8

Hunting and Warfare:The

Ritualisation of Military Violence in
Ancient Egypt
j oh n c. d AR n e ll

Slaughter and Celebration in a Nilotic Context

Although the culture of ancient Egypt was centred on the Nile Valley,
the Upper Egyptian proto-kingdom (c. 3250–3100 BC E ) out of which
dynastic Egypt developed was itself the child of interactions between
desert dwelling groups and their Nilotic counterparts during the fifth and
fourth millennia BC E. Already during the Naqada I period (c. 4000–3500
B CE ) – the first of a continuous sequence of cultural phases leading
directly to the First Dynasty and the birth of the unified Egyptian
state – representations of human conflict appear as the ritually inter-
preted counterparts to activities within and involving the animal world.
Iconographic allusions to military activity more frequently reference the
results of warfare, even the ritualised presentation of captives, than
dwelling upon any specifics of the conflict itself.
This early ritualisation of warfare, and its depiction, recurs throughout
the iconography and literary descriptions of the roughly three millennia
of the ‘pharaonic’ state. Even a hymnic royal text of the late second
millennium BCE could blithely reference the public display of trophies of
bloody conflict as counterparts of animal sacrifice in the context of the
ritual setting that more often than not masks the reality of ancient
Egyptian warfare: ‘How pleasant is your going forth to Thebes, / your
chariot bending from the severed hands, / foreign chiefs pinioned bird-
like before you’. The description of the return of the conquering phar-
aonic hero in the Ramesside text P. Anastasi II 5, 3–4 reveals the often
fleeting recognition of violence and gore in Egyptian texts and images,
almost always represented as the messy but necessary prelude to
a resulting celebration of the militarily ensured triumph of Nilotic
order over foreign chaos.

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 john c. d A rnell

Hunting and Warfare

During the fourth millennium BC E Upper Egyptian iconography reveals an
equation of warfare and hunting. A canid predator (more rarely a feline) may
follow groups of animals (or a single object of prey) and represent human
agency; a depiction of the animal object of human ritual hunting, beset by
canids, may balance an image of the zoomorphic royal domination of
a human enemy, the latter also receiving the label of an addax, a symbol of
sacrifice.1 Scenes of complex rituals incorporating hunting and sacrifice from
the end of the Naqada II period (in both Egypt and Nubia, c. 3250 BCE )
include images of human conflict and its results, and a later pharaonic
artist could describe his competence in terms of the paired icons of
hunting and
warfare.2 Such juxtapositions appear on the monuments of New Kingdom
Egypt – on the towers of the first pylon of the mortuary temple of Ramesses
III (c. 1184–1153 BCE ) at Medinet Habu, on the west bank of ancient Thebes,
scenes of the ruler smiting his enemies on the front (east) faces of the
towers
have counterparts in a scene of military activity on the back of the north
tower, and a scene of the king hunting bulls on the back of the south tower.
Ritualised hunting and capture of certain desert game by elite members of
Predynastic society, and the return of those animals for proper sacrifice in
a Nilotic setting, with depiction of those activities on both the desert rock
surfaces and on the bodies of some of the participants, enacted a process of
Niloticisation of the desert.3 The activities of hunting and sacrifice, many
focusing on annual festivals, imposed ritual order on the natural world,
symbolically expanding the ordered cosmos. The earliest Egyptian depictions
of human conflict insert subjugated foes into the role of sacrificial animal,

1 Stan Hendrickx, ‘The Dog, the Lycaon Pictus, and Order over Chaos in Predynastic
Egypt’, in K. Kroeper, M. Chlodnicki and M. Kobusiewicz (eds.), Archaeology of Early
Northeastern Africa, Studies in African Archaeology 9 (Poznan: Poznan Archaeological
Museum, 2006), pp. 728, 736–9; John Coleman Darnell, ‘The Wadi of the Horus Qa-a:
A Tableau of Royal Ritual Power in the Theban Western Desert’, in R. F. Friedman and
P. N. Fiske (eds.), Egypt at its Origins 3, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 205 (Leuven:
Peeters, 2011), pp. 1151–93; Gwenola Graff, Les Peintures sur vases de Nagada I – Nagada II:
nouvelle approche sémiologique de l’iconographie prédynastique, Egyptian Prehistory
Monographs 6 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009), pp. 91–112.
2 Bruce Beyer Williams and Thomas J. Logan, with William J. Murnane, ‘The
Metropolitan Museum Knife Handle and Aspects of Pharaonic Imagery before
Narmer’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 46.2 (1987), 245–85; Winfried Barta, Das
Selbstzeugnis eines altägyptischen Künstlers (Stele Louvre C 14) (Berlin: Verlag Bruno
Hessling, 1970), pp. 104–20.
3 John Coleman Darnell, ‘Homo Pictus and Painted Men: Depictions and Intimations of
Humans in the Rock Art of the Theban Western Desert’, in D. Huyge and F. van Noten
(eds.), ‘Whatever Happened to the People?’ Humans and Anthropomorphs in the Rock Art of
Northern Africa (Brussels: Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences, 2018), pp. 397–418.

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 The Ritualisation of Military Violence in Ancient Egypt

providing the template for much of the imagery, iconography and later
literature of pharaonic warfare. As late as the New Kingdom, major military
campaigns could coincide with hunting expeditions. At the dawn of the New
Kingdom an association of a hunting expedition with military activity appears
to be in place, a grouping repeated throughout the first half of the
Eighteenth Dynasty.4 So Thutmosis I (c. 1504–1492 B CE ) in northern Syria
fought a battle with human enemies from Mitanni (northern Mesopotamia)
and hunted elephants in Niye; Thutmosis III (c. 1479–1425 BCE ) on northern
campaign repeated the hunting of elephants in Niye, and added as
an aside to a campaign in Nubia the hunt of rhinoceros.

Combat in Rituals and Festivals

Combat rituals celebrating the Egyptian subjugation of foreigners were
associated with a number of religious festivals and celebrations, appearing
in the festival cycle in evidence already during the late Predynastic period
and later including the Jubilee (reaffirmation of royal power after ideally
thirty years on the throne) and the New Kingdom durbar celebrations.5 With
the reign of Amenhotep II (c. 1427–1400 BCE), and the replacement of the
routine military campaigning of his father Thutmosis III with a more stable
satellite state in Nubia and regular diplomatic relations with the ancient
Near East,
scenes of ritualised foreign presentation of tribute appear as an icon of
pharaonic universalism.6 Just as the image of the sporting king replaced the
truly militarily active ruler of the earlier Eighteenth Dynasty, so displays
of competitive physical prowess appear in the form of sporting matches
accom- panying festivals,7 including those of foreign tribute.

4 Howard Carter, ‘Report on the Tomb of Zeser-Ka-Ra Amen-hetep I, Discovered by the

Earl of Carnarvon in 1914’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 3 (1916), pl. 21, no. 4;
Kurt Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Urkunden des ägyptischens Altertums IV
(Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1906–9), pp. 103–5, 893, ll. 14–17; Wolfgang Helck, Urkunden der 18.
Dynastie, Urkunden des ägyptischen Altertums IV (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1955–8),
p. 1246, l. 3, and p. 1248, ll. 1–13.
5 Marc Leblanc, ‘“In Accordance with the Documents of Ancient Times”: The Origins,
Development, and Significance of the Ancient Egyptian Sed-Festival (Jubilee Festival)’,
unpublished PhD thesis, Yale University, 2011, 458–509.
6 Diamantis Panagiotopoulos, ‘Foreigners in Egypt in the Time of Hatshepsut and
Thutmose III’, in E. H. Cline and D. O’Connor (eds.), Thutmose III: A New
Biography (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), pp. 377–89, 400–1.
7 Andrea Gnirs and Antonio Loprieno, ‘Krieg und Literatur’, in R. Gundlach and C. Vogel
(eds.), Militärgeschichte des pharaonischen Ägypten: Altägypten und seine Nachbarkulturen im
Spiegel aktueller Forschung, Krieg in der Geschichte 34 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh,
2009), pp. 270–9; Wolfgang Decker, ‘Sport und Fest im alten Ägypten’, in C. Ulf (ed.),
Ideologie – Sport – Aussenseiter. Aktuelle Aspekte einer Beschäftigung mit der antiken

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 john c. d A rnell

In scenes of wrestling and stick fighting from the Ramesside period,

Egyptian soldiers fight foreigners (perhaps themselves in Egyptian service,
performing a role in non-lethal combat); the speeches recorded for the
Egyptian participants in the matches are in keeping with the non-lethal
nature of the activities, and add a light-hearted aspect to the engagements. 8
Maintaining an association of ritual animal sacrifice and the subjugation of
foreigners within later, New Kingdom contexts, fattened cattle for sacrifice
could wear between their horns representations of the heads of foreign
enemies, small hands attached to the tips of the arm-like horns, the sacrifice
of the bovid becoming the symbolic elimination of an icon of foreign power.9
In depictions of celebration of Egyptian domination of foreign regions – so in
both the durbar scenes of Tutankhamun’s (c. 1336–1327 BC E) viceroy of Nubia,
and in Horemheb’s (c. 1323–1295 BCE ) depiction of the celebrations surround-
ing the victorious return of a successful Egyptian campaign into Nubia –
foreign prisoners may contrast with presumably Egyptianised members of
that same foreign region taking prominent roles in the celebration of
Egyptian victory and domination.
More physically violent, the punishment of foreign enemies may appear
as a magical mirroring in the punishment of Egyptian malefactors, with
the forks of a pillory post terminating in the heads of foreign enemies.
Similarly, on execration figurines, names of foreign enemies and Egyptian
rebels and criminals may appear, evidence of the essential equation of all
outside the social norm.10 No Egyptian religious texts describe any concept
of innate evil within humans or the cosmos, although people are capable of
wickedness;11

Gesellschaft, Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft Sonderheft 108 (Innsbruck:

Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, 2000), pp. 111–45.
8 John Coleman Darnell and Colleen Manassa, Tutankhamun’s Armies: Battle and Conquest
during Ancient Egypt’s 18th Dynasty (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007), pp. 208–9, 272, nn. 102–7.
9 Jacques Leclant, ‘La “Mascarde” des boeufs gras et le triomphe de l’Égypte’, MDAI(K) 14
(1956), 128–45; Anthony J. Spalinger, ‘Chauvinism in the First Intermediate Period’, in
H. Vymazalová and M. Bartá (eds.), Chronology and Archaeology in Ancient Egypt (The Third
Millennium B.C.) (Prague: Czech Institute of Egyptology/Karolinum Press, 2008), p. 252.
10 Linda Borrmann, ‘Form Follows Function: der Zeichencharakter der altägyptischen
Ächtungsfiguren’, in G. Neunert, A. Verbovsek and K. Gabler (eds.), Bild: Ästhetik
– Medium – Kommunikation, Göttinger Orientforschungen Ägypten 58 (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2014), pp. 103–17; Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert, Abseits von Ma‘at:
Fallstudien zu Aussenseitern im Alten Ägypten, Wahrnehmungen und Spuren
Altägyptens 1 (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2005).
11 Erik Hornung, Der ägyptische Mythos von der Himmelskuh: eine Ätiologie des
Unvollkommenen, 3rd edn, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 46 (Freiburg and Göttingen:
Universitätsverlag Freiburg and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), pp. 90–5;
Jan Assmann, Ma’at: Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im alten Ägypten (Munich:
C. H. Beck, 1990), pp. 174–95; Mpay Kemboly, The Question of Evil in Ancient Egypt,
Egyptology 12 (London: Golden House Publications, 2010).

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 The Ritualisation of Military Violence in Ancient Egypt

combat is thus a means of maintaining an equilibrium and expanding the

realm of ultimate order – Egypt – against the outer chaos – the region on the
edge of which foreign lands teeter. Textually, enemies appear as overwhel-
mingly bad, animalistic and chaotic, yet their natures and the actions taken
against them usually appear in a formalised language employing a limited
number of generalising terms.12 Inscriptions of soldiers stress more martial
prowess and the capture of prisoners than any overt bloodlust.
Rituals of foreign execration and criminal execution may appear dur-
ing the Early Dynastic period, with the apparent beheading of enemies, 13
perhaps subsequent to a smiting ritual. At the Middle Kingdom Egyptian
fortress of Mirgissa, on the Second Cataract in Nubia, a beheaded body,
buried in sand with crucibles to represent the fiery punishment of the
damned, broken ritual vessels, and execration figures, appears to repre-
sent the use of an actual execution within the context of magical
practice.14 The king might threaten a foreign ruler with death by fire
(attested to by rebels), perhaps related to the burning of execration
figures.15 The destruction of a donkey, a typhonic animal symbolising
chaotic forces and opposition to cosmic order, could also represent the
control of enemies both human and more elemental.16 Even in the
standardised depictions of bound foreigners, the ropes tortuously
wrapped around the captives’ upper arms are perhaps more evidence
of enemies compared to sacrificial birds than representations of actual

12 Detlef Franke, ‘Schlagworte: Über den Umgang mit Gegnern in Memorialtexten des
Mittleren Reiches’, in H. Felber (ed.), Feinde und Aufrührer: Konzepte von Gegnerschaft in
ägyptischen Texten besonders des Mittleren Reiches, Abhandlungen der Sächsischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, phil.-hist. Klasse 78/5 (Leipzig: Verlag der
Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 2005), pp. 89–110.
13 Amaury Pétigny, ‘Le Châtiment des rois rebelles à Memphis dans la seconde moitié du
Ier millénaire av. J.-C.’, in L. Bares, F. Coppens and K. Smoláriková (eds.), Egypt in
Transition: Social and Religious Development of Egypt in the First Millennium BCE
(Prague: Karolinum Press, 2010), pp. 343–53; X. Droux, ‘Une representation de
prisonniers décapités en provenance de Hiérakonpolis’, Bulletin de la Société
d’Égyptologie de Genève 27 (2005–7), 33–42.
14 Robert Kriech Ritner, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice (Chicago:
Oriental Institute, University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 153–80.
15 Kyle van Leer, ‘A Textual Analysis and Commentary on the Tod Inscription of Sesostris
I’, unpublished senior essay, Yale College, 2013, 68–79.
16 Françoise Labrique, ‘“Transpercer l’âne” à Edfou’, in J. Quaegebeur (ed.), Ritual and
Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 55 (Leuven: Peeters,
1994), pp. 175–89; Dirk Huyge, ‘Detecting Magic in Rock Art: The Case of the Ancient
Egyptian “Malignant Ass”’, in H. Riemer et al. (eds.), Desert Animals in the Eastern
Sahara: Status, Economic Significance and Cultural Refiection in Antiquity, Colloquium
Africanum 4 (Cologne: Heinrich Barth Institut, 2010), pp. 293–307.

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 john c. d A rnell

constraints, the latter attested in visual and textual references to mana-

cles and sticks bound to neck and wrists.17
The close association between ritual and warfare continues into the
New Kingdom, with cosmological concepts influencing how the
Egyptians displayed the results, if not practice, of warfare. Thutmosis
I suspended the body of a Nubian leader – killed by the Egyptian ruler
himself – from the prow of his vessel during his return to Egypt.
Hanging inverted, the corpse of the enemy suffers the inversion of the
damned so commonly depicted in the Netherworld Books of New
Kingdom Egypt; as the royal vessel appears about to sail over him, the
Nubian becomes a literal depiction of the defeated chaos serpent Apep,
eternally defeated and overridden by the bark of the triumphant solar
deity.18 Having personally killed seven rulers of Takhsy (northern Beqaa
Valley) by means of his mace, Amenhotep II – mirroring Thutmosis I –
suspended their inverted bodies from the prow of his royal falcon-bark;
six of the bodies eventually hung from the wall of Thebes, the seventh
from the wall of Napata in Nubia.19 A western Asiatic enemy ruler within
a cage suspended from the yardarm of an Egyptian vessel during the
reign of Tutankhamun evokes the imagery of ritualised fishing and
fowling,20 which could symbolise the subjugation of enemies both per-
sonal and cosmic within both royal and private spheres. Captives can also
appear as though strapped to the cab, yoke and horses of the royal
chariot, with others trailing behind on ropes, evoking functional

17 Hermann Junker, ‘Die Feinde auf dem Sockel der Chasechem-Statuen und die
Darstellung von geopferten Tieren’, in O. Firchow (ed.), Ägyptologische Studien
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1955), pp. 168–75; Renate Müller-Wollermann, Vergehen und
Strafen: zur Sanktionierung abweichenden Verhaltens im alten Ägypten, Probleme der
Ägyptologie 21 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 209–16.
18 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, p. 8, ll. 14–19, l. 5; Vivian Davies and Renée Friedman,
Egypt (London: British Museum Press, 1998), p. 110; Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian
Books of the Afterlife, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999),
pp. 38–9; John C. Darnell, The Enigmatic Netherworld Books of the Solar Osirian Unity:
Cryptographic Compositions in the Tombs of Tutankhamun, Ramesses VI, and Ramesses IX
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), pp. 209–16; Andrea Klug, Königliche Stelen
in der Zeit von Ahmose bis Amenophis III, Monumenta Aegyptiaca 8 (Brussels: Fondation
Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 2002), pp. 351–2.
19 Peter Beylage, Aufbau der königlichen Stelentexte, vom Beginn der 18. Dynastie bis zur
Amarnazeit, ÄAT 54 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002), pp. 267–8, 696–700; Klug,
Königliche Stelen, pp. 278–92.
20 Alfred Grimm, ‘Ein Käfig für einen Gefangenen in einem Ritual zur Vernichtung
von Feinden’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 73 (1987), 202–6; Alfred Grimm, ‘Der Tod
im Wasser: Rituelle Feindvernichtung und Hinrichtung durch Ertränken’, Studien
zur Altägyptischen Kultur 16 (1989), 111–19; Yvan Koenig, Magie et magiciens dans
l’Égypte ancienne (Paris: Pygmalion Editions, 1997), pp. 149–56.

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 The Ritualisation of Military Violence in Ancient Egypt

elements of the chariot – such as lynch pins – that could be carved in the
shape of the heads of foreign enemies.21

Icons of Power: The Ruler Smites his Enemies

and Tramples them Beneath his Soles
In place by the late Naqada II period, with harbingers during Naqada I,
and persisting into the Roman period, a scene of the ruler grasping a
kneeling enemy, or several foes, and raising a weapon – usually a mace – as
though about to smite what he grasps, serves as the principle icon of
victory.22 Originating in the discoidal and pear-shaped maces of the
Predynastic period, the pear-shaped mace survives as the most common
weapon symbolising royal domination through violent action. The image
of a single triumphant figure violently establishing order over his foes
represents a focus on the ruler
that develops during the Protodynastic period. The mace may early appear
as the disembodied representation of royal power, and a bow or a boat may
become a personified agent of domination, obviating the need for anthro-
pomorphic representations of the early ruler. 23 Continuing the association of
warfare and hunting, a ruler may smite a theriomorphic manifestation of
chaos in the same manner as that in which he smites the depiction of a human
enemy.24
A depiction of a male figure wielding a mace above the head of
a bound prisoner (or group of prisoners) recognisably appears at the
end of the Naqada II period (as a small vignette within a larger scene of

21 Abdel-Hamid Zayed, ‘Une representation inédite des campagnes d’Aménophis II’, in

P. Posener-Kriéger (ed.), Mélanges Gamal Eddin Mokhtar I, Bibliothèque d’Études 87/1
(Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1985), pp. 5–17, pls. 1–2; Ritner,
Mechanics, pp. 122–5; Darnell and Manassa, Tutankhamun’s Armies, p. 242, n. 177.
22 Emma Swan Hall, Pharaoh Smites His Enemies (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1986);
Caleb R. Hamilton, ‘Conflict in the Iconography of the Protodynastic and Early
Dynastic Periods’, in R. Landgráfová and J. Mynárová (eds.), Rich and Great: Studies
in Honour of Anthony J. Spalinger on the Occasion of his 70th Feast of Thoth (Prague:
Carolinum Press, 2016), pp. 99–113.
23 John Coleman Darnell, Theban Desert Road Survey II: The Rock Shrine of Pahu, Gebel
Akhenaton, and Other Rock Inscriptions from the Western Hinterland of Qamûla, Yale
Egyptological Publications 1 (New Haven, CT: Yale Egyptological Institute, 2013),
pp. 122–3; Stan Hendrickx et al., ‘Late Predynastic/Early Dynastic Rock Art
Scenes of Barbary Sheep Hunting from Egypt’s Western Desert. From
Capturing Wild Animals to the “Women of the Acacia House”’, in H. Riemer
et al. (eds), Desert Animals in the Eastern Sahara: Status, Economic Significance and
Cultural Refiection in Antiquity (Cologne: Heinrich Barth Institut, 2010), pp. 219–20;
Darnell, ‘Wadi of the Horus Qa-a’, p. 1173.
24 Nicholas Reeves, The Complete Tutankhamun (London: Thames & Hudson, 1990),
pp. 176–7.

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 john c. d A rnell

ritual events), and again during Naqada III (as a more prominent element
within a depiction of what may be a ritual celebration of the aftermath
of a conflict).25 In both of those examples the event occurs outside of battle,
within a ritual context, and the same striking pose could appear in other
rituals as a consecratory gesture.26 Evidence from bodies of soldiers
dating to the early Twelfth Dynasty suggests that such a blow was
indeed given as a coup de grâce to hopelessly wounded combatants, and
at least some versions of the smiting scene may have been acted out
within a ritual setting.27 The reigns of both Akhenaton and Merneptah
indeed provide evidence for the revelation of royal victory going beyond
the display of corpses to the otherwise rarely attested use of impalement
of defeated enemy leaders.
According to the texts and iconography of pharaonic power, Egyptian
deities both sanctioned warfare and influenced the Egyptians’ martial
success. By the New Kingdom the Egyptian ruler clearly derives his
authority to make war from the gods, who present him with
a weapon – usually a sickle sword – while the king adopts the smiting
pose; this presentation is common in iconography, and is even attested to
as the subject of a dream appearance of the god Ptah. The divine ruler
himself would also trample enemies beneath his feet. The bases of
statues, the pavements of ritual structures and palaces, and the soles of
sandals could bear images of bound enemies, and the handle of a royal
sceptre might take the form of an enemy bent in the back-breaking pose
of the object of the king’s wrath in the gesture of waf-khasout, ‘bending
back the foreign lands’.28

25 Williams and Logan, ‘Metropolitan Museum Knife Handle’, 245–85; John

Coleman Darnell, et al., Theban Desert Road Survey in the Egyptian Western Desert 1:
Gebel Tjauti Rock Inscriptions 1–45 and Wadi el-Hôl Rock Inscriptions 1–45, Oriental
Institute Publications 119 (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago,
2002), p. 16.
26 Arno Egberts, In Quest of Meaning: A Study of the Ancient Egyptian Rites of Consecrating the
Meret-Chests and Driving the Calves 1, Egyptologische Uitgaven 8/1 (Leiden: Nederlands
Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1995), pp. 54–7.
27 Carola Vogel, ‘Fallen Heroes? Winlock’s “Slain Soldiers” Reconsidered’, Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 89 (2003), 239–45; Alan R. Schulman, Ceremonial Execution and
Public Rewards: Some Historical Scenes on New Kingdom Private Stelae, Orbis Biblicus et
Orientalis 75 (Leuven: Peeters, 1988); Kerry Muhlestein, Violence in the Service of Order:
The Religious Framework for Sanctioned Killing in Ancient Egypt, BAR International Series
2299 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011); Anthony J. Spalinger, Icons of Power: A Strategy of
Reinterpretation (Prague: Karolinum Press, 2011), pp. 10, 90–119.
28 Ritner, Mechanics, pp. 119–36; Darnell and Manassa, Tutankhamun’s Armies, p. 254,
n. 124.

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 The Ritualisation of Military Violence in Ancient Egypt

Combat in Earnest
Although evidence for human conflict during a time of climatic change
is present in the form of ‘overkilled’ human remains from a Palaeolithic
cemetery at Gebel Sahaba in Nubia (at least 11,600 years ago), the
earliest continuous and iconographically informative evidence for the
imagery of human conflict begins in Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia
around the cusp of the fifth and fourth millennia BCE . Parallel to the
ritual equation of hunting and warfare, organised conflict in ancient
Egypt emphasised speed and manoeuvre over the clash of major oppos-
ing forces that would underpin hoplite battles of the second half of the
first millennium BCE . This general eschewing of shock tactics led to the
increased employment of mercenaries, particularly during later phases of
the Pharaonic period, with resulting implications for Egyptian society. 29
Nevertheless, military training could be violent itself, and may have
involved considerable exercise in hand-to-hand combat, along with the
development of the physical stamina necessary for rapid movement over
long distances.30 Scenes in the Middle Kingdom tomb of Baket at Beni
Hasan show what appear to be 220 different wrestling positions/holds,
in decoration that depicts military activity that involves the storming of
a fortified position.31
Both the pictorial evidence and human remains suggest that the
majority of injuries resulting from both projectile weapons and the
crushing blows of close combat were to the chest and abdomen.32
Although not referenced in any royal monument, conflicts both within
Egypt and on the periphery thereof could take the form of a monomachy

29 Colleen Manassa, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah: Grand Strategy in the 13th
Century BC, Yale Egyptological Studies 5 (New Haven, CT: Yale Egyptological Seminar,
2003), pp. 77–82; Dan’el Kahn and Oded Tammuz, ‘Egypt is Difficult to Enter: Invading
Egypt – a Game Plan (Seventh-Fourth Centuries BCE)’, Journal of the Society for the
Study of Egyptian Antiquities 35 (2008), 37–66.
30 Ricardo A. Caminos, Late-Egyptian Miscellanies, Brown Egyptological Studies 1
(London: Oxford University Press, 1954), pp. 91–5; Hartwig Altenmüller and
Ahmed M. Moussa, ‘Die Inschriften auf der Taharkastele von der Dahschurstrasse’,
Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 9 (1981), 57–84; Wolfgang Decker and Frank Förster,
‘Sahures tranierte Truppe. Sporthistorische Bemerkungen zu einem Relief aus der
Pyramidenanlage des ägyptischen Königs Sahure (2496–2483 v. Chr.)’, Nikephoros 24
(2011), 17–70.
31 Abdel Ghaffar Shedid, Die Felsgräber von Beni Hassan im Mittelägypten, Zaberns
Bildbände zur Archäologie 16 (Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1994), p.
31, figs. 43–5.
32 Gonzalo M. Sanchez, ‘A Neurosurgeon’s View of the Battle Reliefs of King Sety I:
Aspects of Neurological Importance’, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 37
(2000), 143–65.

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 john c. d A rnell

(duel) between champions. 33 Nevertheless, in scenes and laudatory texts,

the king ultimately battles directly against the enemy leader, all other
combat seemingly incidental. A victory hymn of Old Kingdom date
suggests that a truly successful campaign involved both defeat of the
enemy and the safe return of the Egyptian force. 34 No ancient Egyptian
source expresses reluctance to kill the enemy, although a scribal text (in
P. Lansing) suggests that Egyptian soldiers could be discomfited by care
for prisoners. Soldiers may have waded amongst the dead and dying,
dispatching the latter (in reality perhaps as the result of medical triage,
for which Papyrus Edwin Smith may be a surviving manual), but plunder
during the battle appears only in a negative light.
After the battle, the collection of booty is the source of long and mon-
umentally memorialised lists. Although dismemberment as deconstruction
of the damned appears throughout the New Kingdom Netherworld Books,
the only well-attested and sanctioned application of mutilation to an enemy
on the battlefield is the New Kingdom tradition of removing a hand from an
apparently deceased opponent as proof of a kill; a soldier might carry the
hands gruesomely transfixed on his spear.35 From their Libyan opponents,
Ramesside period Egyptian soldiers might similarly remove the phallus and
testicles, perhaps at once a reference to what for the Egyptians was the odd
appearance of the uncircumcised Libyans, and a graphically physical attesta-
tion of the defeat of enemies likened to the elimination of their ‘seed’. For
presentation of such trophies, a combatant might receive the ‘gold of
valour’. In addition to allowing for a tally of the enemy slain, the severed
body parts
could have formed part of a display of victory in Egypt. Texts make occa-
sional allusions to the painting of the body with the blood of enemies, but
the contexts are those of royal epithets and the symbolic toilet of the
personification of the city of Thebes as warrior goddess.36

33 David Klotz, ‘Emhab versus the tmrhtn: Monomachy and the Expulsion of the Hyksos’,
Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 39 (2010), 211–41; Bernard Mathieu, ‘Du conflit
archaïque au mythe osirien: pour une lecture socio-politique du mythe dans l’Égypte
pharaonique’, Droits et Cultures 71 (2016), 20, n. 76.
34 Kurt Sethe, Urkunden der Alten Reiches, 2nd edn (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche
Buchhandlung, 1933), vol. I, p. 103, l. 6–p. 104, l. 4.
35 Susanna Heinz, Die Feldzugsdarstellungen des Neuen Reiches: Eine Bildanalyse (Vienna:
Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001), p. 239.
36 Kenneth A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, Historical and Biographical 2 (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1979), p. 354, l. 5; Epigraphic Survey, Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak 3: The
Bubastite Portal, Oriental Institute Publications 74 (Chicago: Oriental Institute,
University of Chicago Press, 1954), pl. 16 C, l. 34.

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 The Ritualisation of Military Violence in Ancient Egypt

Egyptian military scenes do not often emphasise sufferings of the enemy

populace or punishment of the defeated, except in smiting scenes. The
reigns of Akhenaton and Merneptah provide evidence for the impaling of
enemy commanders – the former following a relatively small raid led by the
viceroy of Kush against an Eastern Desert group apparently threatening the
gold- mining regions, the latter following a large battle resulting from a
Libyan invasion of Egypt.37 The Egyptian idiom, ‘placed atop a stake’,
does not indicate whether living bodies or corpses were involved. The
treatment is
otherwise attested for Egyptian criminals, 38 and reveals – as do the earlier
execration texts – that all those outside of maat (cosmic order), both
Egyptians and foreigners, could expect similarly damning treatment. From
the reign of Ramesses III, depictions of the attempted land invasion by
elements of the ‘Sea Peoples’ attacking Egypt show the families of the
invaders, transported in great carts alongside the invading military force,
coming under attack by pharaonic troops.
Egyptian forces could employ food as a weapon, both during internal
Egyptian struggles and foreign campaigns. Devastation of foreign vegetation
probably provides the background to the trees appearing alongside foreign
animal resources on the Predynastic ‘Libyan Palette’, and appears again in the
iconography of Ramesside warfare, devastation of foreign landscapes corre-
sponding to the destruction of enemy fortifications.39 A Middle Kingdom
rock inscription from Nubia describes a scorched earth policy in which
an Egyptian military force burns both dwellings and food supplies of the
Nubian foe, part of a general royal approach. 40 The Nubian King Piye (c. 744–
714 BCE), during his subjugation of the northern portions of Egypt at the time
of the establishment of Twenty-fifth Dynasty hegemony, could bemoan the
plight of horses discovered in a besieged city, although this appears as part
of a royal reproach against an enemy ruler; the tribulations of the
human population receive no attention, as apparently they are perceived
as having

37 William J. Murnane, Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995),
pp. 101–3; Manassa, Great Karnak Inscription, p. 100.
38 Müller-Wollermann, Vergehen und Strafen, pp. 197–8.
39 Krzysztof M. Cialowicz, Les Palettes égyptiennes aux motifs zoomorphes et sans
décoration, Studies in Ancient Art and Civilization 3 (Cracow: Uniwersytet
Jagiellonski, 1991), pp. 56–7; Spalinger, Icons of Power, p. 63, n. 17 and p. 64, n. 3. See
Jacques Vandier, Mo‘alla, la tombe d’Ankhtifi et la tombe de Sébekhotep, Bibliothèque
d’Études 18 (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1950), pp. 220–5 for food
as a weapon in internal Egyptian conflicts.
40 Zbynek Zába, The Rock Inscriptions of Lower Nubia (Czechoslovak Concession) (Prague:
Universita Karlova, 1974), inscription no. 73; Christopher J. Eyre, ‘The Semna Stela:
Quotation, Genre, and Functions of Literature’, in S. Israelit-Groll (ed.), Studies in
Egyptology Presented to Miriam Lichtheim (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1990), pp. 134–65.

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 john c. d A rnell

brought it on themselves by opposing the victorious Piye and thus set

themselves against the cosmic order.

Transition of Foreigners from Agents and Objects

of Violence to Members of Society
Foreign acculturation could be the result of voluntary submission to the
Egyptian ruler and subsequent passing through the status of hem-servant –
a process that could involve participation in work details – a class from
which unacculturated foreigners remain separate.41 Passage through hem-
status as a means of Egyptianisation would also be the path of the properly
instructed prisoner of war. In pictorial representations of the fate of
captives, the process of acculturation of prisoners of war marks
a boundary between the unrestrained behaviour of the foreign captives
and corresponding violence meted out to them by their Egyptian captors,
and the ordered behaviour of the pacified and properly Egyptianised –
albeit suitably deferential – foreigners and their now allied fellow
Egyptians.42 This need not necessarily be an egalitarian process; the con-
cept of working into a civilised state, predicated on an assumption of
a native idleness, figures in arguments for forced labour in viceregal
Mexico, where the concept of the New World natives as persona
miserable43 corresponds to the common Egyptian use of the adjective
‘wretched’ describing Nubia and Nubians. Acculturation through
military service could involve a physical change such as branding,
circum- cision, the learning of Egyptian and ultimately the acquisition
of land.44

41 Claude Obsomer, Sesostris Ier, Étude chronologique et historique du règne (Brussels:

Connaissance de l’Égypte ancienne, 1995), pp. 630–5; Tobias Hofmann, Zur sozialen
Bedeutung zweier Begriffe für <Diener>: b3k und hm, Aegyptiaca Helvetica 18 (Basel:
Schwabe Verlag, 2005), pp. 169–71, 257–8; Oleg Berlev, ‘A Social Experiment in Nubia
during the Years 9–17 of Sesostris I’, in M. A. Powell (ed.), Labor in the Ancient Near East,
American Oriental Series 68 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 143–58.
42 Bernadette Menu, ‘Captifs de guerre et dépendance rurale dans l’Égypte du Nouvel
Empire’, in B. Menu (ed.), La Dépendance rurale dans l’Antiquité égyptienne et proche-
orientale (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 2004), pp. 187–209.
43 Alejandro Cañeque, The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in
Colonial Mexico (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 185–212.
44 John Coleman Darnell, ‘A Bureaucratic Challenge? Archaeology and Administration in
a Desert Environment (Second Millennium B.C.E.)’, in J. C. Moreno Garcia (ed.),
Ancient Egyptian Administration (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 791–2, nn. 31–2; Sally Katary,
‘Land-Tenure in the New Kingdom: The Role of Women Smallholders and the
Military’, in A. Bowman and E. Rogan (eds.), Agriculture in Egypt: from Pharaonic to
Modern Times, Proceedings of the British Academy 96 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), pp. 61–82.

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 The Ritualisation of Military Violence in Ancient Egypt

The foreigners could, at the same time, retain a peculiar identity in

auxiliary military units.45

Women and War

Although the Egyptian ruler could view Egypt’s foreign opponents ‘as
women’, foreign women fare better than men in Egyptian descriptions and
depictions of warfare; so Asiatic women care for their panicked and injured
male compatriots in late Old Kingdom imagery, and in a description of
a Seventeenth Dynasty Theban attack on the Hyksos capital only Hyksos
women make some appearance on the enemy palace walls and sound the
alarm.46 In iconography, female captives do not appear as restrained,
although the Late Egyptian story of the Capture of Joppa appears to refer to
both sexes as handcuffed. No reference to the rape of enemies appears in
either texts or iconography, suggesting that sexual violence was not an
ideologically encouraged aspect of warfare.47
The female Egyptian ruler, who does not visually participate in dom-
ination of foreigners in earlier imagery, becomes an active participant
during the late Eighteenth Dynasty. The early queens of the Eighteenth
Dynasty appear to have exercised a more than ceremonial role in
military matters and foreign relations. During a period of particularly
well-attested and elaborate diplomatic letter exchanges, the queen
(Nefertiti) may appear in the pose of smiting foreign women, might
stand behind the king in a smiting scene brandishing her own weapon
(Ankhesenamun), and could even appear in the guise of a female sphinx
trampling foreign women.48

45 John Coleman Darnell et al., Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hôl: New
Evidence for the Origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt , Annual of the
American Schools of Oriental Research 59/2 (Boston: American Schools of Oriental
Research, 2005), pp. 87–90.
46 Manassa, Imagining the Past, pp. 91–4.
47 John Coleman Darnell, ‘The Stela of the Viceroy Usersatet (Boston MFA 25.632), his
Shrine at Qasr Ibrim, and the Festival of Nubian Tribute under Amenhotep II’, Égypte
Nilotique et Méditerranéenne 7 (2014), 239–76, http://recherche.univ-montp3.fr/egypto
logie/enim.
48 Silke Roth, Gebieterin aller Länder (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 2002), pp. 26–9;
Epigraphic Survey, Reliefs and Inscriptions at Luxor Temple 1: The Festival Procession of
Opet in the Colonnade Hall, Oriental Institute Publications 112 (Chicago: Oriental
Institute Press, 1994), pls. 28–9; Friedhelm Hoffmann, ‘Warlike Women in Ancient
Egypt’, Cahiers de Recherches de l’Institut de Papyrologie et d’Égyptologie de Lille 27 (2008),
49–57.

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 john c. d A rnell

Violence and Warfare in Egyptian Literature

The earliest literary descriptions of military activity appear in autobio-
graphical inscriptions in non-royal tombs of the late Old Kingdom, with
royal self-presentation all but absent prior to the reign of Monthuhotep
II (c. 2061–2010 BCE ) at the dawn of the Middle Kingdom (late Eleventh
Dynasty). The advent of fictional literature in the Twelfth Dynasty
expanded the possible genres in which the ancient Egyptians could
expostulate upon warfare and violence, although in the extant corpus
from the Middle Kingdom those two themes appear only rarely. In the
Story of Sinuhe the protagonist, who has fled from Egypt into Syria-
Palestine after overhearing news of the death (and possible assassina-
tion) of Amenemhat I, engages in single combat with the ‘hero of
Retjenu’, a designation that alludes to formulae employed in execration
rituals.49 The duel between Sinuhe and the hero of Retjenu, vividly
described in near royal terms, is a prearranged event. The man of
Retjenu attacks Sinuhe in the Egyptian’s own encampment; Sinuhe’s
victory – the triumph of Egyptian archery over the javelins and close
combat weapons of his foe – enables the Egyptian to carry out the very
actions his foreign opponent had threatened to enact (after piercing the
neck of the Syrian with an arrow, Sinuhe leaps upon his dying foe and
delivers the mortal blow with his attacker’s own battle-axe). In contrast
to the single combat between Sinuhe and the hero of Retjenu, which
appears mimetic by comparison, the Instruction of Merikare employs the
topos of the Asiatic forever in a state of combat, neither able to conquer
nor be conquered, and who does not – thief-like – announce the day of
fighting.
Another textual genre that develops during the early Middle Kingdom and
sees its full development in the New Kingdom is that of the ‘royal novel’.50
The term refers to a historical text centred on the person of the king, usually
involving military activity, in which the king must respond to foreign
aggression, often associated with consultation of a council. Inevitably the
ruler rages against an act of foreign aggression – failure to acknowledge Egypt
and to respect her borders are inherently hostile actions, even before any
forces joining battle – and orders a response. Within the template of the

49 Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert, ‘The Hero of Retjenu – an Execration Figure (Sinuhe

B 109–13)’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 82 (1996), 198–9.
50 Beate Hofmann, Die Königsnovelle: ‘Strukturanalyse am Einzelwerk’, Ägypten und Altes
Testament 62 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2004); Manassa, Great Karnak
Inscription, pp. 107–9; Manassa, Imagining the Past.

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 The Ritualisation of Military Violence in Ancient Egypt

genre, some variation is possible, suggesting how actual events may be

worked to fit within an established but somewhat malleable prototype. In
at least one instance (the Nubian war of Sety I), the king’s order is to await the
development of the enemy plans; in another (the Megiddo campaign of
Thutmosis III), an impetuous royal suggestion for a swift attack is countered
by an ultimately honoured request to delay the onslaught so as not to leave
the rearguard of the army in a potentially dangerous situation. The royal
novel genre displays an Egyptian penchant for presenting and interpreting
events within ideologically informed templates, consistent with their view of
the duality of time, a linear form progressing within and reinforcing the
cosmic relevance of cyclical time, in which unique and personal events echo
and foreshadow the repetitions of order triumphant. It is probably a literary
reflection of what we see in the Early Dynastic (and possibly Predynastic)
period in which festivals occur in conjunction with historical events, and at
times involving actors within those very events.
With harbingers in the semi-fictionalised frame story of the earlier royal
novel, a new literary tradition emerges during the New Kingdom
(particu- larly the Ramesside period), and an innovative genre – historical
fiction – develops, which focuses almost exclusively on conflict and combat.
Even in the small corpus of historical fiction – only four tales are partially extant
– the level of violence within the narrative varies dramatically, from
taunting letter-writing to a siege that results in no casualties (Egyptian or
foreign) to fictional portrayals of battles.
The surviving iconographic and textual evidence from ancient Egypt
reveals an essential equation of warfare and hunting as parallel and necessa-
rily repeated means of ensuring and demonstrating the triumph of order
over chaos. Both texts and scenes emphasise the successful outcome of this
eternal conflict, often obscuring historical detail and all but eliminating
details of the bloody reality of military conflict. As the Egyptian ruler was
both the chief administrator and supreme priest, the image of the ruler and
the icon of the king smiting his bound and helpless enemies loom large.
While public execution may have occurred at least on occasions, the
Egyptian representa- tion of warfare veils the details of the shock of combat
and the gruesome results thereof behind the image of a recurring triumph of
order over chaotic forces. This template of maat-order appears also to allow
even traditional enemies to enter Egyptian society after acknowledging
the supremacy of
Egypt, enabling the Egyptians to avoid – at least until late in pharaonic
civilisation – the complete demonisation of foreigners and military
opponents.

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 john c. d A rnell

Bibliographic Essay
For warfare and hunting see the following: Stan Hendrickx, ‘L’iconographie de la chasse
dans le contexte social prédynastique’, Archéo-Nil 20 (2010), 106–33; Stan Hendrickx et al.,
‘Late Predynastic/Early Dynastic Rock Art Scenes of Barbary Sheep Hunting from Egypt’s
Western Desert. From Capturing Wild Animals to the “Women of the Acacia House”’, in
H. Riemer et al. (eds), Desert Animals in the Eastern Sahara: Status, Economic Significance and
Cultural Refiection in Antiquity, Colloquium Africanum 4 (Cologne: Heinrich Barth Institut,
2010), pp. 189–244; Wolfgang Decker and Michael Herb, Bildatlas zum Sport im alten
Ägypten. Corpus der bildlichen Quellen zu Leibesübungen, Spiel, Jagd, Tanz und verwandten
Themen, Handbuch der Orientalistik XIV 1–2 (Leiden: Brill, 1994).
Overall studies of warfare and military imagery are as follows: Juan Carlos
Moreno Garcia, ‘War in Old Kingdom Egypt (2686–2125 BCE)’, in J. Vidal (ed.), Studies
on War in the Ancient Near East: Collected Essays on Military History, Alter Orient und Altes
Testament 372 (Münster: Ugarit Verlag, 2010), pp. 5–41; Anthony J. Spalinger, War in
Ancient Egypt: The New Kingdom (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005); Rolf Gundlach and
Carola Vogel (eds.), Militärgeschichte des pharaonischen Ägyptens: Altägypten und seine
Nachbarkulutren im Spiegel aktueller, Forschung, Krieg in der Geschichte 34 (Paderborn:
Ferdinand Schöningh, 2009); Susanna Heinz, Die Feldzugsdarstellungen des Neuen Reiches:
Eine Bildanalyse (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
2001).
Discussions of ritualised violence are Alan R. Schulman, Ceremonial Execution and Public
Rewards: Some Historical Scenes on New Kingdom Private Stelae, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 75
(Leuven: Peeters, 1988), and Kerry Muhlestein, Violence in the Service of Order: The Religious
Framework for Sanctioned Killing in Ancient Egypt, BAR International Series 2299 (Oxford:
Archaeopress, 2011). For Magic and military violence see Robert Kriech Ritner, The
Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 54
(Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1993).
For weapons see Walter Wolf, Die Bewaffnung des altägyptischen Heeres (Leipzig:
J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1926); Yigael Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical
Lands in the Light of Archaeological Study (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963); Ian Shaw,
Egyptian Warfare and Weapons (Princes Risborough: Shire Publications, 1999); and
Gregory Phillip Gilbert, Weapons, Warriors and Warfare in Early Egypt, BAR
International Series 1208 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2004). For the physical impacts of some
of those weapons, see J. M. Filer, ‘Ancient Egypt and Nubia as a Source of
Information for
Cranial Injuries’, in John Carman (ed.), Material Harm, Archaeological Studies of War and
Violence (Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 1997). On the chariot see Mary A. Littauer and Joost
H. Crouwel, Selected Writings on Chariots and other Early Vehicles, Riding and Harness,
Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 6 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), and André
J. Veldmeijer and Salima Ikram (eds.), Chasing Chariots: Proceedings of the First
International Chariot Conference (Cairo, 2012) (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2013). On nautical
aspects of the Egyptian military see Shelley Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in
the Bronze Age Levant (College Station and London: Texas A&M University Press and
Chatham Publishing, 2008), and David Fabre (ed.), Le Destin maritime de l’Égypte ancienne
(London: Periplus Publishing, 2004).

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 The Ritualisation of Military Violence in Ancient Egypt

Examinations of Egyptian military texts include the following: Anthony J. Spalinger,

Aspects of the Military Documents of the Ancient Egyptians (New Haven, CT and London: Yale
University Press, 1982); Colleen Manassa, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merenptah: Grand
Strategy in the 13th Century BC, Yale Egyptological Studies 5 (New Haven, CT: Yale
Egyptological Seminar, 2003); Patrik Lundh, Actor and Event: Military Activity in Ancient
Egyptian Narrative Texts from Tuthmosis II to Merenptah, Uppsala Studies in Egyptology
2 (Uppsala: Akademitryck AB, 2002); Heinz Felber (ed.), Feinde und Aufrührer: Konzepte von
Gegnerschaft in ägyptischen Texten besonders des Mittleren Reiches, Abhandlungen der
Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, phil.-hist. Klasse 78/5 (Leipzig:
Verlag der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 2005). For diplomatic
aspects of Bronze Age warfare see Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook (eds.),
Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2000).

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