DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5066#0091
62 MILITARY EXPEDITION AGAINST CUSH oh. rv.
But two reasons especially tell against this supposition.
First, there is the difference in the time, which cannot
he made to agree with the days of Joseph, and next
the indisputable fact that in other inscriptions years of
famine are mentioned which thoroughly correspond
with the Biblical account. What the inscription of
Ameni does really teach, from an historical point of
view, is that a military expedition up the river was
directed against the black people of the land of Cush,
who dwelt from the Egyptian frontier at Syene south-
wards up to the sources of the Nile. The names of the
races of the land of Cush conquered by the first
Usertsen, or perhaps rather the names of the countries
inhabited by them, are preserved on a memorial stone
which was found in the neighbourhood of Wady-Halfah,
a little above the Second Cataract. This was, without
doubt, the last point to which Usertsen extended his
campaign against the above-mentioned inhabitants of
the negro-land.
Besides pushing southwards into the gold district
of Nubia Usertsen also directed his attention to the
caverns and mountains of the Sinaitic peninsula, the
mines of which had already been worked under the
Memphite kings. New settlers were sent to the lonely
valleys of this district to work up 'mafkat'] (turquoises)
and copper. Some inscriptions of the Egyptian work-
men whom the king sent there still bear witness to their
presence in the valley of Magharah.
The road from Egypt to Sinai led from the low
lands of the Delta by the narrow road along which
Sineh was obliged to pass in his flight from Egypt to
Edom. Here, also, on the eastern side of the low lands,
1 The green mineral termed ' maf- raid; the second, called ' imitation,'
kat' appears to have been of two is thought to have been either mala-
kinds : the first was marked' genuine,' chite or smalt,
and was in all probability the erne-
But two reasons especially tell against this supposition.
First, there is the difference in the time, which cannot
he made to agree with the days of Joseph, and next
the indisputable fact that in other inscriptions years of
famine are mentioned which thoroughly correspond
with the Biblical account. What the inscription of
Ameni does really teach, from an historical point of
view, is that a military expedition up the river was
directed against the black people of the land of Cush,
who dwelt from the Egyptian frontier at Syene south-
wards up to the sources of the Nile. The names of the
races of the land of Cush conquered by the first
Usertsen, or perhaps rather the names of the countries
inhabited by them, are preserved on a memorial stone
which was found in the neighbourhood of Wady-Halfah,
a little above the Second Cataract. This was, without
doubt, the last point to which Usertsen extended his
campaign against the above-mentioned inhabitants of
the negro-land.
Besides pushing southwards into the gold district
of Nubia Usertsen also directed his attention to the
caverns and mountains of the Sinaitic peninsula, the
mines of which had already been worked under the
Memphite kings. New settlers were sent to the lonely
valleys of this district to work up 'mafkat'] (turquoises)
and copper. Some inscriptions of the Egyptian work-
men whom the king sent there still bear witness to their
presence in the valley of Magharah.
The road from Egypt to Sinai led from the low
lands of the Delta by the narrow road along which
Sineh was obliged to pass in his flight from Egypt to
Edom. Here, also, on the eastern side of the low lands,
1 The green mineral termed ' maf- raid; the second, called ' imitation,'
kat' appears to have been of two is thought to have been either mala-
kinds : the first was marked' genuine,' chite or smalt,
and was in all probability the erne-