh in the direction of the

gold mines.

It had long been recognized that Rameses had built a fleet, and a naval action is
represented amongst the sculptures of Medinat Habu, in which the Egyptian fleet gives
battle to another which had approached some shore or mouth of a river, supposed to be
the Nile. In the speech Rameses mentions the construction of a fleet, but apparently for
the purposes of transport. They were equipped with officers, crews, and all requirements
for the purpose, and were sent on the Red Sea to the opposite coast of Punt, Somali
or Arabia, and Taneter, the " Holy Land," or upper and northern part of that country.
It appears that the Egyptian ships were laden with the products of Egypt, and after
their voyage returned with those of Taneter, and the spices or gums of Punt. The
princes or chiefs of this country gave them for Egypt. Hence it appears they were
transported to Kabti or Coptos, and from thence transported by men and asses to the
river Nile and the canals of Coptos. This tribute, brought as the treasure of Arabia,
was offered to the king by the deputation or tributaries, with their faces on the ground.
The monarch gave these valuable gums and spices to the gods of the different temples,
for use in due performance of the morning worship, and of the other usual rites.

Another of the royal expeditions was to the land of Ataka, to bring thence the
products of the copper mines of the locality. This was also accomplished by ships, arid
the metal, or ore, laden on asses for transport. The ships of the expedition were heavily
laden on the spot, and the vessels discharged their cargo safely in Egypt, The freight
was entered on a roll, and the pieces of the metal described as very numerous. The
metal is described as golden in colour, and consequently either brass or copper.
According to some, the land of Taka4 lies on tjie river Atbara, between Khartum and
the Red Sea, in a metalliferous region, but the copper brought to Egypt came mostly
from Asia, and is not mentioned amongst the products of Rush or Ethiopia, still less of
the Uauat or land of northern Nubia.

After that, the monarch had sent an expedition, or commission, to the land of Mafia,
or supposed "turquoise" land, in the peninsula of Mount Sinai, the mines of which had
been worked since the days of Senefera, of the Illrd Dynasty. It was accompanied

" Mariette, Serapeum, p. 16.

3 r<„J~-

Eisenlohr, der Grosse Papyrus Harris, p. 35.

with numerous presents to the goddess Athor, the mistress of that region, and for the

temple there erected to her. It consisted of gold, byssus, clothes, and other valuables.

Many sacks of real turquoise were brought from thence. Evidence of the works of the

monarch are there found by his name in the temple, a great part of which was built

in his reign, and fragments of porcelain vases inscribed with his name, from the same

spot, are in the collections of the British Museum. A tablet, dated in his 10th year,

records the expedition dispatched thither by Rameses. Finally, the monarch describes

the prosperous condition of the country under his administration. He replanted the

country wuth fruit trees and flowers, and settled persons in the desolated parts, sending

women there to repopulate the country, and caused them to be unmolested by the

enemies of Egypt. The army, composed of Sharutana, or Sardinians, and Kahaka, or

Libyans, was distributed in its appointed quarters, and, no longer occupied in Ethiopian

or Syrian Avars, the weapons of the troops were restored to the arsenals. They are

described as living in quiet amidst then Avives and children, and all the foreigners

settled in Egypt, whether Asiatics or Libyans, lived in peace and tranquillity under the

prosperous regime of the monarch.

The monuments confirm the account of the Great Papyrus, and give additional
information. It does not appear that Rameses III was associated in the kingdom with
his father Setnekht, for a hieratic inscription inscribed on the walls of the rock temple
at Gebel Silseleh has been preserved, recording an expedition made to make the
monuments of Rameses HI in Western Uas, or the Thebaid. Another inscription at
the same place, dated on the 1st of the month Pashons, of first year of his reign, gives
the names of the commission, consisting of the chief of the treasury and others, wdio
were encharged with the task of building the House of Millions of Years, or Palace of
Rameses, probably at Medinat Habu. This work appears to have continued till the
fifth year of the same king; for another inscription, dated the 1st of the same month,
" The year 5," states, "that the 1st of the month Pashons, of the reign of the king of
the upper and lower country, Ra-user-ma, beloved of Amen, the son of the Sun, lord
of diadems, Rameses ruler of An, beloved of all the gods, giver of life for ever ! His
Majesty ordered that Set-em-hebi, the superintendent of the treasury, should make the
House of Millions of Years, of the king of the upper and lower country, Ra-user-ma,
beloved of Amen. He made the work and chief monuments of the ' House of Millions
of Years ' of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ra-user-ma, beloved of Amen, in the
west of Uas. The troops and men who were with him were 2,000, the workmen 200."
After some lines difficult to decipher, it appears that forty transports and four other
boats were employed for the purpose of removing the stone required from the quarries,
and that 3,000 persons, termed "heads," probably foreign captives or convicts, were
engaged on the work,5 which was evidently the commencement of the building of the
Palace of Medinat Habu.

It is at this palace that the campaigns of the king are described in detail, although
the inscriptions are very much mutilated, and consequently difficult to restore. The
first mentioned is that of the fifth year of his reign, in which he had assumed the title
of overthrower or trampler-under-foot of the Tahennu, or Libyans. The inscription
states that the Satu, or eastern foreigners, and the Tahennu, or Libyans, had been
guilty of overrunning the country, so that no harvest had been gathered, in, and
Rameses successfully attacked and defeated them, apparently giving no quarter, but
bringing in the hands and other parts of the slain into the camp, this campaign was
evidently against the western enemies of Egypt. The Mashuasha appears to have been

ühampollion, Not. Descr., pp. 254, 255; Burton, Exe. Hier., pi. xliii-v.