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14 War and Trade with the Pharaohs
Indeed, the idea of leading a military expedition had probably never
entered Weni’s head before that fateful day, when King Pepi I com-
manded him to launch a campaign against rebellious Asiatic ‘sand-dwell-
ers’ – the Egyptian term for people living on the southern Levantine sea coast, who were blocking Egyptian ships from stopping in the natural
harbours close to their fortified settlements. As reported in his autobiography, inscribed in his tomb at Abydos, Weni performed his royal duty admirably. His first step was to assemble an army of tens of thousands, gathered from across Egypt, as well as Nubian mercenaries from different regions – Yam, Wawat, Kaau – the Medjay-Nubians of the Eastern
Desert, and Tjemehu-Libyans from the Western Desert. This was nor-
mal practice in the Old Kingdom because Egypt had no standing army:
troops were called up as needed, their service treated as a form of taxation. Once assembled, the army was led by trusted royal advisors, men
(like Weni) that the king could happily let wander through his domain
with a huge, armed force. Loyalty and organizational experience were the main requisites for the job.
Weni led his army eastwards in the name of the king, followed on the
march by an odd assortment of nobles: royal seal-bearers, palace officials, the chieftains and mayors of Upper and Lower Egypt, chief district officials, and the chief priests of Upper and Lower Egypt. In his account, Weni is quick to note that none among his troops seized a loaf of bread or stole sandals from a fellow traveller, and that no one took cloth from any town along the way. He also thought it worth mentioning that no soldier under his command took a goat from another person. Naturally, this implies that such events did occur during campaigns led by less trustworthy and able leaders (though you’d think that the guy with the extra goat would be easy to spot). There’s no detail in Weni’s account about the specific organization of his fighting force, and, owing to the general lack of military organization in the Old Kingdom, there’s little terminology to aid a reconstruction.
Troops were placed into battalions called tjeset, and military leaders were called overseers of the army ( imy-ra mesha). There were also army scribes, who accompanied campaigns.
Despite Weni’s lack of military training, his missions were successful.
In his own words, he ‘ravaged’ and ‘flattened’ the land of the sand- dwellers, sacked their fortified settlements, cut down their figs and vines, burned down their homes, slew tens of thousands of their troops, and dragged
many back to Egypt as captives. Of course, this is exactly what King Pepi I had hoped would happen, and upon Weni’s return, the king praised the
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Building Foreign Relations (and Pyramids) 15
newly-minted war hero for his excellent leadership. So successful was Weni that the king sent him to lead the troops five times in total – effectively whenever the Asiatic ‘sand-dwellers’ were causing trouble. One particularly noteworthy event occurred at ‘the land of the Nose of the Gazelle’s Head’ –
an unknown location, though perhaps to be equated with the hill of Jaffa in the southern Levant – where Egypt’s enemies had gathered. Weni marched
half his troops by land, and sailed the other half north of the enemy position along the Levantine coast. Catching the Asiatics in a pincer movement, the Egyptian army slaughtered each and every one of them. Under Pepi’s successor, King Merenre, Weni continued his career, acting as a chamberlain and sandal-bearer at the palace, roles that also involved watch and guard duties; though an unexpected move, Weni’s role as war leader had a lasting influence on his career. He was a military man before military men existed.
Old and Middle Kingdom Military Technology
Just as Weni doesn’t mention the organization of his army, he also fails to mention what weapons they carried. Nevertheless, as the technology of
war changed little between the Old Kingdom and the close of the Second
Intermediate Period, 1,000 years later, we can make some educated guesses.
For certain, there were archers among Weni’s troops. The earliest depiction of archers on the march dates to the 4th Dynasty and shows a row of men, armed with bows; this was originally part of the decoration within the mortuary complex of either King Khufu or King Khafre, the builders of
Egypt’s two largest pyramids at Giza. The bows they carry – known as self bows – remained in use until the New Kingdom, and consisted of simple
wooden staves with gut string wound around the ends; they probably had a maximum range of around 190 m. Arrowheads were often made from flint,
bone, ebony, and, from the late Middle Kingdom, bronze.
Other troops among Weni’s army would have been armed with stone
daggers and maces of differing shapes. Axes too had stone blades. Two types of axes were used by Egypt’s troops; one form had a semicircular head, tied by cords, which were fed and tied through holes made in the blade. A second type had a long blade, with a flaring, curved edge. Although some copper daggers and axes are known from the Old Kingdom, they were not the norm.
Before the New Kingdom, soldiers didn’t wear body armour or helmets,
but did carry shields made from cowhides stretched over wooden frames.
Middle Kingdom soldiers did, however, wear leather straps, crossed across the body for protection. The only other technological development, from War and Trade with the Pharaohs.indd 15
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16 War and Trade with the Pharaohs
a military perspective at least, were siege ladders, as shown in the late Old Kingdom tomb of Inti at Deshasheh, where Egyptians attack a fortress in the Levant.
Sieges in the Southern Levant
Having enjoyed his adventures, let’s leave Weni now and take a look at the wider picture, picking up where we left off at the end of the previous chapter. Following the Egyptian withdrawal from the southern Levant at the end of the Early Dynastic Period, the local population were left to their own devices. Now cultivating crops with irrigation systems (as opposed to the dry-farming techniques used earlier), and with a developed bureaucracy and increasing social stratification, the region’s towns transformed into fortified city-states, some on the sites of the earlier Egyptian colonies, including at Egypt’s abandoned headquarters, Tell es-Sakan.
Since the Egyptians now traded directly with cities in the northern Levant, it had become normal for them to sail there, stopping at key points along the Levantine coastline and bringing them into contact with the local city-states and Asiatic ‘sand-dwellers’ that lived on the sandy shores (as mentioned by Weni). The land route across northern Sinai into the Levant – known as
the Ways of Horus – did continue to be used, but it’s impossible to know how often. Whatever the case may be, the route was monitored, enabling
the Egyptians to control the movement of people. Heknikhnum, who lived
during the 5th Dynasty, was an overseer of the Ways of Horus, and it was probably there that King Sneferu of the 4th Dynasty built the ‘Wall of the North,’ a fortress known only from textual sources.
Due to the reduced need for interaction, few Egyptian objects are found in the southern Levant during the Old Kingdom, and few objects of southern Levantine origin are known in Egypt. (A palace at Megiddo, built using Egyptian techniques, may suggest that Egyptian architects were active there, however.) The two regions mainly came into contact whenever Egypt’s trading interests were threatened, leading to campaigns being launched under nobles like Weni; the Egyptians had no interest in controlling the Levant, they simply wanted to ensure the continued flow of luxury goods.
Whenever problems in the southern Levant arose, it led to
an Egyptian
assault on one (or more) of the region’s fortified city-states. A depiction of a siege in the late Old Kingdom tomb of Inti at Deshasheh seems to show such an attack. Egyptians armed with axes chop at Asiatics, who raise their arms in terror. Asiatics fall from the city walls, multiple arrows piercing War and Trade with the Pharaohs.indd 16
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Building Foreign Relations (and Pyramids) 17
their bodies. Meanwhile, some Egyptians enter the city by climbing a siege ladder, while others use stakes to undermine the wall’s foundations. Within the city, Egyptians hack at their enemies. Women and children search for a place to hide. The enemy chief, upon his throne, wonders what to do
next. Outside, Asiatic prisoners, including children, are led away from the city, each tied together in a row, the adults’ hands bound in excruciating positions. The Saqqara tomb of Kaemheset also shows the siege of a city, most probably in the Levant. Here, a wheeled siege ladder has been pushed against the city walls, and is being climbed by soldiers. Others undermine the foundations. Within the city, animals stand in rows, near men, women, and children.
The Sinai Peninsula and the Port of Ayn Soukhna
During the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians started to mine turquoise in southern Sinai. Their main source was at Wadi Maghara, known to the Egyptians as ‘the Terrace of Turquoise,’ where they also smelted copper on a small scale (and left carvings of the pharaoh smiting foreigners). Another major source was Serabit el-Khadim, though this was only extensively exploited in later periods. From the 4th Dynasty, and perhaps even earlier, the Egyptians used boats to transport their mined turquoise and copper ore from the Sinai port of Abu Zenima across the Gulf of Suez to Ayn Soukhna, from where it would be carried to the Nile Valley. Powered by sails and oars, and travelling between 3-4 knots in speed, these boats took around 14-18 hours to make the roughly 100 km journey, and when not in use, were dismantled and stored in rock cut galleries at Ayn Soukhna.
These Egyptian mining operations occasionally encountered dangerous
nomads. So, to protect their ships at Abu Zenima from such troublemak-
ers, the Egyptians built a fortress at nearby Ras Budran (though this was destroyed at the end of the 6th Dynasty). A man more aware than most
of the Sinai’s dangers was Pepinakht (called Heqaib), who lived in Aswan during the 6th Dynasty and held the title overseer of foreigners. He was also in charge of bringing the products of foreign lands to the king (and in later periods was treated like a saint – quite the promotion). The story goes that King Pepi II sent Pepinakht to Sinai to retrieve the body of Ankhti, another overseer of foreigners, who had been killed, along with his team, by Asiatics and sand-dwellers, while they were constructing boats to sail to the land of Punt – a major source of incense and luxury goods somewhere south of Egypt (see below). As well as having to retrieve Ankhti’s body, Pepinakht War and Trade with the Pharaohs.indd 17
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was commanded to deal with the murderers, so he duly left for the Sinai with an army, and successfully killed or drove away his enemies.
Byblos and the Northern Levant
With the shift to the maritime trade route at the end of the Predynastic Period, the city of Byblos in the northern Levant became Egypt’s main trading partner in the region; by boat, the journey from the Delta to Byblos took between seven to twenty days, and required nightly stops at natural harbours along the Levantine seacoast. Upon arrival at Byblos, the Egyptians would have entered a prosperous fortified city (it even had an early sewer network), its houses built around a spring, and there, would have traded their goods for timber, oil, resins, and wine to bring back home. They may also have visited the city’s main temple; this was dedicated to Baalat-Gebal, ‘The Lady of Byblos,’ who was depicted in the same manner as the Egyptian goddesses Isis and Hathor – testament to Byblos’ close ties with Egypt; in the late Old Kingdom, Egyptian stone vessels were given to this temple either as royal gifts or by the local elite.
Under King Sneferu, at the start of the 4th Dynasty, the Egyptians
brought forty shiploads of cedar from Byblos, while Khufu, Sneferu’s son, had funerary boats, constructed from Lebanese cedar, buried beside his pyramid at Giza. Royal funerary temples, such as those of King Sahure at Abu Sir and Unas at Saqqara, also included scenes of boats returning from the Levant – most probably from Byblos. In the Sahure scenes, the Egyptian
crew is accompanied by Asiatics – seemingly dignitaries and their families
– who shout ‘praise to you, Sahure, god of the living, we see your beauty!’1
Interestingly, some of the Egyptians on board are labelled as ‘interpreters.’
One tomb lintel in the Khufu pyramid cemetery is inscribed for ‘the man of Byblos, Wentjet,’ suggesting that people from Byblos settled in Egypt during the Old Kingdom.
A 6th Dynasty official named Iny, who held the intriguing title, seal-
bearer of the god of the two big ships, left an account of his journeys to the northern Levant under different kings in his tomb autobiography. After being selected by King Pepi I to undertake these foreign missions, Iny relates that he travelled four times to the regions of Amaau, Khenty-she (probably Lebanon), and a place called Pawes[...], bringing silver and other goods back to the palace. Next, under King Merenre, he led three boats to Byblos, where he received lapis lazuli, lead/tin, silver, oil, and other commodities.
Upon Iny’s return, the king rewarded him with gold. Under King Pepi II, War and Trade with the Pharaohs.indd 18
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Iny travelled once again to Khenty-she, arriving back in Egypt with his own boat and a number of cargo ships, loaded with silver, and Asiatic men and women (no doubt to be used as slaves). As reward, Pepi II allowed Iny to sit near him when eating at court.
Ebla (Tell Mardikh) is another city in the northern Levant that might have been in contact with Egypt during the Old Kingdom; this was an important trading centre for lapis lazuli and silver thanks to its position at the end of the caravan route from Badakhshan in modern Afghanistan, a major source of lapis lazuli. Controlling a large territory, and enjoying diplomatic relations with other city-states in the region, the rulers of Ebla controlled the onward flow of lapis lazuli; indeed, in what was most probably a royal treasury in one of the city’s palaces, archaeologists discovered 22 kg of raw lapis lazuli, as well as Old Kingdom vessels of a type used to transport prestige items. Such vessels might have reached Ebla through middlemen at Byblos or through direct contact with Egypt. Beyond Ebla, a jar found at Giza, but made in northern Syria or southern Anatolia, also suggests that oils, resins, or perfumes were imported from that region, emphasizing Egypt long-distance contacts.
Early Relations with Crete
Although there’s only limited evidence, it seems that Egypt had estab-
lished contact with Crete by around 2600 BCE. Vessels, seemingly copying Egyptian originals, have been found at Mesara in southern Crete, and a piece of hippo tusk, potentially from Egypt, was discovered at Knossos. Egyptian stone vessels, made during the Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods, have also been found at Knossos; these could have reached the island during the Old Kingdom, but if sent earlier, would push the date of Egypt’s first interactions with Crete back further. Crete’s involvement in international trade reduced towards the end of the Old Kingdom, probably due to the wider
climatic changes that were affecting the whole of the Near East.
Egyptians in Lower Nubia, and Nubians in Egypt
Having explored Egypt’s relations with the east, let’s now turn our attention south. Founded under King Khafre during the 4th Dynasty, seemingly on top of an A-Group site 500 years after it had been abandoned, the Old Kingdom town at Buhen was well-located beside the Nile’s Second Cataract.
No other settlements stood near
by – in fact, no one had lived in the region since the disappearance of the A-Group. Consequently, the town enjoyed
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great vistas over the surrounding landscape: an empty space that stretched all the way back to the First Cataract, broken only by overgrown tamarisk and acacia, a handy source of wood for the Egyptians. While Khafre’s pyramid – the second largest in Egypt – was being erected 850 km north, the Egyptians at Buhen lived on the very edge of Egyptian control, far from the action. You get the feeling that many probably didn’t want to be there: there’s no evidence for Egyptian graves in the area, suggesting that people either moved away before death, or in death were brought back to Egypt.
But whatever their opinion of the place, the townspeople still had jobs to do. Within the great enclosure wall that surrounded the settlement and controlled access stood storage areas, residences, and administrative and cult buildings. The Egyptians at Buhen played a key role in the trade network with Upper Nubia, further south, and also processed gold, melting it down, and pouring it into ingot moulds, before sending it north. At the same time, the Egyptians sent out patrols to monitor any movement in the town’s vicinity; the State clearly saw Lower Nubia as a strategic buffer zone between themselves and Upper Nubia. And if the need for a campaign south arose, Buhen was an excellent launch pad.
Yet Nubians did pass north of Buhen and make their way into Egypt.
Elephantine, in the first half of the Old Kingdom, continued to develop as a border town, where Egyptians and Nubians lived and interacted,
even though it was from there that the Egyptians had launched many of
the campaigns that had decimated the A-Group. The Nubians already liv-
ing at Elephantine were probably the descendants of A-Group settlers that had moved there before the loss of their culture, but after the unification of Egypt; these individuals may have acted as interpreters for Egyptian campaigns and expeditions during the Old Kingdom. As Lower Nubia was
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