Famous Pharaohs: 2009-06-28

Wars of Ramses II With Tunep and Canaan

After peace had been made with the Khita, their frontiers were henceforth spared, although several cities could not prevail upon themselves to acknowledge the Egyptian supremacy. In one of these, “Tunep, in the land of Naharain”, where Ramses had set up his statues as visible memorials of his campaigns against Khita, the opposition of the population assumed such a serious aspect, that Ramses saw himself obliged to lead his army and his chariots in person against Tunep. The memorial inscription preserved in the Ramesseum at Thebes, unfortunately destroyed in its upper part, describes this campaign in the following terms: "his warriors, and of his (chariots. His) armour was upon him. And the king came again to take his armour, and to put it on. And he utterly smote the hostile Khita, who were in the neighbourhood of the city of Tunep in the land of Naharain. After that he no more put on his armour". In the eighth year we again find the king on the soil of the land of Canaan, where, in the territory of what was afterwards Galilee, as well as in the neighbourhood of that ill-famed country, the inhabitants mocked at Pharaoh's highness, and at length tired out his patience. They were punished by the capture of their fortresses ; and their kings and elders, together with the men capable of bearing arms, were carried away to the land of Kemi, after the Egyptian warriors had grossly insulted them, beaten them, and, in token of shame, had plucked out the long beards of the Canaanites. The representation of the conquest of the fortresses had its place on the northern flanking-tower at the corner of the west side of the temple of Ramses on the west side of Thebes. An inscription was annexed to every fortress, beginning with the words, “This is the city which the king took in the eighth year”, to which the particular designation of the place was added. In what has been preserved we can make out the names: Shalama (that is the town of peace), the place Salem, or Saleim, to the south of Scythopolis; Maroma, that is Merom; 'Ain-'Anamim, that is, Anim or Engannim; “Dapur: in the land of the Amorites”, the well-known fortress on Mount Tabor; “the town Kalopu, on the mountain of Beitha-Antha”, that is, the Bethanath of Scripture, in the land of Cabul.

Wars of Ramses II With Tunep and Canaan

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