Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato. The first
prisoner on the left is the Prince of the Khâti (cf. the cut
on p. 318 of the present work), the second is the Prince of
the Amâuru [Amoritos], the third the Prince of the Zakkala,
the fourth that of the Shardana, the fifth that of the
Shakalasha (see the cut on p. 304 of this work), and the
sixth that of the Tursha [Tyrseni].
Their soul had said to them for the second time that “they would end their lives in the nomes of Egypt, that they would till its valleys and its plains as their own land.” The issue did not correspond with their intentions. “Death fell upon them within Egypt, for they had hastened with their feet to the furnace which consumes corruption, under the fire of the valour of the king who rages like Baal from the heights of heaven. All his limbs are invested with victorious strength; with his right hand he lays hold of the multitudes, his left extends to those who are against him, like a cloud of arrows directed upon them to destroy them, and his sword cuts like that of Montû. Kapur, who had come to demand homage, blind with fear, threw down his arms, and his troops did the same. He sent up to heaven a suppliant cry, and his son [Mashashalu] arrested his foot and his hand; for, behold, there rises beside him the god who knows what he has in his heart: His Majesty falls upon their heads as a mountain of granite and crushes them, the earth drinks up their blood as if it had been water...; their army was slaughtered, slaughtered their soldiers,” near a fortress situated on the borders of the desert called the “Castle of Usirmarî-Miamon.” They were seized, “they were stricken, their arms bound, like geese piled up in the bottom of a boat, under the feet of His Majesty.” * The fugitives were pursued at the sword’s point from the Castle of Usirmarî-Miamon to the Castle of the Sands, a distance of over thirty miles.**
* The name of the son of Kapur, Mashashalu, Masesyla, which
is wanting in this inscription, is supplied from a parallel
inscription.
* The Castle of Usirmarî-Miamon was “on the mountain of the
horn of the world,” which induces me to believe that we must
seek its site on the borders of the Libyan desert. The royal
title entering into its name being liable to change with
every reign, it is possible that we have an earlier
reference to this stronghold in a mutilated passage of the
Athribis Stele, which relates to the campaigns of Mînephtah;
it must have commanded one of the most frequented routes
leading to the oasis of Amon.
From a photograph by Beato.
Two thousand and seventy-five Libyans were left upon the ground that day, two thousand and fifty-two perished in other engagements, while two thousand and thirty-two, both male and female, were made prisoners. These were almost irreparable losses for a people of necessarily small numbers, and if we add the number of those who had succumbed in the disaster of six years before, we can readily realise how discouraged the invaders must have been, and how little likely they were to try the fortune of war once more. Their power dwindled and vanished almost as quickly as it had arisen; the provisional cohesion given to their forces by a few ambitious chiefs broke up after their repeated defeats, and the rudiments of an empire which had struck terror into the Pharaohs, resolved itself into its primitive elements, a number of tribes scattered over the desert. They were driven back beyond the Libyan mountains; fortresses* guarded the routes they had previously followed, and they were obliged henceforward to renounce any hope of an invasion en masse, and to content themselves with a few raiding expeditions into the fertile plain of the Delta, where they had formerly found a transitory halting-place. Counter-raids organised by the local troops or by the mercenaries who garrisoned the principal towns in the neighbourhood of Memphis—Hermopolis and Thinisl—inflicted punishment upon them when they became too audacious. Their tribes, henceforward, as far as Egypt was concerned, formed a kind of reserve from which the Pharaoh could raise soldiers every year, and draw sufficient materials to bring his army up to fighting strength when internal revolt or an invasion from without called for military activity.
* The Great Harris Papyrus speaks of fortifications
erected in the towns of Anhûri-Shû, possibly Thinis, and of
Thot, possibly Hermopolis, in order to repel the tribes of
the Tihonu who were ceaselessly harassing the frontier.