* This Tel el-Amarna Ramses is, perhaps, identical with the
Theban one: he may have followed his master to his new
capital, and have had a tomb dug for himself there, which he
subsequently abandoned, on the death of Khûniatonû, in order
to return to Thebes with Tûtankhamon and Aï.
** The fact that the marriage was celebrated under the
auspices of Harmhabî, and that, consequently, Ramses must
have occupied an important position at the court of that
prince, is proved by the appearance of Ramses II., son of
Tuîa, as early as the first year of Seti, among the ranks of
the combatants in the war carried on by that prince against
the Tihonû; even granting that he was then ten years old, we
are forced to admit that he must have been born before his
grandfather came to the throne. There is in the Vatican a
statue of Tuîa; other statues have been discovered at San.
Ramses reigned only six or seven years, and associated Seti with himself in the government from his second year. He undertook a short military expedition into Ethiopia, and perhaps a raid into Syria; and we find remains of his monuments in Nubia, at Bohani near Wady Haifa, and at Thebes, in the temple of Amon.*
* He began the great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak; E. de Rougé
thinks that the idea of building this was first conceived
under the XVIIIth dynasty.
He displayed little activity, his advanced age preventing him from entering on any serious undertaking: but his accession nevertheless marks an important date in the history of Egypt. Although Harmhabî was distantly connected with the line of the Ahmessides, it is difficult at the present day to know what position to assign him in the Pharaonic lists: while some regard him as the last of the XVIIIth dynasty, others prefer to place him at the head of the XIXth. No such hesitation, however, exists with regard to Ramses I., who was undoubtedly the founder of a new family. The old familiar names of Thûtmosis and Amenôthes henceforward disappear from the royal lists, and are replaced by others, such as Seti, Mînephtah, and, especially, Ramses, which now figure in them for the first time. The princes who bore these names showed themselves worthy successors of those who had raised Egypt to the zenith of her power; like them they were successful on the battle-field, and like them they devoted the best of the spoil to building innumerable monuments. No sooner had Seti celebrated his father’s obsequies, than he assembled his army and set out for war.
It would appear that Southern Syria was then in open revolt. “Word had been brought to His Majesty: ‘The vile Shaûsû have plotted rebellion; the chiefs of their tribes, assembled in one place on the confines of Kharû, have been smitten with blindness and with the spirit of violence; every one cutteth his neighbour’s throat.” * It was imperative to send succour to the few tribes who remained faithful, to prevent them from succumbing to the repeated attacks of the insurgents. Seti crossed the frontier at Zalu, but instead of pursuing his way along the coast, he marched due east in order to attack the Shaûsû in the very heart of the desert. The road ran through wide wadys, tolerably well supplied with water, and the length of the stages necessarily depended on the distances between the wells. This route was one frequented in early times, and its security was ensured by a number of fortresses and isolated towers built along it, such as “The House of the Lion “—ta ait pa maû—near the pool of the same name, the Migdol of the springs of Huzîna, the fortress of Uazît, the Tower of the Brave, and the Migdol of Seti at the pools of Absakaba. The Bedawîn, disconcerted by the rapidity of this movement, offered no serious resistance. Their flocks were carried off, their trees cut down, their harvests destroyed, and they surrendered their strongholds at discretion. Pushing on from one halting-place to another, the conqueror soon reached Babbîti, and finally Pakanâna.**
* The pictures of this campaign and the inscriptions which
explain them were engraved by Seti I., on the outside of the
north wall of the great hypostyle hall at Karnak.
** The site of Pakanâna has, with much probability, been
fixed at El-Kenân or Khurbet-Kanâan, to the south of Hebron.
Brugsch had previously taken this name to indicate the
country of Canaan, but Chabas rightly contested this view.
W. Max Millier took up the matter afresh: he perceived that
we have here an allusion to the first town encountered by
Seti I. in the country of Canaan to the south-west of
Raphia, the name of which is not mentioned by the Egyptian
sculptor; it seems to me that this name should be Pakanâna,
and that the town bore the same name as the country.
The latter town occupied a splendid position on the slope of a rocky hill, close to a small lake, and defended the approaches to the vale of Hebron. It surrendered at the first attack, and by its fall the Egyptians became possessed of one of the richest provinces in the southern part of Kharû. This result having been achieved, Seti took the caravan road to his left, on the further side of Gaza, and pushed forward at full speed towards the Hittite frontier.
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph, by Émil Brugsch-Bey.