The American University in Cairo

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Noticing Neighbors:
Reconsidering Ancient Egyptian Perceptions of Ethnicity
A Thesis Submitted to
The Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, and Egyptology

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of Master of Arts
In Egyptology
By Taylor Bryanne Woodcock

Under the supervision of Dr. Mariam Ayad

May 2014

ABSTRACT
Ethnic identities are nuanced, fluid and adaptive. They are a means of categorizing the
self and the other through the recognition of geographical, cultural, lingual, and
physical differences. This work examines recurring associations, epithets and themes in
ancient Egyptian texts to reveal how the Egyptians discussed the ethnic uniqueness they
perceived of their regional neighbors. It employs Egyptian written records, including
temple inscriptions, royal and private correspondence, stelae and tomb autobiographies,
and literary tales, from the Old Kingdom to the beginning of the Third Intermediate
Period. The textual examples are organized by ethnic group and divided into four regions,
beginning with those concerning the western groups and proceeding clockwise, ending
with those concerning the southern groups. The analysis of these texts produces an
understanding of the Egyptian conceptualization of ethnicity in general, and the
conceptualization of distinct ethnic identities specific to the four regions surrounding
Egypt. This enhances our understanding of the lexical differences through which the
Egyptians distinguished their neighbors from each other. Egyptian written records do not
support the belief that the ancient Egyptians only understood their foreign neighbors
within the simplistic framework of four broad races. Egyptian literature contained a
multitude of primary ethnonyms for distinct ethnic groups, as well as a number of
secondary, informal ethnonyms. This study elucidates the placement of Egypts
neighbors in the organization of the Egyptian cosmos, their distinct perceptions in
Egyptian cultural cognition, and the Egyptian vocabulary for discussing foreigners and
foreignness, thus leading to a better understanding of ethnic perceptions in ancient Egypt.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Figures................................................................................................................................ iv
Tables .................................................................................................................................. v
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1
Methodology ................................................................................................................... 1
Prior Scholarship............................................................................................................. 4
Chapter 1. Ethnicity, Ethnonyms, and a Vocabulary of Foreignness ................................. 8
Chapter 2. The Westerners ................................................................................................ 18
Ethnonyms and Homelands .......................................................................................... 18
Orientation: The Western Homelands .......................................................................... 20
Common Culture: Language, Dress, and Customs ....................................................... 24
Associations, Epithets, and Descriptions ...................................................................... 26
Chapter 3. The Northerners............................................................................................... 33
The Sea Peoples ......................................................................................................... 33
The people of Keftiu...................................................................................................... 40
The Aamu and the Setyu ................................................................................................ 42
The Hyksos................................................................................................................. 52
Chapter 4. The Easterners ................................................................................................. 57
The Shasu ...................................................................................................................... 57
The Puntites .................................................................................................................. 66
The Medjay ................................................................................................................... 72
Chapter 5. The Southerners............................................................................................... 79
Ethnonyms and Homelands .......................................................................................... 79
Orientation: The Southern Homelands ......................................................................... 82
Common Culture: Language, Dress, and Physical Characteristics............................... 85
Associations, Epithets, and Descriptions ...................................................................... 88
Concluding Remarks......................................................................................................... 95
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 105
Appendix: Sample of ethnonyms in ancient Egyptian written sources .......................... 127

iii

FIGURES
Figure 1: Libyan Palette, verso....2
Figure 2: Map of the cosmos from the sarcophagus of Wereshnefer........12
Figure 3: Horus and the Four Races from the tomb of Seti I..13
Figure 4: Drawing of Shasu Spies at Abu Simbel.59
Figure 5: Fragment of a map of the cosmos..96

iv

TABLES
Table 1: Some Terms for Foreigners.15
Table 2: Sample of Texts associating Ethnic Groups
with Islands or the Sea ..........34
Table 3: Northern Primary and Secondary Ethnonyms
in Sample Texts..46
Table 4: Sample of Animals associated with Foreigners.101

Introduction
Methodology
Studies of ethnicity in antiquity have recently gained popularity and many, as a
result, have increased our awareness of the amount and the nature of the interactions that
the ancient Egyptians had with the xAstyw, foreigners.1 The vibrant and intricate images
of foreigners portrayed in ancient Egyptian tombs, temples, palaces and models attracted
Egyptological scholarly attention early on.2 Visual and written sources illustrate that the
ancient Egyptians had an understanding of the ethnic diversity of their world through
contact with foreigners in both royal and private arenas, outside of and within Egyptian
borders. Egyptian creative and political processes in the Early Dynastic Period illustrate
social awareness of a need for rulers to overpower foreign enemies,3 such as on the
Narmer Palette.4 They also showed an awareness of foreign lands on the so-called Libyan
Palette5 (Fig. 1) that includes the early hieroglyphic combination of the land (Gardiner
Sign-list N 18)6 and throw-stick (Gardiner Sign-list T 14)7 signs in the bottom register.
While the textual approach to studying foreigners has not been overlooked,
studies of their artistic typologies are overwhelmingly more popular. There has not been a
qualitative and comparative discussion of ethnic groups in Egyptian written sources that
examines how Egyptians characterized the distinct ethnic groups they encountered, and
how those characterizations (including descriptions, epithets, associations and figurative
expressions) can be categorized. In order to address the apparent and nuanced ethnic

1 For some examples of these studies see: Stuart Tyson Smith, Wretched Kush: Ethnic Identities and

Boundaries in Egypts Nubian Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003). Charlotte Booth, The Role of
Foreigners in Ancient Egypt: A Study of Non-Stereotypical Artistic Representations (Oxford:
Basingstoke Press, 2005). Heidi Saleh, Investigating Ethnic and Gender Identities as Expressed on
Wooden Funerary Stelae from the Libyan Period (c. 1069715 B.C.E.) in Egypt (PhD diss.,
University of California, Berkeley, 2006). Frederik Christiaan Woudhuizen, The Ethnicity of the Sea
Peoples (PhD diss., Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, 2006). William A. Cooney, Egypts Encounter
with the West: Race, Culture and Identity (PhD diss., Durham University, 2011).
2 For example: W. M. Flinders Petrie, Racial Photographs from Egyptian Monuments (London: British
Association, 1887). W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Races of Early Egypt, The Journal of the
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 31 (1901). W. Max Mller, Asien und Europa
nach Altgyptischen Denkmlern (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1893).
3 A.J. de Wit, Enemies of the State: Perceptions of otherness and state formation in Egypt (Masters
thesis, Leiden University, 2008)
4 Jean Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt (London: H. Grevel & Co., 1905), 244-245.
5 Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt, 236.
6 Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar (Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1957), 487.
7 Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 513.

Figure 1: Libyan Palette, verso Image from John Baines, Contextualizing Egyptian
Representations of Society and Ethnicity (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1991), 365.

perceptions that have been long overlooked, this thesis is a lexical analysis of foreignness
as defined in ancient Egyptian texts.
The research questions of this thesis focus on the human perception, bias and
categorization of difference and foreignness. The intent of this work is to identify the
collective Egyptian cultural perceptions of their foreign neighbors and to divulge the
ways in which each was conceptualized as a distinct ethnicity. It is not designed to create
more accurate pictures of those ethnic groups themselves, as is primarily the focus of
Egyptological studies of foreigners. This work produces a comparative understanding of
the ways the ancient Egyptians thought about, discussed, and categorized their ethnic
neighbors. It examines the Egyptians cultural perceptions of several ethnic groups, with
the hope that, through comparison, these perceptions will be more clearly apparent. A
number of specific questions will be addressed:

What names and epithets did the Egyptians use for their regional neighbors?

What can be gleaned from Egyptian texts about the Egyptians perceptions of
these neighbors, in terms of what they were known for and what they were
associated with?

Where did these neighbors fit in the Egyptian cosmography and how did this
affect the Egyptian understanding of them?

How else did the Egyptians talk about and categorize their ethnic neighbors,
and what collective opinions can be discerned about individual ethnic groups?

With these questions in mind, a number of ethnic groups were selected for which there
are sufficient and varied references in Egyptian written records. Selection of these ethnic
groups was based upon extant common elements, patterns, and reoccurring associations
in Egyptian texts. The source material includes historical records, such as tomb
autobiographies, boundary stelae, king-lists, and temple inscriptions; wisdom literature;
royal and private letters; fictional narratives; and religious hymns. The included written
sources represent a wide range of Egyptian chronology, from pre-dynastic palettes to
Third Intermediate Period inscriptions, with the majority of examples dating to the
Middle and New Kingdoms. The Third Intermediate Period and following eras were
characterized by foreign rulers, including the Libyans and Nubians, the Assyrians and
Persians, and finally, the Greeks and Romans, who adopted Egyptianized roles in temple
ritual and relief in order to assume the role of the Egyptian king. Because the Egyptian
culture and royal ideology of these periods were influenced by the foreignness of Egypts
kings, an understanding of the Egyptian conception of ethnicity during those periods
would be best addressed separately.8
This thesis organizes the selected ethnic groups by the four cardinal directions,
befitting of one of the many kinds of associations through which the Egyptians
understood their neighbors. This work begins with the ethnic groups associated with the
west and proceeds clockwise around the Egyptian cosmos to end with the peoples of the
south. This approach allows greater maneuverability in assigning ethnic groups to their
appropriate cardinal direction. In this work, each ethnic group has been assigned to one of
the four cardinal directions based on the Egyptian perception of where they fit in the
ancient political topography, not based on our modern understanding of their actual

8 Ethnic relations, assimilation, and adaptation in these periods have nevertheless been studied. For

some examples, see: Simon Davis, Race Relations in Ancient Egypt: Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew, Roman
(London: Methuen and Co., 1951); K. Goudriaan, Ethnicity in Ptolemaic Egypt (Amsterdam: J. C.
Gieben, 1988); Per Bilde, Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt, (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1992); and
Janet H. Johnson, Ethnic Considerations in Persian Period Egypt, in Gold of Praise: Studies on Ancient
Egypt in Honor of Edward F. Wente (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1999).

geographical origins. In many cases, however, these orientations were not concrete,
resulting in shifting associations between two cardinal directions, as with the Aamu, who
were first primarily associated with the east and then with the north. In this situation the
ethnic group is included in the dominant orientation determined by the most meaningful
and prominent association. Some ethnic groups fulfilled a political and religious role in
the Egyptian landscape that was not necessarily consistent with their topographical
location (for example, the inhabitants of the Mediterranean Sea are the only ethnic groups
located true north of Egypt). The association of the Aamu with the north in New
Kingdom written sources fulfilled an important cosmographical purpose, although their
actual geographical location was to the northeast.
Prior Scholarship
Scholarly work concerning Egypts foreigners has primarily been one of two
types: 1) an examination of how Egyptians viewed foreign peoples in general (in terms of
chaos vs. order, and us vs. them) or 2) a historical review of the archaeological,
textual and visual evidence of a single ethnic group.9 Both of these types of studies miss
the differentiation in Egyptian perceptions of distinct ethnic groups. Outside of these
categories, there are a number of notable works that attempted to understand foreigners
through textual analyses:
Sir Alan Gardiner laid the groundwork for a textual study of ancient ethnic groups
with his publication of Amenemopes Onomasticon in Ancient Egyptian Onomastica
(1947). Approximately fifty-six foreign peoples and locations are included in the list, but
many are illegible due to a large lacuna in the papyrus. Gardiner presents the significant
textual appearances of each ethnonym or toponym, with a cursory bibliography. His
comments on these ethnic groups were restrained by the limitations of the text; Gardiner
recognizes that the list is largely restricted to the foreign peoples that were the most
familiar to the Egyptians during the Ramesside period, when the papyrus was composed.
In addition to the historically narrow sampling of foreign peoples, the majority of the list
can be identified as toponyms, not ethnonyms. Gardiners translations and comments are

9 Examples include: Raphael Giveon, Les Bdouins Shosou Des Documents gyptiens (Leiden: Brill,

1971); Oric Bates, The Eastern Libyans: An Essay (London: Frank Cass and Company, Ltd., 1914); and
John Strange, Caphtor/Keftiu: A New Investigation (Leiden: Brill, 1980).

a significant contribution to the topic, but cannot be considered a comprehensive

discussion of foreign peoples in Egyptian texts.
The first significant work to deal with Egypts traditional enemies, known as The
Nine Bows, was Eric Uphills article The Nine Bows (1966). As a construct, the Nine
Bows appear first in the Early Dynastic period but feature predominantly in New
Kingdom royal and political propaganda. Uphills aims were to highlight their major
textual appearances, identify their geographical origins, and illustrate the shifting
identities of Egypts enemies overtime, without being exhaustive on the topic. The article
fruitfully details the individuality of these ethnic groups along with their possible
homelands, but it does not form any conclusions about Egyptian perceptions of them as a
people, or their place in the Egyptian awareness of ethnicity.
The first work on the epithets of foreigners in Egyptian texts is David Lortons
article The So-Called Vile Enemies of the King of Egypt (in the Middle Kingdom and
Dyn. XVII) (1973). This seminal work examined the uses of the word most commonly
associated with foreigners in Egyptian texts: Xsy. Lorton traces the history of the word
through Middle and New Kingdom royal and private inscriptions and compares the
contexts of each use. He concludes that in many instances, a more accurate translation of
Xsy is defeated rather than the traditional wretched, or vile. Lortons methodology
for analyzing the use of a single word, Xsy, should be applied to other epithets and
descriptions of foreigners. Lortons slightly later work The Juridical Terminology of
International Relations in Egyptian Texts Through Dyn. XVIII (1974) contained valuable
discussions of the common titles wr and HqA, including lists of all known instances of the
titles. His conclusions from their contexts about the use of both terms enriched our
understanding of foreign rulers in Egyptian texts.10
Topos und Mimesis (1988), a largely literary examination of references to
foreigners in Egyptian texts, was a unique contribution to the topic. Antonio Loprieno
presented two major Egyptian interpretations of foreigners in Egyptian texts: the
Foreigner Topos, or stereotypical, overarching theme of the chaotic outsider; and the
Foreigner Mimesis, or the humanization of foreigners who accept Egyptian ways and/or
language. The bulk of his analyses are applied to the Story of Sinuhe (which exhibits

10 Refer to the discussion of these titles in the Conclusion on page 102.

mimetic roles) and the Instruction to Merikare (the foreigners in which he considered to
be topoi). He does not attempt to diversify his thematic and rhematic literary
divisions by examining which ethnic groups they were applied to and whether there are
patterns.
Dominique Valbelles Les Neuf Arcs: LEgyptien et les trangers de la
prhistoire la conqute dAlexandre (1990) is a historical examination of Egypts
relationships with its regional neighbors from the Pre-Dynastic Period through the Late
Period. The title, which refers to Egypts traditional enemies, is misleading; the work
covers Egypts relationships with the major foreign races, which she illustrates were far
more complex than that of only enemies. She focuses on how Egyptian foreign policy,
evident already during Dynasty 0, dictated different responses to foreign powers, through
the construction of fortifications along Egypts borders, the forced displacement of
foreign captives, and the commercial exploits of Punt and the Levant. She makes special
note of the foreign peoples who inhabited Egypt, including the Hyksos and foreign
kings of the Third Intermediate Period. Valbelles work provided an essential overview
of the Egypts relationship with neighboring peoples on a State and private level, but was
not intended to divulge or compare Egypts perceptions of those neighboring peoples
ethnic identities.
A recent and significant work on the classification of ethnic groups is Andrs
Diego Espinels Etnicidad y territorio en el Egipto del Reino Antiguo (2006). His book is
a partially lexical, partially visual examination of ethnicity and foreignness as related to
each of the major territories of the Egyptian world, including Egypt. The first part is
dedicated to the examination of geographical and ethnic terms used by the Egyptians to
describe their world, on both the macro and micro scale. His exploration of ethnicity is
restricted to the Old Kingdom, thus narrowing the scope of his evidence and missing the
opportunity to explore the nuanced ethnic identities of Egypts neighbors overtime. Few,
if any, textual examples for each ethnonym are included within the brief, individual
examinations of each ethnic group, presumably due to the restricted time period from
which he drew them. His noteworthy contribution to the study of Egypts regional
neighbors was his categorization of Egyptian exonyms into types: Trminos genricos,
Pseudoetnminos, and Etnminos. The categorization of Egyptian exonyms in this

work as primary or secondary does not follow Espinels in every instance, perhaps
because a better understanding of these terms can be made through the examination of
their use throughout a greater portion of Egyptian history.

Chapter 1. Ethnicity, Ethnonyms, and a Vocabulary of Foreignness

Within academia, studies of ethnicity, ethnic identities and ethnonyms are
relatively recent, and were even more recently welcomed into Egyptology.11 Ethnicity
is a modern term derived from the Greek word , ethnos, meaning nation, or
people.12 An individuals ethnicity is only a single element of their multi-faceted
identity, but it is an element that is easily expressed and perceived. In practice, ethnicity
is a means of classifying oneself and others as elements of their societies.13 Conceptually,
ethnicity is the recognition of a contrast between us and them.14 This recognition is
two-sided: the characterization of the self, and the characterization of the other, which
results in the awareness of the differences between them. Therefore, ethnic identities are
formed either reflexively or through external assessment.15 The recognition of ethnic
difference manifests itself culturally in a number of ways, including through the use of
ethnonyms. Ethnonymy, the study of ethnic group names, constitutes a branch of
Onomastics.16 Reflective of the dualistic forms of ethnicity (internal and external),
ethnonyms have two types: endonyms, or autonyms, the name used reflexively by an
ethnic group, and exonyms, the name applied to an ethnic group by an external source.17
This thesis deals entirely with exonymic use in ancient Egyptian written sources.
Exonyms often emphasize a characteristic visible to the external culture,18 as will be
illustrated with examples in the Egyptian language.

11 For an overview of literature see: Smith, Wretched Kush: Ethnic Identities and Boundaries in Egypts

Nubian Empire, 1-55.

12 Robert Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 377. Smith, Wretched Kush:
Ethnic Identities and Boundaries in Egypts Nubian Empire, 10.
13 Sandra Wallman, The Boundaries of Race: Processes of Ethnicity in England, Man 13 (1978):
202.
14 Sandra Wallman, Ethnicity Research in Britain, Current Anthropology 18 (1977): 532.
15 Steve Fenton, Ethnicity, Racism, Class and Culture (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
1999), 19-21.
16 William Bright, What IS a Name? Reflections on Onomastics, Language and Linguistics 4 (2003):
671.
17 Frank Proschan, We are all Kmhmu, Just the Same: Ethnonyms, Ethnic Identities and Ethnic
Groups, American Ethnologist 24 (1997): 91.
18 Kenton L. Sparks, Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1998), 107:
note 44.

Anthropologists have created numerous theoretical models for identifying

ethnicity within the last century, and there is no definitive model.19 For the purpose of
this thesis, Hutchinson and Smiths six main features of ethnic groups as outlined in their
book20 will be considered:
1. A common proper name, to identify and express the essence of the
community
2. A myth of common ancestry, a myth rather than a fact, a myth that includes
the idea of a common origin in time and place and that gives an ethnie a sense
of fictive kinship
3. Shared historical memories, or better, shared memories of a common past or
pasts, including heroes, events and their commemoration
4. One or more elements of common culture, which needs not be specified but
normally include religion, customs or language
5. A link with a homeland, not necessarily its physical occupation by the ethnie,
only its symbolic attachment to the ancestral land, as with diaspora peoples
6. A sense of solidarity on the part of at least some sections of the ethnies
population
A societys ethnic identity is built upon these shared characteristics, or index features.21
These features are not stagnant,22 but they are fluid and adaptive and can vary in
effectuation from person to person. What determines a persons ethnicity cannot be
objectively defined. Ethnicity is neither intrinsic nor permanent.23 Ethnicity is also
situational and an individual may have multiple, even contradictory, ethnic identities. A
popular example from ancient Egypt of how the reflexive and imposed ethnic identities
may conflict is that of Heqanefer, a Great One (wr) of Miam (modern Aniba) during the
late 18th Dynasty.24 In a scene from the tomb of the Egyptian Viceroy of Nubia (or
Kings Son of Kush) Huy, Heqanefer is shown in the Egyptian visual style for southern

19 For a brief overview of conceptualizations of ethnicity see: Sin Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity:

Constructing Identities in the Past and Present (New York: Routledge, 1997), 100-105; John
Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, Ethnicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 5-10.
20 Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity, 6-7.
21 Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity, 24.
22 Ronald Cohen, Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology 7
(1978): 397.
23 Especially in the modern world, immigration, adoption and international travel facilitates the
blending of cultural practices and merging of ethnic identities.
24 Smith, Wretched Kush: Ethnic Identities and Boundaries in Egypts Nubian Empire, 173.

foreigners: adorned with feathers, gold earrings, and a brightly patterned kilt and sash.25
Yet his name, Heqanefer, and the titles he held were in the Egyptian language.26 His
rock-cut tomb, located at modern Toshka East, was carved in the Theban style27 and
included Egyptian funerary elements such as Funerary Figurines and a pectoral, as well
as hieroglyphic texts and reliefs.28 The image of Heqanefer created by these contrasting
depictions is dualistic: the Egyptians portrayal of his ethnic origins in Huys tribute
scene as distinctly foreign, and his personal portrayal as an Egyptian official in his own
tomb. Heqanefers shifting identity exemplifies one possible way that ethnic identities are
situational, and how at times, an individual may choose to emphasize certain aspects of
their ethnicity, when at other times they may minimalize it.29
While many of the above features would be difficult to identify for an ethnic
group based entirely from second-party sources (i.e. a second cultures observations),
some are amply found applied to Egypts neighbors in Egyptian texts. This work
examines how the Egyptians identified the index features of their foreign neighbors as
recorded in Egyptian texts. Externally imposed ethnicity is an active and powerful aspect
of interaction between people groups. It may have little to do with the objective truth of
who the people group is. The Egyptian perceptions of their foreign neighbors that are
discussed here may not be true to the actual identities of the ethnic groups, but detail how
the Egyptians categorized and understood them.
The ancient Egyptians were aware of the difference between them and their
regional neighbors as early as the formation of the Egyptian state. Their methods of
indicating this difference in visual and written culture developed quickly, for the purpose
of unification by emphasizing the difference between internal and external cultural

25 N. de Garis Davies, The Tomb of Huy (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1926), plate 27.
26 Heqanefer means good ruler. William Kelly Simpson, Nubia: The University Museum Yale

University Expedition, Expedition 4 (1962): 33-36. William Kelly Simpson, Heka-Nefer and the
Dynastic Material from Toshka and Arminna (Philadelphia: University Museum of the University of
Pennsylvania, 1963), 8-9.
27 Refer to the tomb section and plan: Simpson, Nubia: The University Museum Yale University
Expedition, 32.
28 Simpson, Nubia: The University Museum Yale University Expedition, 35-36.
29 Another recent work on the evidence for dualistic ethnic identities is: Stuart Tyson Smith, Colonial
Gatherings: The New Kingdom Presentation of Inu and the British Imperial Durbar, a Comparison,
abstract, 65th Annual Meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt (2014): 79.

10

identities.30 There was no word original to the Egyptian language that meant ethnicity,
or ethnic group, although they were certainly aware of the differences between ethnic
groups. The Hymn to the Aten contains a partial image of the world, selecting three
regions to represent the ethnic diversity known to the Egyptians: Kharu to the north,
Kush to the south, and Egypt between them:

xAswt xAr kS {sn}31 kmt di.k s nb r st.f ir.k Xrwt.sn wa nb Xry r wnmw.f Hsb aHaw.f
nsw wp.w m mdwt qdw.sn m mitt inmw.sn sTny sTny.k xAstyw32
the foreign lands of Kharu, Kush and Egypt, you put every man into his place.
You provide their portion, each one having according to his food. His lifetime is
counted out. Tongues are separate by speech, and their natures likewise. Their
skins are distinguished; you distinguish the foreigners.33
The Egyptian language contained a plethora of ethnonyms for their regional neighbors.34
While it is possible that these ethnonyms were orthographically similar to their
neighbors autonyms (if indeed they had such autonyms), it cannot be guaranteed.35

30 Tonny J. de Wit, Ethnicity and State Formation in Egypt: Ideology and Practice, in Proceedings of

the Fourth Central European Conference of Young Egyptologists (Budapest: Studia Aegyptiaca, 2007),
407-410. De Wit credits the Egyptian awareness of outsiders, especially those to the south and
northeast, as a contributing factor to the cultural establishment of the Egyptian ethnie and homeland.
31 These signs are problematic it is possible that the s should have been tA (Gardiner Sign-list N 16)
to translate as the land of Egypt.
32 Excerpt from the Hymn to the Aten. N. de Garis Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna VI: Tombs of
Parennefer, Tutu, and A (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1908), plate 27: lines 8-9.
33 A similar creation narrative occurs in Papyrus Boulaq XVII: Edda Bresciani, Foreigners, in The
Egyptians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 223.
34 Schneider notes that even acculturated foreigners in Egypt were unable to free themselves from
their original ethnonyms, but the continued use of the ethnonyms cannot be taken as indicators of a
specific degree of ethnicity. Thomas Schneider, Foreigners in Egypt: Archaeological Evidence and
Cultural Context, in Egyptian Archaeology (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 144.
35 Modern examples of the potential differences and similarities between exonyms and autonyms are
the English name for the European country Germany and the native name: Deutschland, or the
English name for the Eurasian country Russia, and the native name: Rossiya.

11


Figure 2: Map of the cosmos from the sarcophagus of Wereshnefer Image from Othmar
Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 38.

The Egyptian conception of the world featured their homeland, kmt, the Black
Land, at the center of the universe. The 30th Dynasty map of the cosmos on the lid of the
sarcophagus of Wereshnefer illustrates the regions of the Egyptian world: the realm of
the gods in the innermost sphere, surrounded by the Egyptian nomes, and then
surrounded again by the regions of the foreign peoples (Fig. 2). The intimate relationship
between the gods homeland and Egypt in this map reflects the Egyptians consideration
that Egypt was a part of the ordered world (mAat), and outside of Egypt was chaos (isft).
Humankind according to the Egyptians consisted of four, broad types, usually referred to
in Egyptology as the Four Races, which were visually and nominally distinct from each
other: Egyptians (rmT), Nehesyu, Aamu, and Tjehnu (Fig. 3).36

36 Anthony Leahy, Ethnic Diversity in ancient Egypt, in Civilizations of the ancient Near East I (New

York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1995), 226.

12


Figure 3: Horus and the Four Races from the tomb of Seti I Image from Carl Lepsius,
Denkmler aus gypten und thiopien, Abt. III (Berlin: Nicolaische Buchhuandlung,
1849-1859), plate 136.

These four races were not the only ethnic groups known to the Egyptians, nor were
these the only ethnonyms the Egyptians used for their neighbors, but they were
sometimes used as representatives of the western, southern and northeastern regions.
Anthony Leahy described the Egyptian awareness of their foreign neighbors37:
The Egyptians had specific names for many geographical areas outside
their frontiers, but since the precise origin of foreigners was rarely of
importance to them, generic terms covering large areas, such as aAmw
(amu), Asiatic, were preferred.
This approach in Egyptology ignores the ethnic variations among Egypts neighbors that
were both present and acknowledged in Egyptian written records. It is interesting to note
that while there were four types of people, the Egyptians divided the world outside of
Egypt into four cardinal directions:

37 Leahy, Ethnic Diversity in Ancient Egypt, 226-227.

13

di.i n.k qnt nxt r xAswt nbt di.i bAw.k snDw.k m tAw nbw Hryt.k r Drw sxnwt nt pt
I gave to you valor and strength against all foreign countries. I made your authority and
fear of you in every land, the dread of you as far as the four supports of heaven.38

rdi.n.i n.f tAw rsy mHt dmD n whi imnt iAbt nw tA

I (the king) gave to him (Osiris) the lands of the south and the north united, not
lacking the west and the east of the land.39
The formula in royal literature for naming representative foreign lands located at each of
Egypts four borders, sometimes as gifts from the gods, existed from the Old Kingdom.40
The inhabitants of each region were called upon based on their cardinal direction to
represent the four corners of the world in texts that symbolically ensured Egyptian
dominion over them. These references to the four cardinal directions performed the same
functions as lists of the Nine Bows did to symbolically extend the kings dominion over
every region of the world and over all of their inhabitants. The stele of Amenhotep III
from his Memorial Temple is a good example of this in Amuns speech to the king he
names each cardinal direction and its inhabitants: Kush to the south, sTt to the north,
Tjehnu to the west, and Punt at the sunrise (east).41 This formula that attributed
representative ethnic groups to each of the four cardinal directions was neither permanent
nor consistent it varied to reflect the foreign powers of the time. Its use lasted even into
the Ptolemaic Period when it was recorded at the Temple of Edfu with slight variation:

38 From the Poetical Stele of Thutmose III. Kurt Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV (Leipzig: J. C.

Hinrichs, 1906), 612: lines 7-9.

39 From the Dedicatory Stele of Seti I to Ramesses I at Abydos. Kenneth Kitchen, Ramesside
Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical IV (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 114: 9-10.
40 For example, the three races of bound prisoners, albeit without ethnonyms, from the mortuary
temple of Sahure in: Ludwig Borchardt, Das Grabdenkmal des Knigs Shu-re (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs,
1913), plate 5.
41 W.M. Flinders Petrie, Six Temples at Thebes (London: B. Quatrich, 1897), 25 and plate 12.

14

Kush to the south, the Aamu to the north, the Tjemeh to the west, and the Shasu to the
east.42
Term

Transliteration

Translation

xAstyw

foreigners, desertdwellers43

pDty

foreigner44

r-pDtyw

foreigners45

rwty

outsider, stranger46

SmAw

foreigners47

aA

interpreter48
foreigner49

Table 1: Some Terms for Foreigners

An additional element of this work is a discussion of the Egyptian vocabulary of

foreignness or the words the Egyptians used to refer to, categorize, and describe
foreigners. Aside from their use of ethnonyms for their regional neighbors, the Egyptian
language contained a number of general terms for foreigners (Table 1). These terms often

42 Giveon, Les Bdouins Shosou Des Documents gyptiens, 164.

43 Raymond O. Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian (Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1962),

185. Schneider defines xAstyw as: foreigners outside Egypt who are devoid of any opportunity of
acculturation. Schneider, Foreigners in Egypt: Archaeological Evidence and Cultural Context, 144.
Adolf Erman and Hermann Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache III (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 1982), 234.
44 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 97. Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der
Aegyptischen Sprache I, 570.
45 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 146.
46 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 147. Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der
Aegyptischen Sprache II, 405.
47 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 266. Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der
Aegyptischen Sprache IV, 470.
48 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache I, 159.
49 Hans Goedicke, An Additional Note on 3 Foreigner, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 52
(1966): 172.

15

ended with the throw-stick, determinative

determinative

(Gardiner Sign-list T 14), and the hills

(Gardiner Sign-list N 25). Thutmose IIIs stele from Gebel Barkal

is a perfect example of an Egyptian text that employs all forms of the Egyptian
vocabulary of foreignness. It lauds the military might of the Egyptian king and his
subjugation of all peoples and lands.50 The phraseology is both general and specific,
pinpointing the names and homelands of numerous Egyptian neighbors (mntyw sTt, HrywSay, aAmw, wAwAt, etc.), their orientations outside of Egypt (rsyw, mHtyw), as well as
including a number of descriptors (nbdw-qd, pDtyw, bStt, psDt-pDt, xrw, etc.) in an attempt
to describe the other. The descriptions used in Egyptian rhetoric about foreigners can be
categorized as two types: first, forms of humiliation51 and second, judgment of character.
Used primarily in political narratives, the Egyptians employed a vocabulary of
humiliation that involved the degradation of foreign and domestic enemies for the
purpose of celebrating the power of the Egyptian king and upholding his leadership of the
State by depicting him righteously defeating chaos (isft) and maintaining justice (mAat).
Judgments of character appear in fictional and historical narratives, in which a
description of the ethnic group, as an active character in the story, was needed for the
audience, and also in royal and non-royal correspondence. Other means of discussing
foreignness was through the use of analogies with animals52 or objects. Three simile
relationships reoccur repeatedly in New Kingdom texts: the king (as a lion) devouring
foreigners (as cattle);53 the king (as a falcon) catching foreigners (as small birds);54 and

50 Adriaan de Buck, Egyptian Readingbook vol. I: Exercises and Middle Egyptian Texts (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1948), 56-63.

51 A discussion of foreign prisoners in New Kingdom Egyptian texts, including the Egyptian terms for
their prisoners of war, and descriptions of humiliating forms of execution, is included in: Mark D.
Janzen, Iconography of Humiliation: The Depiction and Treatment of Bound Foreigners in New
Kingdom Egypt, (PhD diss., The University of Memphis, 2013), 220-260.
52 Teeter specifies that often these comparisons were with wild, and hence unpredictable animals.
Emily Teeter, Animals in Egyptian Literature, in A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near
East (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 268-269.
53 Epigraphic Survey, Later Historical Records of Ramesses III (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1932),
plate 83: column 43 and plate 86: column 33.
54 Epigraphic Survey, Later Historical Records of Ramesses III, plate 68: column, 3; plate 82: column 17
and plate 86: columns 22, 43. In the Karnak Inscription of Merneptah the chief of the Rebu is
described being: fettered like birds. Colleen Manassa, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah
(New Haven: Yale University, 2003), 165.

16

the king threshing the foreigners (as grain or straw).55 Other comparisons were made to
Ddft, snakes,56 and pnw, mice.57 Further examples of this phenomenon will be
discussed with individual ethnic groups.
Aside from the terms in Table 1, which were used homogenously for foreign
peoples, Egyptians also talked about their neighbors using more personable terms,
including rmT, people,58 nywtyw, townsmen,59 and mryt, underlings or servants,60
terms that were primarily applied to Egyptians. The use of these terms was not restricted
to situations of the foreigner-mimesis,61 but could also be used to refer to the distant
other. This vocabulary creates a dualistic picture of ethnicity in Egyptian texts:
words existed exclusively for outsiders that indicate perceived difference, and other
words, applied to both foreigners and Egyptians, indicate a perceived similarity.
Stemming from these basic observations of the way Egyptians described
foreignness, the following chapters present further textual evidence for their
considerations of individual ethnic groups, as arranged by their cardinal orientation,
beginning with Egypts western neighbors.

55 Epigraphic Survey, Later Historical Records of Ramesses III, plate 82: column 37; plate 83: column

42; and plate 86: column 49.

56 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical IV, 4: line 13.
57 Note that this word is now lost but was recorded by Maspero. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions:
Historical and Biographical IV, 21: line 3 and note 3a.
58 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 150. No. 230 in: Alan H. Gardiner, Ancient
Egyptian Onomastica (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 98-110.
59 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 126.
60 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 111.
61 Antonio Loprieno, Topos und Mimesis: zum Auslnder in der gyptischen Literatur (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1988), 60-71.

17

Chapter 2. The Westerners

The peoples who inhabited the western desert were considered by the ancient
Egyptians to be distinct ethnic groups as early as the Predynastic period. The nomadic
and pastoral lifestyles of these western neighbors generated almost nothing in the way of
permanent, archaeological imprints on their cultural landscape. To make the task of
exploring their ethnic identities even more difficult, none of the peoples in Egypts
western desert employed a written language that could provide insight into how they
conceptualized their own ethnicity (including through the use of autonyms and
toponyms) or which index features they relied upon as a community to differentiate
themselves from outsiders, if they did so at all.62 Without an archaeological record or
first-hand records, historians are left with the task of reconstructing their ethnic identity
based on little evidence. This chapter will present some of the index features of Egypts
western neighbors from the Egyptians perspective.
Ethnonyms and Homelands
As early as the Sixth Dynasty, Egyptians employed two common names for these
now comprehensively dubbed Libyan peoples: Tjehnu, the oldest, first appeared on the
Early Dynastic Libyan Palette63 with a simplistic orthography of

, and also on an

depicting rows of bound peoples.64 The

ivory cylinder of King Narmer

other common ethnonyms, Tjemeh, first appeared in the Old Kingdom autobiographies of
Weni65 as

and Harkhuf66 as

. Throughout their

longstanding use, Tjehnu and Tjemeh were terms that refered to both the geographical
places and the ethnic groups that inhabited them. In close association with the Tjehnu and

62 For example: religious practices, dress, historical symbols, or language. Hutchinson and Smith,

Ethnicity, 85-89.
63 Jean Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt (London: H. Grevel & Co., 1905), 236.
64 John Baines, Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007),
fig. 8.
65 Kurt Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1933), 101.
66 Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 125.

18

Tjemeh, several other ethnonyms appeared in late New Kingdom texts. The
Onomasticon of Amenemope, composed during the Ramesside Period when the threat
of invasion from the west was at its highest, begins the section of foreign lands and
peoples with the67:

Tjemeh,

Tjehnu,

Meshwesh68 (often abbreviated Ma in Egyptian

texts), and

Rebu.69 Their frequent appearances together during the

Ramesside Period has been taken as evidence of their Libyan identities, but this does
not confirm that they shared a common geographic or ethnic origin, only that the
Egyptians associated them with one another.70
The Egyptians recognized that the ethnonym itself was essential for the longevity
of the ethnic group.71 A speech recorded by Ramses III during his second war against the
Westerners begins by boasting72:

i Dd n pA xrw n mSwS ptr rf73 fx rn.k r nHH Dt

67 No doubt that when conjuring names of foreign peoples for the composition of the list, the Libyans

would have been among those the scribes would first think of. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica
I, 113-4.
68 The Meshwesh first appear in a topographical list of Thutmose III, without description. They also
appear in two topographical lists of Horemheb. Cooney, Egypts Encounter with the West: Race,
Culture and Identity, Appendix D. J. Simons, Handbook for the study of Egyptian Topographical Lists
relating to Western Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1937), 114.
69 Otherwise translated as Libu or Labu. The earliest appearance of the Rebu in Egyptian texts is from
the reign of Ramses II. David OConnor, Egypt, 1552-664 BC, in The Cambridge History of Africa
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 919. Cooney, Egypts Encounter with the West:
Race, Culture and Identity, Appendix C.
70 The term Libyan will be avoided in this thesis for its homogenous treatment of these ethnic
groups.
71 This follows the first of the six elements of an ethnie according to Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity,
6. Refer to page 9 for the list of elements.
72 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical V, 45.
73 Kitchen interprets the second eye determinative (Gardiner Sign-list D 6) to be a mistake for r
(Gardiner Sign-list D 21): Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical V, 45: note 13a.
Edgerton and Wilson agree with this interpretation: William F. Edgerton and John A. Wilson,
Historical Records of Ramesses III: The Texts in Medinet Habu volumes I and II (Chicago: The Oriental
Institute, 1936), 63 and note 3a.

19

Say to the fallen of the Meshwesh: See now, your name will be destroyed for
ever and ever!
The use of a common, proper ethnonym that has the ability to carry the essence of the
people within itself is an important element of an ethnic identity.74 Especially in contexts
of war, the name carries the weight of the enemys formidability and unity within itself.
The Egyptians ensured their enemies destruction with written spells that contained their
enemies names, both personal names and ethnonyms,75 on figurines or pots, which were
then smashed or burned.76 By destroying their enemies names, the Egyptians believed
they also destroyed the threat they posed.
Orientation: The Western Homelands
The association of the Tjemeh and Tjehnu with the western regions of the
Egyptian world is present in the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. The earliest explicit
placement of Tjehnu in the west appears in the 6th Dynasty autobiography of Harkhuf,
during the reign of Pepi II.77 Harkhuf records that he found the ruler of Yam (a southern
region)78 heading to the land of the Tjemeh:

r Hwi TmH r qaH imnt n pt

in order to smite the Tjemeh at the western bend of the sky.
th

The 12 Dynasty Story of Sinuhe begins with the death of King Amenemhat I, while
his son Senusret (I) is away leading a campaign against the Tjemeh

.79

Senusret I, returning to Egypt with Tjemeh prisoners and cattle, is met by messengers sent
from the royal court80:

74 Hutchinson and Smith 1996, Ethnicity, 6.

75 For examples, refer to the execration texts included in this work on pages 74-75.
76 Robert K. Ritner, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice (Chicago: Oriental Institute

Press, 1993), 136-142. Kerry Muhlestein, Execration Ritual, in UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
(Los Angeles, 2008).
77 Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 125-6.
78 David OConnor, The Locations of Yam and Kush and Their Historical Implications, Journal of the
American Research Center in Egypt 23 (1986): 29.
79 Alan H. Gardiner, Notes on the Story of Sinuhe (Paris: Librairie Honor Champion, 1916), 123.
80 Gardiner, Notes on the Story of Sinuhe, 124.

20

r gs imnty r rdit rx sA nsw

to the western side in order to inform the kings son (of his fathers death).
From the recto inscription of a New Kingdom stele erected by Amenhotep III at his
mortuary temple is a speech that Amun gives to the king promising to deliver to him the
foreigners from the four cardinal directions, south, north, west and east81:

di.i Hr.i ir imnt biAyt.i n.k di.i iTt.k THnw

I turn my face to the west and I cause a wonder for you. I cause you to conquer
the Tjehnu.82
This text called upon the Tjehnu as the western representative of the Egyptian cosmos. It
will be considered again for its placement of other ethnic groups. The Egyptians also
used the Tjehnu as one of the three foreign races whose representatives are smited by
the Egyptian king to show his dominion over the entire world.83
The Rebu and Meshwesh were also associated with Egypts west, although this
association does not assure that the ethnic groups originated there. They were described
approaching Egypt from the west84:

wn rb85 mSwS snDm Hr kmt iw iTi.w nA dmiw pA rwD imnt

the Rebu and the Meshwesh were dwelling in Egypt, plundering the towns and
the western shore (of the Nile).

81 Petrie, Six Temples at Thebes, 25 and plate 12.

82 The text was also copied by Ramses III. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical

V, 97.
83 Mentuhotep Nebhepetre II smiting the three races (sTAw, sTtyw, THnw) in Elisa Fiore Marochetti, The
Reliefs of the Chapel of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep at Gebelein (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 51. Also refer to
footnote 40.
84 Wolja Erichsen, Papyrus Harris I: Hieroglyphische Transkription (Brussels: Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca,
1933), 93.
85 These names (Rebu and Meshwesh) are examples of group writing. As such, they are transliterated
without the vowels, following Junge. Friedrich Junge, Late Egyptian Grammar: An Introduction
(Oxford: Griffith Institute, 2001), 41-44, and especially 42.

21

In at least one case, the Tjehnu performed a northern role in the Egyptian
cosmography. The caption beside a scene of Ramses II smiting a man clearly marked as a
Tjehnu

in the Beit el-Wali temple86 further adds the description:

ptpt xAst mHty, trampling the northern foreign land. In the temple, the

Tjehnu join scenes of ethnic groups representing the north and east on the northern
walls.87 This grouping of western, northern, and eastern neighbors on the north side,
while the representative of the south (Kush) take up the southern side of the temple, is an
example of a convenient grouping of the northernmost neighbors rather than a
redefinition of Tjehnu as a northerner. It does indicate that in the mind of the Egyptians,
the Tjehnu were more comparable for categorization with the Northerners and Easterners
than with the Southerners.
During the Ramesside Period when Egypt experienced a steady encroachment of
various immigrating peoples from the west, the Westerners were often discussed together
in Egyptian texts. The texts from this period illustrate the united front that the Egyptians
perceived coming toward them from the west. At times, the discourse indicates that the
Egyptians considered the ethnonyms Tjehnu and Tjemeh as umbrella terms for the
western ethnic groups,88 under which various other western peoples could be described89:

tfi THnw iryw Sdt iw.sn twt dmD nn r-a.sn m rb spdw mSwS
The Tjehnu are in motion, making a plot. They are assembled, united without
their limit, consisting of Rebu, Sepedu and Meshwesh.

86Epigraphic Survey, The Beit el-Wali Temple of Ramses II (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1967), 23

and plate 24.

87 The ethnic identities of the northerners are only identifiable through their visual stylization; the
texts clarifying their ethnicities are now destroyed. Epigraphic Survey, The Beit el-Wali Temple of
Ramesses II, plates 11-14.
88 Edgerton and Wilson, Historical Records of Ramesses III: The Texts in Medinet Habu volumes I and II,
20.
89 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical V, 12.

22

pA TmH iw(w) dmD m bw wa m rb spdw mSwS

The Tjemeh have come, united in one place, consisting of Rebu, Sepedu and
Meshwesh.90
In both of these examples the Tjehnu and Tjemeh are mentioned first, likely because their
longstanding presence in Egyptian cultural awareness made them the most familiar of the
Westerners to the Egyptians, perhaps even synonymous with the western regions. Adding
to these more general ethnic terms, the Egyptians specified exactly which western
peoples they were referring to, here, the Rebu, Sepedu91 and Meshwesh.
As seen in the examples above, these western peoples were often referenced en
masse, but this did not preclude the Egyptian understanding that each ethnic group
inhabited its own distinct, cultural land92:

pA tA TmHw pd iry.w nhr mSwS axy.[sn kAp] m tA.sn

The land of Tjemeh fled, they went running, and the Meshwesh, [they] rose up,
[taking shelter] in their land.
This provides evidence of individuality among the western ethnic groups, lending validity
to the idea that they should be treated distinctly, with discrete societal leadership and
goals. A description from Merneptahs Poetical Stele briefly describes what the
Egyptians thought of the lifestyle that the Rebu enjoyed in their own homeland93:

90 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical V, 22: line 12.
91 The Sepedu only appear in the inscriptions of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. Bates notes their

orthographic similarity to Esbet, another ethnonym only mentioned in the Medinet Habu records,
and proposes that they may be the same people group. Bates, The Eastern Libyans: An Essay, 47.
92 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical V, 24: lines 4-5.
93 Petrie, Six Temples at Thebes, plate 14: row 10.

23

bnd n rb qn.sn anx sxr nfr n qdd m-Xnw tA sxt

It goes ill for the Rebu; they have ceased living the good manner of going around
within the countryside.
Together, these texts show that the Egyptians were aware that a distinct homeland existed
for each of the western peoples, an essential element of recognizing an ethnic group.
They also perceived enough compatibility among them that their collaboration, as in
instances of war with a common enemy, was a natural outcome.
Common Culture: Language, Dress, and Customs
While there is no extant evidence of the type of languages spoken by the
Westerners or what those languages were called by the people who spoke them, Spell PT
301 does indicate that they spoke a language foreign to the Egyptians94:

iTi n.k wrrt m Aaaw wrw aA xntyw THnw

Take for yourself the wrrt-crown from the great and mighty jabberers who are
over Tjehnu.
Faulkner commented that the word Aaaw, jabberers, is intended to give the impression
that when the Egyptians heard foreigners speak it was only unintelligible babble.95 The
word was used for the speakers of any foreign language,96 and in this text linked an
unspecified foreign language to the land of Tjehnu. Another indication of the linguistic
differences between the Egyptians and the Westerners is found in a Ramesside text from
Deir el-Medina97:

94Kurt Sethe, Die Altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte nach den Papierabdrucken und Photographien des

Berliner Museums I (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1908), 234. Anthony Spalinger, Some Notes on the
Libyans of the Old Kingdom and Later Historical Reflexes, Society for the Study of Egyptian
Antiquities Journal 9 (1979): 130.
95 Raymond O. Faulkner, Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 90.
96 See it also applied to the Nehesyu on page 87.
97 From the Rhetorical Stele of Ramesses III, found at Deir el-Medina in Chapel C: Kitchen, Ramesside
Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical V, 91: lines 5-7. Serge Sauneron, La diffrenciation des

24

di.f DAy.w itrw in r kmt st irw m nxtw n nsw nxt sDm.w mdt rmT Hr Sms nsw iry.f sth
mdt.sn
He made them (the Rebu and Meshwesh) cross the river, and brought into Egypt,
they are put in fortresses of the mighty king. They heard the speech of the people
(Egyptians), while serving the king, and he obstructed their language.
There are fewer descriptions of the Westerners cultural dress as might have been
expected because of how brightly and intricately the Egyptians visually portrayed their
clothing. The Poetical Stele of Merneptah, also called the Israel Stele, was written to
commemorate the kings victory over the Westerners, and includes all of their most
common ethnonyms: the Tjemeh, the Tjehnu, the Meshwesh and the Rebu. It contains a
noteworthy image of the Rebu ruler as he flees from Egypt after his military defeat and
makes an important comment on the cultural dress of the Rebu98:

wr Xsy xrw n rb war m nfrw99 grH n wai.f bn mHwt Hr tp.f

The defeated, fallen Great One of the Rebu fled in the end of the night alone by
himself, without a feather on his head.
Later in the text, this ruler of Rebu is cursed by his own people, and called100:

wr xsf SAy bin mHwt

a Great One, repressed by fate and evil of feather.

langages daprs la tradition gyptienne, Le Bulletin de lInstitut Franais dArchologie Orientale 60
(1960): 41.
98 Petrie, Six Temples at Thebes, plate 14: row 6.
99 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 132. Alan H. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar
(Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1957), 266.
100 Petrie, Six Temples at Thebes, plate 14: row 8. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and
Biographical IV, 14-15.

25

These are two rare references to a cultural element of the western peoples that was
essential to their visualization in Egyptian art, and possibly one of their index features:
the feather worn on their head.
Egyptian military protocol for counting the dead enemy involved the removal of
enemy soldiers right hands and phalli. Merneptahs Poetical Stele includes the phrases
Hnnw qrnt and Hnnw m qrnt, phalli with
foreskins several times in the lists of slain enemy soldiers.101 The Egyptians noted that
the phalli collected from the Rebu soldiers were uncircumcised, even explicitly
contrasting this attribute with that of other defeated enemies who did not have
foreskins.102 This detail about the Rebu provides a glimpse into the cultural customs of
this ethnic group, and can be categorized as one of their ethnic index features, something
visible to an external culture that made their ethnicity instantly recognizable.103 The
Egyptians awareness of this feature is reverberated centuries later when Piankhy,
founder of the 25th Dynasty, deposed several kinglets in Egypt, and allowed only one of
the four kings to enter his palace because the others were uncircumcised, and as a result,
impure.104 Together, these texts illustrate a number of cultural features among the western
peoples that the Egyptians linked with them: a foreign language, cultural dress, and
cultural traditions.
Associations, Epithets, and Descriptions
The unique association of Egypts western neighbors with the sky in the mind of
the Egyptians has already been seen in the autobiography of Harkhuf, as quoted above,

101 Manassa, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah, plates 11-12. James Henry Breasted, Ancient

Records of Egypt: historical documents from the earliest times to the Persian conquest III (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1906), 247: Note h.
102 The Sherden, Shekelesh and Ekwesh are described as circumcised. They originated from the
foreign lands of the sea. Manassa, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah, 163.
103 Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity, 24.
104 Tormund Eide, Fontes Historiae Nubiorum: Textual Sources for the History of the Middle Nile Region
Between the Eighth Century BC and the Sixth Century AD I (Bergen: University of Bergen, 1994), 111
and 117.

26

where the Tjemeh were placed at the western bend of the sky. This association of the
western regions with the sky is also present in Spell PT 570105:

nTrw niwtyw ixm-sk xns tA tHnw

O, local gods, indestructible stars<s>, which traverse the land of Tjehnu.
The association with the indestructible stars continues in Spell PT 665C106:

wn n.k s 6 xsf.w THnw Ssp.k a ixmw-sk

For you, the six door-bolts107 (which) ward of Tjehnu, are opened grasp the
hand of the indestructible stars.
Cooney interprets both of these mortuary texts that refer to the western land of Tjehnu as
metaphorical in meaning.108 The West was the place to which the deceased traveled after
death, where Osiris was known as the First of the Westerners. While the land of Tjehnu
in these texts was more likely in the realm of the afterlife than that of the geographical
world, its association with the west persisted.
The majority of Egypts descriptions of her western neighbors come from the socalled Libyan Wars during the Ramesside period. These interactions likely tainted their
perception with a militarized quality and obscured perceptions of western ethnicities that
might have been more accurate during a time of peace. During Ramses IIIs second war
against the Westerners, the Meshwesh and Tjemeh were called109

ihw (for

105 Sethe, Die Altgyptischen Pyramidentexte nach den Papierabdrcken und Photographien des

Berliner Museums II, 295.

106 Gustav Jquier, Les pyramides des reines Neit et Apouit (Cairo: Imprimerie de lInstitut Franais
dArchologie Orientale, 1933), plate 28.
107 Spalinger identified these six door-bolts with the six regions surrounding Egypt. Spalinger,
Some Notes on the Libyans of the Old Kingdom, 131.
108 Cooney concludes that this Tjehnu is likely a mythical one, not a geographical one: the Land of
Tjehnu was one of the last places through which the deceased king had to pass before becoming an
Imperishable Star. Cooney, Egypts Encounter with the West, 112.
109 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical V, 63.

27

Ahw) miserable110 and bdS

languishing, or weak. The two most

common epithets for Egypts enemies were used frequently for the Westerners:
xrw, fallen,111 and

Xsy, alternatively translated as wretched,

despicable, defeated, weak, or vile.112 Mereyey, ruler of the Rebu is called bwt
an abomination and

sHwr rn.f, his/whose name is cursed.113

The inscriptions at Medinet Habu contain a form of humiliation that compares

Westerners to women114:

dx.i tA n tmH nn prt.sn mSwS sai.sn n Hryt.i

I defeated the land of Tjemeh; their seed does not exist. The Meshwesh writhe
through the fear of me.
The word sai is used to express writhing caused by birth pangs115 and is appropriately
demarcated with a pregnant woman determinative (Gardiner Sign-list B 2). This text
contains a parallel destruction of these westerners by ensuring the Tjemeh men could not
reproduce and by reducing the Meshwesh to the harmless status of pregnant women.
Another example of this is a lexical comparison between Meshesher,116 ruler of the
Meshwesh, and womanly experiences. Meshesher is described as being117:

110 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache I, 12.
111 Leonard H. Lesko and Barbara Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian I (Providence: B.C. Scribe

Publications, 2002), 369.

112 Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian I, 388. Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 204.
David Lorton, The So-Called Vile Enemies of the King of Egypt (in the Middle Kingdom and Dynasty
XVIII), Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 10 (1973): 65.
113 Petrie, Six Temples at Thebes, plate XIV: row 9.
114 From the First Libyan War of Ramesses III. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and
Biographical V, 20.
115 Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian II, 12.
116 Cooney, Egypts Encounter with the West, 192-193.
117 Edgerton and Wilson, Historical Records of Ramesses III: The Texts in Medinet Habu volumes I and
II, 79: Note 23e.

28

pgA Hr tA, extended on the ground. The word pgA literally means to
open or to extend and the orthography is typically completed with
list A 2) or

(Gardiner Sign-

(Gardiner Sign-list D 40) as the determinative.118 In the same text, the

Hdy limp119 or spread out120 by the

Meshwesh and the Tjemeh were made

king, written with the determinative of a woman giving birth rather than

(Gardiner

Sign-list A 61). The implication of both texts is the transformation of these western
enemies into women who are humiliatingly opened and spread out by the Egyptian
king.121
A recurring form of rhetoric in Egyptian texts is the use of similes, particularly for
explaining the foreignness of their neighbors by comparing them with animals or animal
behavior. The intention of these comparisons was not only the humiliation of the
foreigner, but also the exaltation of the Egyptian king. A stele established at Buhen by
Thutmose III describes Tjehnu submitting to the kings power, and coming before him
with tribute on their backs122:

[] mi ir Tsmw, like

dogs do.123
Characteristics that the Egyptians considered specific to the western peoples also
exist. Two perceptions of the western peoples reappear frequently in Egyptian discourse:
they were not content with their geographical boundaries, and they actively plotted the
ruin of Egypt. In the Egyptian worldview the boundaries of Egypt had not been
established by men, but by the gods, and upheld an essential demarcation between chaos

118 From his Second Libyan War. Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian I, 158.
119 Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian I, 340.

120 Second Libyan War of Ramesses III. Edgerton and Wilson, Historical Records of Ramesses III: The

Texts in Medinet Habu volumes I and II, 81: Note 32d.

121 David OConnor, Egypts Views of Others, in Never Had the Like Occurred: Egypts View of its Past
(Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2003), 157.
122 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 809.
123 A similar text is found in Merneptahs Great Karnak Inscription, in which a ruler is compared to a
dog, but because of lacunae it is unclear if this comparison was meant for Mereyey the Rebu ruler, or
a ruler of one of the Sea Peoples. Manassa, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah, plate 6.

29

and order, alien and familiar.124 As a result, an invasion of foreign peoples represented
more than a military threat; it was an offense to the gods and the termination of the
established order. The Egyptian kings during the Ramesside period made an effort to
repel the western invaders, and spoke about them as bringers of evil to Egypt.
When Ramesses III constructed a temple dedicated to Thoth at Hermopolis he
also built a wall surrounding it, made especially for125:

saSAt xAstyw tHnw wn thA tAS.sn Dr Xry-Hat

repelling the Tjehnu foreigners who violate their boundary since of old.
In another text he expounds on his destruction of the three western peoples126:

pA tA TmH spd mSwS wn m iTA Hr saDA kmt hrw nb

the Tjemeh, Sepedu, and Meshwesh who were capturing and ruining Egypt every
day.
The word saDA,127 to ruin, or to harm, is used again to describe the hearts of the
Tjemeh, Rebu, Sepedu and Meshwesh128:

ib.[sn] mH m saDA Xr pnat,

[their] hearts are filled with wrongdoing, and possessing perversity. (literally:
being upside down)
The Egyptians emphasized that the Westerners had made sxrw plans for Egypt129 and
were actively scheming against it130:

124 Jan Assmann, The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 2002), 151-3.

125 Erichsen, Papyrus Harris I, 67: line 2.
126 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical V, 14-15.
127 Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian II, 16.
128 From the First Libyan War of Ramesses III. Epigraphic Survey, Earlier Historical Records of
Ramesses III (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1930), plate 27: columns 27-8.

30

rb Hr wAwA bin r irr.w Hr kmt

the Rebu are plotting evil, which they will do against Egypt.
The Egyptians clearly perceived the Rebu as the most sinister ethnic group among the
Westerners. They are described as mobilizing combined armies against Egypt,131
leading what might be an attack against the Tjehnu, and mentioned in what appears to be
a record of accusation that their bad advice was to blame for the war with the
Egyptians.132 In Merneptahs record of his war against the Westerners, the blame is
placed on the Rebu for the coming of the Shekelesh and Teresh, perpetuating their image
as conniving initiators.133
The Egyptian perception of the character of these western peoples during the late
New Kingdom was that they were scheming and conniving, and eagerly planned the
downfall of Egypt. This was clearly the result of their unified encroachment on Egyptian
land and plundering of Egyptian towns during the Ramesside period.
There are a number of other ethnic groups, some of which are only mentioned
once in Egyptian texts that are briefly associated with the Meshwesh and Rebu invasion
during the reign of Ramses III.134 Because of their appearance with other, unmistakably
western neighbors they have conventionally been categorized as other Libyan ethnic
groups or tribes. Little can be said about these obscure ethnic groups; their ethnic and
historical identities as well as origins remain especially dubious.

129 Epigraphic Survey, Earlier Historical Records of Ramesses III, plate 27: columns: 27, 29, 30.

130 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical IV, 10: lines 12-13. Manassa, The Great

Karnak Inscription of Merneptah, plate 15: column 70.

131 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical IV, 23.
132 A speech by an unspecified group of people that may have been intended for the general enemies
of Egypt, or the Westerners as a whole, says: The Rebu caused our confusion as well as [their own],
for we listened to their counsels, and (now) our heat is taken away and we are upon the way [of]
crime like <them>. Edgerton and Wilson, Historical Records of Ramesses III: The Texts in Medinet
Habu volumes I and II, 84.
133 Manassa, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah, plate 13: line 56.
134 Including the Sepedu, Imukehek, Qeheq, Qeyqesh, Esbet, Ekbet, Shai, Hes and Beqen. It is even
unclear if some are simply an orthographic error of another ethnonym. Bates, The Eastern Libyans:
An Essay, 46-7. Cooney assess that it is possible some of them might be better characterized as Sea
Peoples than as Libyans. Cooney, Egypts Encounter with the West: Race, Culture and Identity, 165-
167.

31

Summary
Modern historians are unable to study the ethnicities of Egypts western neighbors
in their own language. Instead, they have to rely entirely on sources external to their
culture, such as those left by the Egyptians and, later, the Greeks. The application of the
general ethnonym Libyan to all tribes and lands (Meshwesh, Rebu, Tjehnu, Tjemeh,
etc.) as is the convention for English translations, causes general confusion and lack of
specificity in modern scholarship. It has led to the gross oversimplification that all of the
western peoples should be categorized as Libyan, a pre-conception that is now hard to
reverse. Referring to all of Egypts western neighbors with the same name destroys any
possibility of grasping their distinctiveness, and as a result, the essence of what forms
their individual ethnic identities. Three main features that identify an ethnic group can be
found in Egyptian texts concerning Egypts western neighbors:
1. The use of common proper names (Tjehnu, Tjemeh, Meshwesh, Rebu, and others) for
referring to individual ethnic groups
2. The awareness of cultural elements, including a distinct language that was dissimilar
to the language spoken by the Egyptians (Tjehnu); practice of a custom (Rebu)
uncommon to the Egyptians; and an established article of adornment (Rebu)
3. The awareness of distinct homelands for each ethnic group (Tjehnu, Tjemeh,
Meshwesh, Rebu)

32

Chapter 3. The Northerners

The Egyptian awareness of northerners as an embodiment of foreignness, and the
north as the delineation of the end of the Egyptian world, was recorded in writing as early
as the 2nd Dynasty reign of Khasekhemwy on two stone vessels.135 In the Egyptian
cosmography the northern border was located at the Mediterranean Sea,136 reflective of
Egyptian topography. References to the northland and northerners meant the marshes
of the Egyptian Delta before the Middle Kingdom.137 Egypts ethnic neighbors located
true north were the island inhabitants, but they did not function as the northern neighbors
in cosmographic statements until the New Kingdom.138
The Sea Peoples
While applying the term Sea People to a number of unique ethnic groups is
homogenizing, it is at least accurate (Table 2). Because of their historical significance in
the Mediterranean region, these peoples have been extensively studied, relying heavily
upon comparison with sources from other ancient cultures, including the Hittites, due to
restricted information available in Egyptian written records.139 The majority of their
appearances in Egyptian sources are restricted to the Ramesside Period,140 when a

135 Both vessels read: rnpt

aHA Hwt mHtyw, year of fighting and smiting the northerners. De Wit,
Enemies of the State: Perceptions of otherness and State Formation in Egypt, 273-276.
136 Mario Liverani, International Relations in the Ancient Near East, 1600-1100 B.C. (New York:
Palgrave, 2001), 31.
137 Donald B. Redford, Egypt and Western Asia in the Old Kingdom, Journal of the American
Research Center in Egypt 23 (1986): 126: note 10. Refer to the inscription of Mentuhotep Nebhepetre
II, in which the Delta played the role of the northerner: Marochetti, The Reliefs of the Chapel of
Mentuhotep at Gebelein, 11 and 135.
138 Redford, Egypt and Western Asia in the Old Kingdom, 126. See also his Table 1 for the 1st
Dynasty label of King Den smiting the East, with a stylistically identifiable northern neighbor.
139 G.A. Wainwright, Some Sea-Peoples and Others in the Hittite Archives, The Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 25 (1939): 149. G.A. Wainwright, The Teresh, The Etruscans and Asia Minor, Anatolian
Studies 9 (1959): 202. N.K. Sandars, The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the ancient Mediterranean (London:
Thames & Hudson, 1985), 111; Trevor R. Bryce, Lukka Revisited, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 51
(1992): 121.
140 The Danuna, Sherden and Lukka appear as early as the Amarna Letters from the reigns of
Amenhotep III/IV. For the Danuna see Amarna letter EA 151; for the Sherden see Amarna letters EA
81, 122, 123; for the Lukka see Amarna letter EA 38. William L. Moran, The Amarna Letters
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

33

number of ethnic groups who were intrinsically linked to the islands or the sea
attempted to invade and settle in Egypt.141 However, the Egyptians awareness of
islanders living in the wAD-wr, literally the Great Green, or the Sea,142 predates the
appearance of the Sea Peoples.143 The existence of the islands in their greater
geographical awareness appears in texts as early as the reign of Senusret I, in the tale of
Sinuhe.144
Egyptian texts145 and the Sea Peoples
Ethnic Group

Islands

Sherden

Sea
K, AS, MH, HP

Lukka
Danuna

HP

Shekelesh

Peleset

MH

Tjeker

MH, W

Teresh

MH, R

Ekwesh

K, A

Weshesh

HP

Table 2: Sample of Texts Associating Ethnic Groups with Islands or the Sea

141 David OConnor, The Sea Peoples and the Egyptian Sources, in The Sea Peoples and Their World:

A Reassessment (Philadelphia: University Museum Publications, 2000), 85.

142 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 56.
143 iww Hryw-ib wAD-wr, islands which are in the midst of the Great Green are included in Thutmose
IIIs Poetical Stele: Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 616.
144 iww nw wAD-wr, islands of the Great Green: Gardiner, Notes on the Story of Sinuhe, 81.
145 Abbreviations for Texts in Table 2: HP = Harris Papyrus; K = Karnak Inscription; AS = Papyrus
Anastasi II; A = Athribis Stele; MH = Medinet Habu; R = Rhetorical Stele; W = Wenamun
Matthew J. Adams and Margaret E. Cohen, The Sea Peoples in Primary Sources, in Philistines and
Other Sea Peoples in Text and Archaeology (Atlanta: Archaeology and Biblical Studies, 2013), 646-
664.

34

In the Qadesh Battle inscriptions from the reign of Ramesses II, the Sherden146
are included among the Egyptian troops,147 and the Lukka148
among the large Hittite coalition.149 In the reign of his son, however, the
Sherden exhibited a change in alliance, and fought against the Egyptian army and
alongside many other peoples of the sea. There are four extant sources for Merneptahs
war with these peoples, the most important of which is the Great Karnak Inscription, now
badly fragmented.150 This inscription recorded a war against the Rebu, one of Egypts
western neighbors, who led an army comprised of the Shekelesh
, the Lukka
Teresh

, the Sherden

, the
.151

and the Ekwesh

Years later, the Sherden were listed again among the Egyptian army152 in Ramesses IIIs
records of repelling a coalition of people groups from the isles,153 which included the154:
who were joined by the Peleset155

Shekelesh

146 No. 268 in: Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica I, 194-199.

147 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical II, 11. Erichsen, Papyrus Harris I, 91:

line 1. Jeffrey P. Emanuel, Srdn from the Sea: The Arrival, Integration, and Acculturation of a Sea
People, Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 5 (2013): 14.
148 No. 247 in: Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica I, 127-8.
149 G. A. Wainwright, Some Sea Peoples, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 47 (1961): 71.
150 Eric H. Cline, The Sea Peoples Possible Role in the Israelite Conquest of Canaan, in Doron:
Festschrift for Spyros E. Iakovidis (London: University College London Press, 2009), 192.
151 Manassa, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah, plate 4: lines 13-14.
152 Epigraphic Survey, Earlier Historical Records of Ramesses III, plate 29: line 39.
153 Epigraphic Survey, Earlier Historical Records of Ramesses III, plate 44: line 15 and plate 46: line 18;
Erichsen, Papyrus Harris I, 92: line 17.
154 Note that the orthography for these ethnic groups is rarely consistent, even within the same
source.
155 No. 270 in: Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica I, 200-205.

35

, the Danuna156

, the Weshesh
.157

, and the Tjeker

The Egyptians considered two details important for identifying these ethnic
groups: they were located geographically north of Egypt, and they inhabited islands in the
sea. These two descriptors reoccur frequently in conjunction with these ethnonyms. An
inscription of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu describes two of these ethnic groups as
northerners158:

iry xAswt mHtt nwT m Haw.sn m prst Tk[r]

the northern foreign lands were trembling in their bodies, namely the Peleset and
the Tjek[er].
In Merneptahs inscription at Karnak the Ekwesh, Teresh, Lukka, Shekelesh and Sherden
are also called159:

mH[tyw] iw.[w] n iww nbw, the

northerners who came of all islands. Another line from the same text reiterates their
northern-ness, and also their aquatic origins160:

ist rf xAswt mHtt nty m nAy.sn iww Hr nwT m Haw.sn

now then, the northern foreign lands who are in their islands, are trembling in
their bodies.

156 No. 244 in: Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica I, 124.
157 Also spelled Zeker in English translations. No. 269 in: Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica I,

199. For a discussion of the Egyptian sources in which the Tjeker appear, see: Hans Goedicke, The
Report of Wenamun (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 175-183.
158 Epigraphic Survey, Earlier Historical Records of Ramesses III, plate 28: line 51.
159 Manassa, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah, plate 2: line 1.
160 Epigraphic Survey, Earlier Historical Records of Ramesses III, plate 37: lines 8-9.

36

In the historical section of the Harris Papyrus, composed during the reign of Ramesses IV
but recording events from the reign of his father, Ramesses III, the Danuna were linked
directly to the islands161:

dAnwnA m nAy.sn

iww, Danuna in their islands. In the same text, the Sherden and Weshesh were
called162:

n pA ym, from the sea.

During Ramesses IIIs war against these Sea Peoples the ethnic groups are
frequently named en masse, representing what the Egyptians apparently saw as a united
front163:

tAy.w iwnmkt m prsT Tkr SAkrSA dAnwnA wASASA tAw dmD

their confederation, namely the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Danuna, and
Weshesh, lands united.
As a confederation of peoples, they are described having sxrw plans164 for Egypt, in
the same way the western peoples, as combined foreign forces, were also described at
Medinet Habu. The Peleset, Tjeker and Danuna are each individually called xrw,
fallen.165 On a stele of Ramesses II from Tanis, the Sherden are described as having
a166:

bStw HAty, rebellious of heart.

While the narrative describes the Sea Peoples in groups, no doubt to reflect their

combined strength, this did not preempt the Egyptians from individualizing some of
them. In the tally of the hands and phalli of dead enemies, the Sherden, Shekelesh and

161 Erichsen, Papyrus Harris I, 92: line 18.

162 Erichsen, Papyrus Harris I, 93: line 1.
163 Epigraphic Survey, Earlier Historical Records of Ramesses III, plate 46: lines 17-18.
164 Epigraphic Survey, Earlier Historical Records of Ramesses III, plate 46: line 18.
165 Epigraphic Survey, Earlier Historical Records of Ramesses III. For Danuna and Peleset: plate 44; For

Tjeker: plate 43.

166 William Flinders Petrie, Tanis - Part II: Nebesheh (Am) and Defenneh (Tahpanhes) (London: Gilbert
and Rivington, 1888), plate 2: fig. 78.

37

Ekwesh are commented upon for being circumcised.167 These brief comments on the
cultures of some of the sea peoples probably reflect an increased interaction between
the Egyptians and a few of these groups, making them suited for more informed
descriptions.
The Peleset is also the only ethnic group to be described with a homeland more
specific than the islands or the Sea. 168 On the Rhetorical Stele of Ramesses III,
among a list of Sea Peoples, the Peleset is referred to as169: tA prst, the land of Peleset
expressing awareness of a homeland. At Medinet Habu when the rulers of Kush, Kode,
Tjemeh, and Tjehnu are individually called Xsy, defeated, the mention of the Peleset
specifies only170:
At Medinet Habu the Peleset are described

xAswt prst, the countries of Peleset.

171

axy prsT kAp m dmi.sn

the Peleset are suspended, being hidden in their towns.
At Medinet Habu, named alongside the rulers (wr Xsy) of Hatti and Amor, who
are given the typical ruler title and epithet, the leaders of the Peleset and Tjeker are called
aA, magnate.172 Perhaps because of their nomadic, migratory status during the early 20th
Dynasty, the Egyptians did not recognize the Peleset or Tjeker leaders as proper rulers.173
In the Report of Wenamun, written at the end of the 20th Dynasty, Wenamun travels to
Dor, a Tjeker town where he meets Beder, the Great One (wr) of Dor.174 At this point the
Egyptians recognized an established homeland for the Tjeker and could identify

167 Manassa, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah, plate 12: line 52.
168 Danel Kahn, The Campaign of Ramesses III against Philistia, Journal of Ancient Egyptian

Interconnections 3 (2011): 4.
169 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical V, 73.
170 Epigraphic Survey, Later Historical Records of Ramesses III, plate 118. The Peleset are also the only
Sea People included in these scenes and captions.
171 Epigraphic Survey, Earlier Historical Records of Ramesses III, plate 29: lines 20-24.
172 Note that the Sherden and the Teresh are included in the same list, but without any titles. Giveon,
Les Bdouins Shosou Des Documents gyptiens, 138-139.
173 This may be corroborated by the application of aA to the Shasu leaders, who were nomads,
although Egyptian records contain many references to the Shasu homeland. Refer to pages 58-63.
174 Bernd U. Schipper, Die Erzhlung des Wenamun: Ein Literaturwerk im Spannungsfeld von Politik,
Geschichte und Religion (Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2005), 45.

38

permanent locations within the Tjeker homeland, such as the town (dmit) of Dor.175 It is
reasonable to assume that this change in titles for the Tjeker from aA in the early 20th
Dynasty to wr in the late 20th Dynasty could be attributable to their change from a
migratory people to a stationary one.
The Report of Wenamun also contains mention of

tA

n i-r-s,176 the land of Alasiya, generally identified as the island of Cyprus.177 Wenamun
reaches this land by fate of the wind after leaving the Tjeker harbor. An ethnonym for the
towns inhabitants is not included in the narrative, but they are twice called rmT,
people.178 There are two other notable descriptions of Alasiya in the Report: first, the
leader of Alasiya is a woman179:

HA-ti-bA180 tA wr n pA dmi181
Hatiba, the Great One of the town.
Second, Wenamuns pronounces that Alasiya is a place where right is always done:

i.ir.tw grg n dmi nb i.ir.tw mAat n pA tA n i-r-s

One does evil in every town, (but) one does justice in the land of Alasiya.

175 Goedicke, The Report of Wenamun, 182.

176 Following Schippers transliteration: Schipper, Die Erzhlung des Wenamun: Ein Literaturwerk im

Spannungsfeld von Politik, Geschichte und Religion, 97.

177 Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature II: The New Kingdom (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2006), 230: note 22. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica I, 131. For the
placement of Alasiya on the island of Cyprus see: Y. L. Holmes, The Location of Alaiya, Journal of
the American Oriental Society 91 (1971). For the placement of Alasiya on the Syrian coast see: G. A.
Wainwright, Alashia-Alaa and Asy, Klio 14 (1914-1915).
178 Schipper, Die Erzhlung des Wenamun: Ein Literaturwerk im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Geschichte
und Religion, 98, 101.
179 Schipper, Die Erzhlung des Wenamun: Ein Literaturwerk im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Geschichte
und Religion, 97. It is unclear if this was the social protocol for Alasiya - the Amarna Letters EA 33-40
contain reference to a male ruler: Goedicke, The Report of Wenamun, 127 and note 194.
180 Following Goedickes transliteration: Goedicke, The Report of Wenamun, 126-127. Also see the
discussion of her name and title in: Camilla Di Biase-Dyson, Foreigners and Egyptians in the Late
Egyptian Stories: Linguistic, Literary, and Historical Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 322-325.
181 Note that while her name is determined by a seated woman (Gardiner Sign-list B 1), the title wr
has not been feminized.

39

While the extant copy of Wenamuns Report abruptly ends after Wenamun reaches
Alasiya, providing little else about its inhabitants, Wenamuns association of mAat, truth
or justice with the islanders is notable.

The people of Keftiu
The ethnic identity of the people of Keftiu is obscure in Egyptian texts; the items
that the Egyptians obtained by trade from them appear far more often in Egyptian records
than the peoples do themselves. Wainwright identified only a single use of the Egyptian
kftiwi,182 Keftiui (and the projected plural of Keftiuiu),

exonym

although it is impossible to know if the ethnonym experienced wider use or not.183 While
the name of their homeland is very clear, 184 kfAtiw

or kftiw

, their orientation varies: they are associated with the west, the north,
and occasionally the island rulers, who were grouped separately. The people of Keftiu
have been included with Egypts northern neighbors in the present work in recognition of
its association with the islands185 and its inclusion with northern neighbors in several
topographical lists.186

182 G. A. Wainwright, The Keftiu-People of the Egyptian Monuments, Annals of Archaeology and

Anthropology 6 (1914): 28; Strange, Caphtor/Keftiu: A New Investigation, 101.

183 Other references to an individual from Keftiu are genitival, direct or indirect.
184 For kfAtiw

see: Alan H. Gardiner, The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage

(Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1969), 32. For kftiw

Dynastie IV, 1098.
185 See also:

see: Sethe, Urkunden der 18.

Keftiu ships in the Annals of Thutmose III: Sethe, Urkunden der 18.
Dynastie IV, 707.
186 As further evidence, Wainwright illustrated that in topographical lists, the people of Keftiu were
grouped with northern locations: Naharen, Upper and Lower Retenu, Kheta, Qadesh, Tunip and
others: G.A. Wainwright, Asiatic Keftiu, American Journal of Archaeology 56 (1952): 198. In the
tombs of Amenemhab (TT 85) and Kenamun (TT 162) the people of Keftiu are also included with the
rulers of Retenu: Nina M. Davies, Foreigners in the Tomb of Amenemhab (No. 85), The Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 20 (1934): 190.

40

In the Hymn of Victory from the reign of Thutmose III, Amun identifies each
region of the Egyptian world and grants the Egyptian king dominion over them. In this
list Keftiu is located to the west of Egypt187:

ii.n.i di.i titi.k tA imnty kfAtyw isy Xr SfSft

I came to cause you to trample on the western land, Keftiu and Isy (Cyprus)
being in awe.
A text that located Keftiu to the north of Egypt is found in the Book of the Day from the
tomb of Ramesses VI188:

niwt.sn pw kfAtyw iw xprw.sn m iww nw pt m wAD-wr mHtt

their town, it is Keftiu. They came into existence in the islands of the sky, in the
northern Great Green.
In a scene of foreigners bringing tribute in the tomb of Rekhmire, the rulers of Keftiu
arrive with the people of the islands189:

wrw nw kfAtyw iww Hry-ib nw wAD-wr

Great Ones of Keftiu and the islands in the midst of the Great Green.
The people of Keftiu were linked with the Aamu in a spell from the London
Medical Papyrus, in which words in the Keftiu language were to be spoken to cure a
northern disease190:

Snt nt tnt-aAmw m Dd n kfAtyw

Spell for the tnt-Aamu (disease), in the saying of Keftiu (language):.191

187 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 616.
188 Strange, Caphtor/Keftiu: A New Investigation, 87.
189 Tomb of Rekhmire: Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 1098.
190 Walter Wreszinski, Der Londoner Medizinische Papyrus (Brit. Museum Nr. 10059) und der Papyrus

Hearst (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1912), 151: no. 32.

191 For attempts at translation of the Keftiu spell, see: F. G. Gordon, The Keftiu Spell, The Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 18 (1932): 67; G. A. Wainwright, Keftiu, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 52

41

There are two ways to interpret this association: that the people of Keftiu were similar to
the Aamu in the minds of the Egyptians and so categorized together in this instance, or
that the Egyptians encountered a foreign illness considered to be of northern/eastern
origins, and they believed that the people of Keftiu had managed to cure it.
These brief mentions demonstrate that the Egyptians identified the Keftiu as a
distinct ethnic group with a unique ethnonym and cultural homeland (even if they were
uncertain of its precise geographical orientation). They were also aware of a language of
Keftiu enough to either preserve a coherent spell in the foreign language, or imitate its
phonemic principles at some length. The textual sources for the people of Keftiu are so
limited that they do not even appear with epithets or descriptions of a positive or negative
kind.
The Aamu and the Setyu
As discussed, Egypts cosmographic north was the marshes of the Delta and its
northern boundary was at the sea. After the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, the role of
the northerner was newly assigned to the aAmw and sTtyw who had represented the eastern
neighbors,192 while the northland had previously referred to the Egyptian Delta. This
shift is visible in their lingering eastern association even into the New Kingdom, as the
Shasu replaced them in the role of easterner.
An important distinction should be remembered when discussing northern ethnic
group names and place names, which are misleadingly handled by the English
translations of Asiatic and Asia for distinct ethnonyms and toponyms. Many
toponyms that are conventionally translated as Asia in English publications are not
lexically related to the ethnonyms translated as Asiatic, as the English translations are.
For example, Upper and Lower Retenu (rTnw) and Naharen (nhrn)193 are toponyms, and
the ethnic groups who resided there were differently named (aAmw or sTtyw).

(1932): 27; Wainwright, The Keftiu-People of the Egyptian Monuments, 82; Strange,
Caphtor/Keftiu: A New Investigation, 99; Evangelos Kyriakidis, Indications on the Nature of the
Language of the Keftiw from Egyptian Sources, gypten & Levante 12 (2002): 213.
192 Refer to the Prophecy of Neferty on page 48.
193 There is, however, at least one instance of Naharen transformed into a title that is evocative of an
ethnonym:
nhry. Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache II, 286.
Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica I, 173.

42

The Egyptians employed numerous terms and ethnonyms for their northern
neighbors194 (Table 3). Their written records indicate that the Egyptians used the primary
ethnonyms aAmw195

and sTtyw196

to which a number of

secondary exonyms could be applied, including the mnTw197

Say198

, the hryw-

(a nisbe adjective literally meaning: those who are upon the

sand), and the nmiw-Say199

(a nisbe adjective literally meaning:

those who travel the sand). Three of these exonyms (aAmw, sTtyw, and mnTw) appear
independently in written records. Three (Hryw-Say, nmiw-Say, and mnTw) can be tentatively
dubbed secondary exonyms.200 Two are explicitly linked with a desert lifestyle it is
easy to imagine how these epithets for the northern/eastern desert peoples could evolve
into ethnonyms in their own right through consistent usage.201
An example of the way the Egyptians used Aamu as an umbrella term for all the
northern peoples can be found in the Qadesh Battle Inscriptions. In the lengthy prayer

194 Phyllis Saretta, Egyptian Perceptions of West Semites in Art and Literature during the Middle

Kingdom, (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1997), 28-34.

195 Asiatic in: Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 38.
196 Asiatic in: Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 255. The earliest extant instance of
sTty is inscribed on an ivory throw-stick from the 1st Dynasty tomb of Qaa, above the relief of a man.
De Wit, Enemies of the State: Perceptions of otherness and State Formation in Egypt, 235-6. In
this work, this ethnonym will be transcribed as Setyu in English. Note, however, that its hieroglyphic
orthography is different from that of the southern ethnonym styw, also transcribed as Setyu in
English. Early uses of sTt and sTtyw may have been for a Delta town, before the term was expanded to
include other northern peoples: William A. Ward, Early Contacts between Egypt, Canaan, and Sinai:
Remarks on the Paper by Amnon Ben-Tor, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 281
(1991): 12.
197 Beduin in: Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 110. Redford credits Hermann Kees
with the likely idea that this exonym, and the name of the Egyptian god Monthu, originate from the
same root word meaning to be wild: Redford, Egypt and Western Asia in the Old Kingdom, 126
and footnote 15. In this work, this ethnonym will be transcribed as Montiu in English, following
Redford.
198 Beduin in: Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 175. Also commonly translated as
sand-farers or sand-travelers. Redford concluded that this term was used first as an attribute of a
ethnic group, and later evolved into an ethnonym of its own right: Redford, Egypt and Western Asia
in the Old Kingdom, 126.
199 Sandfarers in: Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 133.
200 Espinel labeled them pseudo-ethnonyms to indicate their nominal function, but their difference
from primary ethnonyms: Andrs Diego Espinel, Etnicidad y territorio en el Egipto del Reino Antiguo
(Barcelona: Institut dEstudis del Prxim Orient Antic, 2006), 118.
201 Examples of this phenomenon occurring in modernity are the evolution of the terms: hillbilly,
gypsy, and bedouin.

43

Ramesses II spoke at the battle, the king refers to all his enemies gathered there,
including the Hittites and their large coalition of northerners, as Aamu202:

ix Hr ib.k nn amw imn Xsy xm.w nTr

what is your opinion of these Aamu, O Amun, wretches who are ignorant of
god?
This observation of godlessness, or the implication that the Aamu worshiped gods
unknown to the Egyptians, mirrors the descriptions of other godless foreigners or
worshippers of Seth. In the eyes of the Egyptians, the Aamu did not worship the true, i.e.
Egyptian, gods.203
The Middle Kingdom Story of Sinuhe is a unique text that provides insight into
the life of the Aamu, and more specifically, the lifestyle of an outsider (Egyptian) who
successfully adopted their homeland and culture. Along Sinuhes journey out of Egypt he
chronicles numerous places along the frontier between Egypt and the northern
countries204:

rdi.n.i wAt n rd<wy.i> m xd dmi.n.i inbw-HqA iry r xsf sTtyw r ptpt nmiw-Say,
I made a path for <my> feet northwards. I reached the Walls of the Ruler, which
were made in order to ward off the Setyu, in order to trample those-who-travelthe-sand.205
In the same story, when Sinuhe has cause to praise the Egyptian king (Senusret I), he says
of him206:

202 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical II, 35.
203 Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (London: Thames &

Hudson, 2003), 197; H. Te Velde, Seth, God of Confusion: A Study of His Role in Egyptian Mythology and
Religion (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 109-117. See also the association of Seth with the Rebu, and with the
HqAw-xAswt.
204 Gardiner, Notes on the Story of Sinuhe, 129.
205 The Aamu with which Sinuhe lived were from the land of Retenu. In Thutmose IIIs Hymn of
Victory they are called aAmw nw rTnw, Aamu of Retenu: Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 615.
206 Gardiner, Notes on the Story of Sinuhe, 139.

44

nn kAi.f xAswt mHtt ir.n.tw.f r Hwi sTtyw r ptpt nmiw-Say

he does not think about the north foreign lands (for) he was made in order to
smite the Setyu, in order to trample those-who-travel-the-sand.
The Stele of Sobek-khu includes two ethnonyms in conjunction with each other in a
record of a northern campaign of Senusret III207:

wDA Hm.f m xd r sxrt mnTw sTt

his Majesty set out northwards in order to overthrow the mnTw of sTt.
Two lines later he continues his intent:

r aHA Hna aAmw, in order

to fight with the Aamu.208 On a stele near Aswan from the reign of Thutmose II, the king
named Egypts northern boundary at209:

mHty r pHww sTt,

northern (boundary) at the marshes of Setet. The association of the north with the
marshes of the Delta in the Old and Middle Kingdoms shifted to absorb the new northern
boundary by perpetuating the association with marshes further north of the Delta.

207 John Garstang, El Arbah: A Cemetery of the Middle Kingdom (London: B. Quaritich, 1901), Plate 5.
208 Note that in both orthographies the plurality is indicated by

(Gardiner Sign-list N 33A),

the sign for sand and other kinds of granules, rather than the typical strokes.
209 Kurt Sethe, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde gyptens (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs,
1896), 81.

45

Primary
Period

aAmw

OK

Inscription of PepyNakht

OK

Teaching for
Merikare

FIP

Inscription of
Mentuhotep II

FIP

Prophecy of Neferty

MK

Instructions of
Amenemhat I

MK

Story of Sinuhe

MK

Stele of Sobek-khu

MK

Kamose Inscriptions

SIP

Admonitions of
Ipuwer

SIP?

Text
Autobiography of
Weni

sTtyw

nmiw-Say

X
X
X
X

X
X

X
X

Obelisk of
Hatshepsut

NK

Qadesh Inscriptions

NK

Table 3: Northern Primary and Secondary Ethnonyms in Sample Texts

Hryw-Say

Secondary
mnTw

46

Amenhotep II erected a stele at Amada, just north of the Second Cataract, that
contains the memorable account of seven Great Ones of Tikhsy210 who were hung on the
walls of Napata in tA-sty as a display of victory211:

Dr ntt iTi.n.f rsyw waf.n.f mHtyw

since he had seized the Southerners and he had subdued the Northerners.
This text describes the Egyptian kings might extending to the north, as represented by
the rulers of Tikhsy, and to the south, as represented by the inhabitants of tA-sty, and in
both cases their inhabitants are explicitly identified according to their geographical
orientation. On a stele of Ramesses II, the Setyu are again identified in the north212:

fx sTtyw HAq dmit.sn ptpt.n.f xAswt mHty

the Setyu are destroyed, their towns are captured after he trampled the northern
foreign countries.
In the Instructions of Merikare, set during the First Intermediate Period, the king
describes the same Walls of the Ruler as encountered by Sinuhe, to Egypts east.213
Interestingly, although the inscription from the reign of her husband placed the marshes
of Setet at his northern border, Hatshepsuts obelisk at Karnak cast the Montiu of Setet
in the role of the eastern neighbor214:

210 In the Theban tomb of Amenemhab (TT 85) the inhabitants of the location Tikhsy were called

Aamu. Georg Ebers, Das Grab und die Biographie des Feldhauptmanns Amn em hb, Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenlndischen Gesellschaft 30 (1876) plate 2: line 20. Another negative reference to
the inhabitants of Tikhsy, though again not with an ethnonym, can be found in a letter of Amenhotep
II: Wolfgang Helck, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1955), 1344. For an
excerpt from this letter, refer to page 91.
211 Helck, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 1297-1298.
212 From his Year 2 Stele at Aswan. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical II,
344. It is the Setyu whom Mentuhotep Nebhepetre II smites as representative of Egypts northern
enemies in a scene from his Temple at Gebelein, alongside Setyu (southerner) and Tjehnu
(westerner) men. Marochetti, The Reliefs of the Chapel of Mentuhotep at Gebelein, 51-52.
213 Wolfgang Helck, Die Lehre fr Knig Merikare (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988), 50. James K.
Hoffmeier, The Walls of the Ruler in Egyptian Literature and the Archaeological Record:
Investigating Egypts Eastern Frontier in the Bronze Age, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental
Research 343 (2006): 2.
214 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 372.

47

iAbty r pHww sTt mnTw nw sTt m Ammt.i

the eastern (boundary) as far as the marshes of Setet, and the Montiu of Setet are
in my grasp.215
The Prophecy of Neferty, the extant copies of which were composed during the
New Kingdom but detail the events of the reign of Sneferu (4th Dynasty),216 contains an
image of the Aamu coming from the east217:

iw xrwyw xpr Hr iAbtt iw aAmw hAt r kmt

enemies appear in the east, the Aamu having descended into Egypt.
In addition to the etymologies of the secondary ethnonyms Hryw-Say and nmiw-Say that
are lexically built on their associations with sand, the Aamu and Setyu as ethnic groups
were associated with the desert. The foreigners in the Admonitions of Ipuwer, elsewhere
identified in the text as the Setyu,218 are equated with the desert, and their invasion into
Egypt is described219:
220

throughout the land.

ms dSrt xt tA, indeed, the desert is

In the Prophecy of Neferty, the Aamu are compared to

iawt xAst, desert herds, that presume to rest in Egypt beside the Nile.221
The Teaching for King Merikare contains advice for the new king from his elderly father,
penned before the Aamu ruled in the Egyptian Delta (see HqAw-xAswt below). The text

215 For an early association of the Montiu with the Aamu see the badly fragmented 11th Dynasty

inscription: J.J. Clre and J. Vandier, Textes de la Premire Priode Intermdiaire et de la XIme
Dynastie (Brussels: Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, 1948), 37.
216 Rosalie David, The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharoahs
Workforce (New York: Routledge, 1996), 27-28.
217 From Papyrus Petersburg 1116B. From the Prophecy of Neferty: Wolfgang Helck, Die
Prophezeiung des Nfr.tj (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992), 30.
218 For a brief, contextualized discussion of the orthography of sTtyw in the Admonitions of Ipuwer
see: John Van Seters, A Date for the Admonitions in the Second Intermediate Period, The Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 50 (1964): 15.
219 Gardiner, Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage, 30, and commentary on p. 9.
220 Note the use of the throw-stick determinative (Gardiner Sign-list T 14), not necessary in the
orthography, qualifying the foreignness of the desert.
221 From Papyrus Petersburg 1116B. Helck, Die Prophezeiung des Nfr.tj, 33.

48

contains descriptions of the environment of the Aamu, and classifies their lifestyle as one
of hardship222:

is aAmw Xsy qsn pw n bw ntf im

now, the wretched Aamu, it is difficult for the place which he is in.223

Ahw.w <m>224 mw StAw m xt aSAw wAwt iry qsn m-a Dww

sufferer of water, short of trees, and many are their225 paths made difficult from
the mountains.
It continues226:

n Hmsi.f m st wat sStA n gAwt dbn.<w xAs>t m rdwy.fy

he does not dwell in one place, but occupied by want, goes around <the
desert>227 on his feet.
The vocabulary used in Egyptian texts to discuss the Aamu and Setyu is typical of
discussing foreignness. In terms of their character as an ethnic group, several Egyptian
documents provide an image of the northerners as a quarrelsome and immoral people,
described as murderers, thieves, and endless fighters. Pepi-Nakht, a man who held the

222 From Papyrus Petersburg 1116A. Helck, Die Lehre fr Knig Merikare, 55.
223 This line has been much discussed, with two common interpretations: either that the Aamu live in

a difficult environment, as would befit the following lines, or that the area itself is made difficult by
the presence of the Aamu: A. Demedchik, A Note to 141 of Sir A.H. Gardiners Egyptian Grammar,
Gttinger Miszellen 134 (1993): 29. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature I, 108: note 14.
224 Refer to variant text from Papyrus Carlsberg VI, which contains an m. Helck, Die Lehre fr Knig
Merikare, 55.
225 Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 87-88.
226 Helck, Die Lehre fr Knig Merikare, 55-56. Note that this transcription is reconstructed from two
separate papyri (Papyrus Petersburg 1116A and Papyrus Carlsberg VI) due to lacunae in each.
227 This is Helcks interpretation, which cannot be corroborated by either of the two papyri also
included in his work.

49

title overseer of foreign countries228 under Pepi II, records a journey to the land of the
Aamu to retrieve the body of an Egyptian official who had been killed along with his
army by229:

aAmw nw Hryw-Say, the Aamu of thosesmAw,230 ones who kill.231

who-live-upon-the-sand and calls them

In the Instruction to King Merikare the Aamu are described as perpetual fighters232:

iw.f Hr aHA Dr rk Hr n qni.n.f n gr qni.tw.f n smi.n.f hrw m aHA

he is always fighting since the time of Horus. He does not conquer; moreover, he
is not conquered. He does not announce the day of fighting.
In the Prophecy of Neferty, the author describes their thieving lifestyle233:

xpi aAmw m xpS.sn sh.sn234 ibw ntyw Hr Smw nHm.sn Htrw Hr skA
the Aamu travel by their strength. They terrorize the hearts of those upon the
harvest (farmers). They seize the ploughing oxen235.
The label of the Aamu as a thief is reiterated in the Instruction to King Merikare236:

mi TAw Sna n smAyt

like one who steals, who is repelled by society.
A large variety of animals were used in comparison with the northern peoples
(Table 4), for a variety of purposes. In the Instructions of Amenemhat, the king boasts237:

228 Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 132.

229 Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 134.
230 Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 135.
231 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 226.
232 From Papyrus Petersburg 1116A. Helck, Die Lehre fr Knig Merikare, 56.
233 From Papyrus Petersburg 1116B. Helck, Die Prophezeiung des Nfr.tj, 18.
234 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 237.

235 Note that the determinative for oxen is not a bovine animal, but the Seth animal.
236 From Papyrus Petersburg 1116A. Helck, Die Lehre fr Knig Merikare, 56.

50

iw di.n.i iry.i sTtyw Hr Smt Tsmw

I caused that I make the Setyu go walking as dogs. (or do the dog-walk)238
Causing them to behave as dogs before the Egyptian king projects an image of
submission, obedience and loyalty. Neferty prophesies that the Aamu will immigrate to
live in northern Egypt alongside the Egyptians like marsh birds239:

iw Apdw DrDrit r mst m Sdwt nt tA-mHw

stranger birds will breed in a plot of the Delta.
A similar description was used by a man in a letter to his wayward son on an ostracon
found at Deir el-Medina, in which the Aamu are compared to birds living in the Delta.240
The Annals of Thutmose III records the defeat of Megiddo241 by the Egyptian army242:

skw.sn sDr m sTsy mi rmw m qaH Snw

their troops lying prostrate like fish in the bend of a net.
Using birds and fish as figurative expressions visualizes the chaotic community of
foreigners that the Egyptians perceived they created for themselves even away from their
homeland. The imagery of schools of fish or flocks of birds evoke their number and their
behavior.

237 From Deir el-Medina ostracon 1039. Wolfgang Helck, Der Text der Lehre Amenemhets I. fr seinen

sohn (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1986), 78.

238 Also refer to the land of Retenu described behaving as dogs that belong to the Egyptian king in the
Story of Sinuhe: Hans Goedicke, Three Passages in the Story of Sinuhe, Journal of the American
Research Center in Egypt 23 (1986): 173. For further discussion of the dog as an allegory in Egyptian
texts, see: Jos M. Galn, What is he, the dog? Ugarit-Forschungen 25 (1993).
239 From Papyrus Petersburg 1116B. Helck, Die Prophezeiung des Nfr.tj, 27.
240 From Mennas letter to his son: Jaroslav erny and Alan H. Gardiner, Hieratic Ostraca I (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1957), plate 78.
241 The inhabitants of Megiddo were Setyu as was mentioned in the record of Thutmose IIIs siege of
Megiddo: Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 661.
242 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 659.

51

Merikare is advised by his father that the Aamu is243:

msH Hr mryt.f, a crocodile on his bank. The crocodile on
its bank evokes an image of watchfulness and the perpetual threat of an attack. The
Instruction of Dua-Khety (also known as The Satire of the Trades), describes a tradesman
who journeys abroad into foreign lands and is at risk of attack by wild animals or thieves.
He was perpetually244:

snD.w mAiw Hna aAmw

afraid of lions and the Aamu.
Lions and crocodiles were both used as clear analogies for strength, formidability and
danger. The Egyptian king was also compared to lions and crocodiles in royal
inscriptions.245 These texts illustrate that the Egyptians perceived the Aamu as a potential
threat on a political level, and also on a personal level.

The Hyksos
The ancient group known widely as the Hyksos, are deceptively studied in
Egyptology as a unique ethnic group, although they were clearly identified in ancient
Egyptian literature as aAmw.246 The name Hyksos originates from a Hellenized version
of the Egyptian title

HqAw-xAswt or rulers of foreign lands.247 The

Aamu who ruled northern Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period adopted the use
of this title, although the title HqA itself predates them248 and appeared in royal and non-

243 Helck, Die Lehre fr Knig Merikare, 59.
244 Wolfgang Helck, Die Lehre des dw3-Htjj II (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1970), 94.

245 Shih-Wei Hsu, Figurative Expressions Referring to Animals in Royal Inscriptions of the 18th

Dynasty, Journal of Egyptian History 6 (2013): 10 and Table 1.

246 For a discussion of possible lexical origins of aAm, see: Saretta, Egyptian Perceptions of West
Semites in Art and Literature During the Middle Kingdom, 18-25; Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan,
and Israel in Ancient Times (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1995), 32.
247 Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 100. Dominique Valbelle, Les Neuf Arcs:
Lgyptien et les trangers de la Prhistoire la conqute dAlexandre (Paris: Armand Colin, 1990),
115.
248 Torgny Sve-Sderbergh, The Hyksos Rule in Egypt, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 37
(1951): 56.

52

royal compositions as a term for unspecified northern rulers.249 Because the HqAw-xAswt
embody a unique interaction between the Egyptians and the Aamu, (the HqA-xAswt were
foreigners living within traditional Egyptian geographical boundaries) they are discussed,
albeit briefly, in the present work separately from the references to the Aamu who lived
outside of Egypt.250
In the Inscription of Kamose, king of the Theban 17th Dynasty, the references to
the Aamu who called themselves kings in northern Egypt carries a distinct tone of distaste
and unsuitability251:

wr m Hwt-wart ky m kS Hmsi.kwi smA.kwi m aAm nHsy s nb Xr fdq.f

m tA kmt psS tA Hna.i
a Great One252 is in Avaris and another is in Kush. I am seated being united with
an Aamu and a Nehesy. Each man possessing his portion in this Egypt, the land is
divided with me!
As foreigners who dared to enter Egypt and live off of Egyptian land and resources, the
Hyksos are depicted as a destructive force in Egypt. The Stele of Kamose, an Egyptian
king in southern Egypt at the end of the Second Intermediate Period, contains his
judgment concerning253:

249 The leader of the aAmw traders in the tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan is identified as a HqA

xAst. Hans Goedicke, Abi-Sha(i)s Representation in Beni Hasan, Journal of the American Research
Center in Egypt 21 (1984): 207. David Lorton, The Juridical Terminology of International Relations in
Egyptian Texts Through Dyn. XVIII (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 22-36, and
especially 26-27 for its use during the Hyksos period. The first text to use HqA-xAswt is the Story of
Sinuhe: HqAw xAswt. See also the Amada Stele of Amenhotep II: HqA xAswt wrw nw rTnw, rulers of
foreign lands and Great Ones of Retenu. Pahor Cladio Labib, Die Herrschaft der Hyksos in gypten
und ihr Sturz (Glckstadt: Augustin, 1936), 6-7.
250 Though in either case, the Aamu were north of the Egyptians Kamose says he xdi.n.i, sails
northwards to meet them. Alan H. Gardiner, The Defeat of the Hyksos by Kamse: The Carnarvon
Tablet, No. 1, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 3 (1916): 104.
251 Gardiner, The Defeat of the Hyksos by Kamse: The Carnarvon Tablet, No. 1, 98.
252 It is interesting to note that while HqA-xAswt was the origin of Hyksos, here the Egyptian king
referred to them with a separate political title: wr.
253 Labib Habachi, The Second Stela of Kamose and his Struggle against the Hyksos ruler and his capital
(Glckstadt: Augustin, 1972), 38: 18.

53

pA HDt ir.sn m-Xnw tA kmt diw st Hr sDm-aS n aAmw btA.n.sn kmt Hnwt.sn
the destruction they make inside this Egypt, they who made them (Egyptians)
serve for the Aamu when they overran Egypt, their mistress.
Although she ruled Egypt years after the HqA-xAswt had already been expelled from the
Delta, Hatshepsuts obelisk at Karnak perpetuated this characteristic254:

iw Ts.n.i stpt HAt-a Dr wn aAmw m-qAb n tA-mHw Hwt-wart255 SmAw m-qAb.sn Hr sxn
iryt
I raised up what was ruined, for the first time since the Aamu were in the midst
of the Delta at Avaris, the foreigners in their midst destroying what was made.
Kamose recorded it was his desire to nHm, rescue or take away256 Egypt from the
foreign rulers.257 The narrative of Apophis (an aAm) and Seqenenre (an Egyptian)
introduces another element of their ideology258:

[aHa.n] nsw ippy a.w.s. Hr ir n.f swtx m nb iw.f tm bAk n nTr nb nty m pA
tA r-Dr.f [wpw] swtx

254 Alan H. Gardiner, Daviess Copy of the Great Speos Artemidos Inscription, The Journal of

Egyptian Archaeology 32 (1946): plate 6: lines 36-38.

255 Spalinger noted that Avaris is demarcated by the foreign land determinative

(Gardiner

Sign-list N 25) rather than the typical city determinative

(Gardiner Sign-list O 49), which
conveys a political statement regarding the foreignness of Avaris rulers. Anthony Spalinger, A
Garland of Determinatives, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 94 (2008): 142.
256 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 136.
257 Gardiner, The Defeat of the Hyksos by Kamse: The Carnarvon Tablet, No. 1, 102.
258 Alan H. Gardiner, Late Egyptian Stories (Brussels: Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, 1932), 85: lines 8-9.

54

[then] King259 Apophis, l.p.h., made for himself Seth as lord, and he did not
serve any god who was in the land in its entirety, [except] Seth.
Seth as the god of deserts, and of foreignness, naturally associated with the Egyptian
neighbors, regardless of whom they worshiped in actuality.260 Hatshepsuts obelisk adds
that they were not ordained rulers of Egypt, i.e., not Egyptians because261:
HqA.n.sn m-xmt ra, they ruled without Re.
The ethnic groups discussed in this chapter are by no means the only northern
peoples the Egyptians were aware of or wrote about. These were selected because of the
multitude of Egyptian sources about them and the insight they provide into Egypts
conceptualization of their foreign neighbors. Other northern ethnic groups include the
Kharu,262 the Fenkhu263 and possibly the Apiru264 (see Appendix).
Summary
As was the case with Egypts western neighbors, but to a lesser degree, the
English all-inclusive translations Asiatic and Asia for northern ethnonyms obscure
the ethnic distinctions being made by the ancient Egyptians in their texts. This obscurity
is exacerbated by the Egyptians use of seemingly overarching terminology of their own
for northerners who inhabited a number of individual homelands, but who were identified
by the same proper names. Three main features that identify an ethnic group can be found
in Egyptian texts concerning Egypts northern neighbors:

259 Note that although he was a foreigner, the composer of the narrative chose to give him the proper

Egyptian royal title.

260 Note the association of the Westerners with Seth, as well.
261 Gardiner, Daviess Copy of the Great Speos Artemidos Inscription, plate 6: line 38.
262 The Kharu sometimes performed the role of the northern neighbor in royal cosmographic
statements. For examples, refer to pages 11 and 60 of the present work.
263 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache I, 577. The Fenkhu are mentioned on a
quarry stele of Neferperet: Lepsius, Denkmler aus gypten und thiopien III, plate 3a. A man from
the lands of Fenkhu is named in the Story of Sinuhe: Hans Goedicke, Sinuhes Epistolary Salutations
to the King (B 206-211), Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 41 (2004): 16.
264 John A. Wilson, The Eperu of the Egyptian Inscriptions, The American Journal of Semitic
Languages and Literatures 49 (1933) Wilson considers aprw as a word that embodied foreignness to
the Egyptians, but did not refer to a unique ethnic group.

55

1. The use of common proper names, though with some overlap, for referring to
individual ethnic groups (Aamu, Setyu, Keftiui, Sherden, Shekelesh, Tjeker, Peleset,
Danuna, Lukka, Ekwesh, Teresh)
2. The awareness of cultural elements, including a language dissimilar to the language
spoken by the Egyptians (Keftiui); religious practices dissimilar to those of the
Egyptians, either by their association with Seth (the Hyksos) or their ignorance of
Egyptian gods (Aamu); practice of a custom specific to some ethnic groups (Sherden,
Shekelesh, Ekwesh); and cultural or political leaders with tailored titles (Peleset,
Tjeker, people of Alasiya)
3. The awareness of homelands, even multiple, for each ethnic group (Aamu, Setyu,
Montiu, Keftiui, Peleset, Tjeker, Danuna, Alasiya)

56

Chapter 4. The Easterners

The pre-dynastic docket of King Den smiting the Easterners265 illustrates the early
awareness of foreign peoples located to the east.266 A spell from the Papyrus BremnerRhind for overthrowing Apophis makes particular mention of

iAbtyw nw

xAswt nbt, Easterners of every desert267 in the list of enemies to be defeated on behalf of
the Egyptian king.
The Shasu268
As was established in the previous chapter, until the Middle Kingdom the aAmw,
sTtyw, mnTw, hryw-Say and nmiw-Say (all those ethnonyms conventionally translated as the
English Asiatic) were categorized as eastern neighbors. Befitting this, the Shasu did not
play the role of the Easterners until relatively late in Egyptian chronology. The Shasu269
are found in Egyptian texts with the standard orthography

SAsw,

beginning in the New Kingdom reign of Thutmose II.270 There are two proposed origins
of their name: a nisbe derived from the Egyptian word SAs

meaning to

travel271 or to traverse,272 thought to refer to their supposed nomadic lifestyle, or from

265 It reads: sp

tpy sqr iAbt, first time of smiting the Easterners. De Wit, Enemies of the State:
Perceptions of otherness and State Formation in Egypt, 175-176. Mary Wright, Literary Sources
for the History of Palestine and Syria: Contacts between Egypt and Syro-Palestine during the
Protodynastic period, The Biblical Archaeologist 48 (1985): 248.
266 Although, by artistic characteristics, the Easterner that the king is smiting was probably an Aamu.
267 Papyrus Bremner-Rhind 28, 15. Raymond O. Faulkner, The Papyrus Bremner-Rhind (British
Museum No. 10188) (Brussels: Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, 1933), 68: line 12.
268 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache IV, 412.
269 For a complete collection of the Shasu appearing in Egyptian written sources, see: Giveon, Les
Bdouins Shosou Des Documents gyptiens. Also see a follow-up article: William A. Ward, The Shasu
Bedouin: Notes on a Recent Publication, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 15
(1972). Note that Ward did not consider the Shasu to be a true ethnic group (he calls them
wandering free-booters), while Giveon treats them as a unique people group and attempted to
extrapolate their culture, religion and language from the limited resources.
270 Giveon, Les Bdouins Shosou Des Documents gyptiens, 219. For a possible attestation of the
ethnonym in an execration text found at Saqqara and dating to the reign of Senusret III,

Swsw, see: Georges Posener, Princes et Pays DAsie et de Nubie: Textes hiratiques sur des figurines
denvotement du moyen empire (Brussels: Fondation gyptologique rein lisabeth, 1940), 91. Ward,
The Shasu Bedouin: Notes on a Recent Publication, 36.
271 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 261.
272 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache IV, 412.

57

the Semitic
, shasah, to plunder or to pillage.273 The name Shasu was used by the
Egyptians for both the ethnic group and for their homeland. They appear in Egyptian
written records relatively late in Egyptian chronology, and their assignment to a cardinal
direction in the Egyptian political world occurs later still. While not explicit, a portion of
the Annals of Thutmose III contains mention of encountering Shasu along a route north
of Egypt274:

rnpt 39 ist Hm.f Hr xAst rTnw m wDyt mHty 14 nt nxtt m-xt Smt [ n]A n xrw n SAsw
Year 39: now, His Majesty was at the foreign land of Retenu on the 14th northern
campaign of victory after going [] the fallen of Shasu.
In the historical narrative of the Battle of Qadesh, Ramesses II and his army encounter
two Shasu spies (Fig. 4) allied with the Hittite army while traveling north to Qadesh275:

ii.in SAsw 2 m nA n mhwt SAsw r Dd n Hm.f m nAy.n snw nty m aAw n mhwt
m-di pA xrw n xt di iwt.n n Hm.f r dD iw.n r-irt bAkw n pr-aA a.w.s. mtw.n rwi.n m-di
pA xrw n xt
Then two Shasu arrived from the tribe of Shasu in order to speak to His Majesty,
saying: Our brethren who are the magnates of the tribe who are in the hand of (in

273 Thomas E. Levy, Russell B. Adams, and Adolfo Muniz, Archaeology and the Shasu Nomads: Recent

Excavations in the Jabal Hamrat Fidan, Jordan, in Le-David Maskil: A Birthday Tribute for David Noel
Freedman (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 66. Giveon, Les Bdouins Shosou Des Documents
gyptiens, 261-264. Ward, The Shasu Bedouin: Notes on a Recent Publication, 56-59.
Note also that the Egyptian SAsw became the Coptic meaning: shepherd. Giveon, Les Bdouins
Shosou Des Documents gyptiens, 264. Jaroslav erny, Coptic Etymological Dictionary (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970), 252.
274 Giveon, Les Bdouins Shosou Des Documents gyptiens, 11.
275 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical II, 103-104.

58

allegiance with) the fallen of Hatti caused that we come to his Majesty in order to
say: we will be servants for the Pharaoh, l.p.h., and we will flee from the hand of
the fallen of Hatti.276
This text reveals two further characteristics of the Shasu people that the Egyptians
preserved in their record of the event. First, that the Shasu could be subdivided into
mhwt,277 families or tribes,278 which were identified by individual names (although in
this case the family name is the same as the ethnonym). Second, that the highest political
authority among the Shasu were referred to as aA279 magnate280 by the Egyptians instead
of one of the usual titles for foreign rulers: wr or HqA. This linguistic distinction from the
leaders of other foreign peoples no doubt reveals the perceived difference between their
political hierarchy, which made Shasu leaders deserving of a distinct title.281
Additionally, it may reflect the level of respect the Egyptians had for these lesser-

Figure 4: Drawing of Shasu spies at Abu Simbel Image from Gaston Maspero, History
of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria (London: The Grolier Society Publishers,
1906), 193.

276 Note that this transcription is reconstructed from two sources (Luxor Temple and the

Ramesseum) due to lacunae in each record.

277 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache II, 114.
278 Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian I, 196.
279 Another example of this title used for the Shasu elite exists at Medinet Habu: aA n snwy n SA[sw].
Giveon, Les Bdouins Shosou Des Documents gyptiens, 139.
280 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 37.
281 See also the Peleset and Tjeker on page 38.

59

influential leaders, that they were not regarded powerful enough for the title Great One,
or ruler.
The above two examples of the Egyptians encountering the Shasu in the north
correspond well to a Ramesside text that associates the Shasu with the northern/eastern
people the Aamu. The association is made in the Papyrus Anastasi I, a satirical letter282
addressed to a soldier-scribe,283 in which a groom is described284:

iTt.n.f spyt sw aq m nA nty bin sw Sbn m nA mhwt SAsw iry.f sw m qAi n aAm
He carried off what remained and he joined with those who are evil; he consorts
with the Shasu tribe, and he makes himself in the manner of an Aam.
These texts reveal the placement of the Shasu in the Egyptian worldview was partially a
northern one. Contrary to these categorizations, the Shasu were alternatively associated
with the east. On a stele of Ramesses II from Tanis, the Shasu are named as Egypts
eastern neighbors in the Egyptian cosmos as divided into four cardinal directions285:

mki.k kmt wsx tAS.k HAq.k xr kS tHnw SAsw iww Hr ib wAD-wr

You protect Egypt; your boundary is extended wide. You capture (or plunder) Kharu,
Kush, Tjehnu, Shasu, and the islands in the midst of the sea.
Following the formula of naming a foreign representative from each cardinal direction, it
is apparent that the Shasu are identified here as the eastern neighbor. As we have already
seen, the Tjehnu were consistently western neighbors, and Kush was unequivocally
located at the southern boundary. Here, Kharu plays the northern compliment to Kush,

282 Dated by Gardiner to the reign of Seti II. Alan H. Gardiner, Egyptian Hieratic Texts - Series I:

Literary Texts of the New Kingdom I (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1911), 1.

283 A. F. Rainey, The Soldier-Scribe in Papyrus Anastasi I, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 26 (1967):
58-60. Gardiner, Egyptian Hieratic Texts I, 5.
284 Gardiner, Egyptian Hieratic Texts I, 64: lines 5-6.
285 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical II, 404.

60

and the Shasu play the eastern compliment to the Tjehnu. Another inscription of
Ramesses II again placed the Shasu in the East. The king is described transplanting the
Aamu (northerners) to the south of Egypt, and the Nehesyu (Southerners) to the north of
Egypt, and doing likewise to Egypts eastern and western neighbors286:

di.n.f SAsw r tA iAbt grg.n.f THnw Hr nA Tswt mH nxtw n qd.n.f

He placed Shasu in the land of the west. He established Tjehnu upon the hills, filling the
fortresses he had built.
Whether or not this records the actual forced displacement of foreign captives, or only
ensured the symbolic disassociation of each ethnic group from their homeland, thereby
disseminating their threat of invasion, is unclear. The Tswt hills287 in this text appear
several other times in Egyptian records that describe the Shasu homeland, and are
discussed below.
The Egyptian awareness of the Shasu homeland tA SAsw is frequently expressed in
topographical lists of the Eighteenth Dynasty.288 A list of Shasu toponyms at the Temple
of Soleb from the reign of Amenhotep III289 provide the names of several localities in the
land of the Shasu, and potentially the ethnic divisions that inhabited each locality290:
tA SAsw smt
tA SAsw yhw

286 From Abu Simbel. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical II, 206-207. Ward,

The Shasu Bedouin: Notes on a Recent Publication, 42. Giveon, Les Bdouins Shosou Des
Documents gyptiens 73. Alexandre Vassiliev, The Localization of the Shasu-Land of Ramesses IIs
Rhetorical Texts, in Current research in Egyptology 2006: Proceedings of the seventh annual
symposium which took place at the University of Oxford, April 2006 (Oxford: Oxbow, 2007): 162.
287 Tswt has conventionally been translated hills or ridges but a recent analysis recommended the
translation: sand dunes. Vassiliev, The Localization of the Shasu-Land of Ramesses IIs Rhetorical
Texts, 166.
288 Giveon, Les Bdouins Shosou Des Documents gyptiens. Reign of Thutmose IV: 16; Amenhotep III:
22, 25, 26.
289 Raphael Giveon, Toponymes ouest-asiatiques Soleb, Vestus Testamentum 14 (1964): 244-245.
290 Giveon, Les Bdouins Shosou Des Documents gyptiens, 26. For a similar list at the Ramesside
temple at Amara West in which smt and yhw reappear, see: Giveon, Les Bdouins Shosou Des
Documents gyptiens, 75.

61

tA SAsw trbr

A further allusion to the Shasu borders occurs in the Wilbour Papyrus, from the reign of
Ramesses V.291 The text describes an Egyptian expedition of the areas surrounding
Shasu, and uniquely includes ordinal directions to emphasize all of the areas explored,
including:

mH-imnt, north-west and

rsy-imnt, south-west.292

References like these to the Shasu homeland and specific places therein confirm that the
Egyptians perceived of the Shasu as an ethnic group of their own sharing a unique
name with their place of origin.
The hills of Shasu-land previously mentioned appear in the records of Seti Is
293

war

against the Shasu294:

nA n xrw n SAsw Sn.sn bdS nAy.sn aAw n mhwt dmD m bw wa aHa Hr nA [n] Tswt n xr
Ssp.sn shA Xnnw wa im Hr smA sn-nw.f bw xm.sn hpw n aH
"The fallen of the Shasu are plotting rebellion; their magnates of the tribes are
gathered in one place, standing upon the hills of Kharu.295 They initiate turmoil
and conflict; one therein killing his fellow. They have no regard for the laws of
the palace."
These hills are referenced later in an inscription from the Ramesside temple at Tell el-

291 Giveon, Les Bdouins Shosou Des Documents gyptiens, 147-148.

292 Note that ordinal directions are extremely rare in ancient Egyptian texts.
293 Anthony J. Spalinger, Northern Wars of Seti I: An Integrative Study, Journal of the American

Research Center in Egypt 16 (1979): 30.

294 Epigraphic Survey, Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak, vol. IV: The Battle Reliefs of King Sety I
(Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1986), plate 6: lines 4-9.
295 Note that this time the hills inhabit a northern foreign land, Kharu. This may indicate the Shasu
territorial boundaries overlapped with those of the Kharu, or that the geographical feature was a
characteristic of a larger region.

62

Retaba in Wadi Tumilat296:

ir xryt aAt m tA n SAsw HAq.f nAy.sn Tswt smA Hr.sn

Making a great slaughter in the land of Shasu, he plunders their hills and slays
them.
The repeated mention of the Tswt in the land of the Shasu stresses that they were a
principal feature of the Shasu landscape in the Egyptian conception of the Shasu
homeland. These hills may have been a descriptive placename297 used by the Shasu
to refer to a specific, or even a number of specific locations in their homeland that the
Egyptians were aware of and adapted for use.
The satirical letter in Papyrus Anastasi I contains advice from one scribe to
another regarding travel and work. In one section, the author attempts to illustrate his
experience to the other scribe by describing his travels in foreign places. Among the
long-winded narration is a description of other elements of the Shasu homeland298:

bw Smt.k r a n SAsw Xry tA pDt mSa [bw] d[g]s.k wAt r pA mgr pt kk.ti m hrw sw rwd
m awn-t Hr i-n-r-n aS pH.w Hrt aSAt miww r Abyw Htmtw inh.w m SAsw Hr wAt.f
You have not gone to the region of the Shasu, with the troops of the army. You
have [not] walked the road to the Mgr; the sky being dark when day, and it is

296 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical II, 304: line 14. Giveon, Les Bdouins

Shosou Des Documents gyptiens, 114.

297 Bright, What IS a Name? Reflections on Onomastics, 674-677.
298 Papyrus Anastasi I, 19, 1-4. Gardiner, Egyptian Hieratic Texts I, 62: lines 1-5. Giveon, Les Bdouins
Shosou Des Documents gyptiens, 127.

63

prosperous with awenet trees,299 and oaks, and cedars that reach the sky; lions are
more numerous than leopards and hyenas,300 and being surrounded by Shasu on
his road.
Other comments on the Shasu homeland come from additional Ramesside sources. A
series of letters written by the High Priest of Amun Amonrasonther during the reign of
Ramesses IX301 describes302:

nA xrw n SAsw n mw-qd nty Hms m qHqh

the fallen of the Shasu of the place of inverted waters303 who reside in QehQeh.
The text goes on to include the intentions of these specific Shasu, who304:

wn iit r thA pA tA n kmt

were coming in order to violate the land of Egypt.
The same word thA to violate or to transgress305 was used to describe the Tjehnu who
did not respect the boundaries between Egypt and the west; in both situations foreigners
had intentions of entering Egypt and this was met with contempt by the Egyptians
because it disrupted the natural order of the world.
Only a few written sources give us an indication of how the Egyptians perceived
the Shasu culture. The Great Harris Papyrus contains a clear list of cultural elements of

299 Gardiner guesses this is a cypress tree. Staves (

) were made from this tree.

Gardiner, Egyptian Hieratic Texts I, 21.
300 Gardiner identifies only one other use of the word, which included a dog determinative. Gardiner,
Egyptian Hieratic Texts I, 21. See also: Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache III,
198.
301 Raphael Giveon, The Shosu of the Late XXth Dynasty, Journal of the American Research Center in
Egypt 8 (1970): 51.
302 Wolfgang Helck, Eine Briefsammlung aus der Verwaltung des Amuntempels, Journal of the
American Research Center in Egypt 6 (1967): 148: line 46.
303 The mw-qd, inverted waters, was not a proper toponym; it could refer to the Euphrates River, but
also any river that flowed south. Donald B. Redford, Egypt and Asia in the New Kingdom: Some
Historical Notes, Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 10 (1979): 68. Erman and
Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache II, 52.
304 Helck, Eine Briefsammlung aus der Verwaltung des Amuntempels, 148: line 52.
305 Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian II, 216.

64

the Shasu lifestyle that were captured by Ramesses III306:

iry.i sHksHkt sar m mhwt SAsw xf.i nAy.sn mhrw hArw m

rmT.w xt.w nAy.sn iAwt m-mitt
I destroy Seir, namely, Shasu tribes. I plunder their tents(?) with their people,
their possessions and their herds likewise.
This text in conjunction with Papyrus Anastasi VI, which contains a letter from a scribe
regarding the Egyptian border, creates an image of the Shasus nomadic lifestyle. The
scribe reports that the Shasu were entering Egypt to use Egyptian pools.307 The scribe
also assigned a specific place of origin to these Shasu308:

grH.n m [dit] sS nA mhwt SAsw n idwm pA xtmw

we have finished permitting the Shasu tribes of Edom to pass the fortress.
In the satirical letter of Papyrus Anastasi I there is a vague and critical portrayal of the
Shasu. A curious portion of the text also seems to refer to their physical size309:

tA gAwt nHA.ti m SAsw kAp Xry nA bAit310 wn im.sn n mH 4 na 5 fnd.sn311 n rdwy HsA Hr

306 Papyrus Harris I, 176, 9-10. Erichsen, Papyrus Harris I, 93: lines 6-7.
307 Their intention was to access Egyptian wells r

sanx nAy.w iAwt in order to sustain their herds. Alan

H. Gardiner, Late Egyptian Miscellanies (Brussels: Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, 1937), 76: line 15.
308 Papyrus Anastasi VI, 54-55. Gardiner, Late Egyptian Miscellanies, 76: lines 12-13. Giveon, Les
Bdouins Shosou Des Documents gyptiens, 132.
309 Papyrus Anastasi I, 23, 7-8. Gardiner, Egyptian Hieratic Texts I, 70: lines 3-6.
310 Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian I, 126.

65

bw an ib.sn bw sDm.w n swnwn

The narrow road being infested312 with Shasu hidden under the thickets; some
among them are either of four cubits or of five, from their nose to feet; fierce of
face, their heart is not friendly, and they do not listen to flattery.
Likely because the Shasu only appear in records of a single war against the
Egyptians, and other interactions with them were minimal, there were seemingly few
opportunities to apply the vocabulary of humiliation to them as an ethnic group. In the
inscriptions of Seti Is war against them, they are called

bStw313 rebels,314

xrw315 fallen, as was typical of describing foreign enemies. Hans Goedicke

proposed that the phrase

SsA Hr xAst, antelope in the desert, in

Papyrus Lansing316 might be a metaphorical reference to the Shasu.317 His argument is

strengthened by the orthographic similarities between the words including the use of
(Gardiner Sign-list Aa 18) in both, and by the intrinsic link between a desert animal and
nomadism. But, as we have seen from the textual evidence presented, the Shasu were not
more greatly associated with the desert than any other foreign people.
The Puntites318
The land of Punt

is frequently attested in Egyptian written records, first

in the Palermo Stone319 and consistently afterward until the Late Period320 as the

311 Gardiner suggests this word is a corruption of fnd, nose. Gardiner, Egyptian Hieratic Texts I, 71.
312 Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian I, 242.
313 Epigraphic Survey, Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak IV, plate 5: line 12.
314 Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian I, 140.
315 Epigraphic Survey, Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak IV, plate 3: line 3; plate 5: line 13;
316 Gardiner, Late Egyptian Miscellanies, 102: line 11.

317 Hans Goedicke, Papyrus Lansing 3,9- 3,10, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 7

(1968): 129. The SsA is typically considered to be the bubalis antelope.

318 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache I, 506.
319 Written:

, pwnt. From the reign of Sahure: Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Royal Annals of Ancient
Egypt: The Palermo Stone and its Associated Fragments (London: Routledge, 2000), 169 and fig. 3.
320 Kenneth Kitchen, The Elusive Land of Punt Revisited, in Trade and Travel in the Red Sea Region
(Oxford: Archaeopress, 2004), 27.

66

destination of Egyptian expeditions and the origin of valued commodities.321 Punt carried
a symbolic significance, as the source of exotic goods including myrrh, which the
Egyptians considered ritually sacred and invaluable, to the extent that Punt was often
tA-nTr, gods land.322 An examination

referred to in the Egyptian language as:

of the textual evidence, however, reveals an odd absence of Punts inhabitants

themselves, especially for a location so highly respected by the Egyptians. There are no
extant records of wars against Punt, or of Puntites immigrating to Egypt in large groups.
Additionally, the great difficulty of reaching distant Punt lessened the actuality of
frequent interactions with the Puntites. These facts greatly affected their presence (or lack
of it) in Egyptian written records.
Having reached Punt, however, the Egyptians recognized the Puntites as
advantageous in obtaining valuable goods. Egyptian expeditions reached Punt both over
land and by sea.323 Upon reaching Punt, Egyptians established their tents324:

m xtyw-antyw nw pwnt Hr-gswy wD-[wr]

in the myrrh terraces of Punt beside the Sea.
Aside from Punts association with the sea, in this case the Red Sea at Egypts eastern
border, Punt was also consistently associated with the east, the sunrise, and the

321 Stephen P. Harvey, Interpreting Punt: Geographic, Cultural and Artistic Landscapes, in

Mysterious Lands (London: University College London Press, 2003), 82.

322 Julien Cooper, The Geographic and Cosmographic Expression T3-ntr, The Bulletin of the
Australian Centre for Egyptology 22 (2011): 47-48.
323 F. D. P. Wicker, The Road to Punt, The Geographic Journal (1998): 155-161. D. M. Dixon, The
Transplantation of Punt Incense Trees in Egypt, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 44 (1969). In
the Old Kingdom see the inscriptions of Pepy-nakht who records the building of a ship for the
purpose of traveling to Punt: Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 134. In the Middle Kingdom see the
inscriptions of Henu and Antefoqer: Louise Bradbury, Reflections on Traveling to Gods Land and
Punt in the Middle Kingdom, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 25 (1988). In the New
Kingdom, see the Great Harris Papyrus that records ships sent by Ramesses III to Punt: Erichsen,
Papyrus Harris I: Hieroglyphische Transkription, 94: lines 15-16.
324 Edouard Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari III (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1898), plate
69.

67

horizon.325 On the Poetical Stele of Thutmose III, already discussed for assigning Keftiu
and Isy to the west, Punt, called here gods land. is located in the east326:

ii.n.i di.i titi.k tA iAbty xnd.k ntyw m ww nw tA-nTr

I came to cause you to trample on the eastern land; you trample those who are in the
districts of gods land.
On the stele of Amenhotep III from his mortuary temple, Punt is located at the sunrise.
This time, Punt is described as multiple countries327:

di.i Hr.i r wbn biAyt.i n.k di.i iwt n.k xAswt nw pwnt
I turn my face to the sunrise, I make a marvel for you: I make come to you the countries
of Punt.
Despite Punts association with the Red Sea and the sunrise, Punt also exhibited
associations with the south and southern peoples. The base of Hatshepsuts fallen obelisk
at Karnak was the first to locate Punt to the south328:

tAS.i

rsy r idb nw pwnt, my southern boundary is at the lands of Punt.329 Here, again, Punt
inhabited a plurality of lands, perhaps indicating it stretched across a number of cultural
territories. The only Late Period source to mention Punt is a stele from an unknown reign

325 Dimitri Meeks, Locating Punt, in Mysterious Lands (London: University College London Press,

2003), 57-58.
326 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 615: lines 10-12.
327 Punt, located at the sunrise, acts as the eastern element of the cosmos in this Hymn. Petrie, Six
Temples at Thebes, plate 12: line 30.
328 Georges Legrain, Sur un Fragment DOblisque Trouv a Karnak, Recueil de travaux relatifs la
philology et larchologie gyptiennes et assyriennes 23 (1901): 195.
329 Much ink has been spilt in an effort to coax Punts actual geographical location from the
expedition texts and reliefs. Kitchen insists that Punt was in East Africa: Kitchen, The Elusive Land of
Punt Revisited, 29. Meeks makes the case that Punt was in Arabia: Meeks, Locating Punt, 78. Punt
probably embodied a massive, shifting region; it remained sufficient in Egyptian written records to
associate Punt with the east, and place the great emphasis on the commodities themselves they
obtained. Put cogently by Jacke Phillips: it is not inconceivable that the term was successfully
applied to several areas trading the same products to Egypt: Punt equals myrrh, therefore myrrh
equals Punt. Jacke Phillips, Punt and Aksum: Egypt and the Horn of Africa, The Journal of African
History 38 (1997): 439.

68

of the 26th Dynasty that corroborates Hatshepsuts assignment of Punt to the south, and
connected Punt to the source of the inundation330:

[nn] mAA nn nn sDm nn Hwit r Dw n pwnt and pw Hwit m Sw rsy

this is [not] seen, this is not heard Rainfall upon the mountain of Punt, it is
scarce, namely rain, in the southern lakes.
Despite Punts many attestations in Egyptian historical and religious
compositions, the Egyptians perceptions of the Puntites ethnic identity is conspicuously
silent. In the Hymn to Amun from Papyrus Leiden I 350, the inhabitants of Punt are
simply labeled331:

imyw pwnt, those who are in Punt, and the

only further description is of them bringing sweet-smelling incense to the god. The 5th
Dynasty autobiography of Harkhuf describes a dancing dwarf from Yam that was brought
to Egypt for an anxious King Pepi II, likened to the one brought from Punt for King Isesi,
although nothing else is said about it.332 In the autobiography, Punt is called the
tA Axtyw,333 land of the horizon-dwellers,334 an epithet used
not only for distant places but also for the realm of the Egyptian gods.335 A stele of
Mentuhotep IV dedicated to Min in Wadi Hammamat provides an additional association
of tA-nTr with the horizon, and the realm of the gods336:

Sps pAwty xnty st m tA Axtyw aH nTr Hnk m anx sSy Hr nTry wAxx nTr pn im.f st.f wabt
nt sxmx-ib Hryt-tp xAswt tA-nTr

330 Found at Defenneh. Petrie, Tanis II, plate 42: lines 12-14.

331 J. Zandee, De Hymnen aan Amon van Papyrus Leiden I 350 (Leiden: Brill, 1948), plate 1: line 5.
332 Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 128.
333 Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 128.
334 For a complete compendium and analysis of this phrase see: Charles M. Kuentz, Autour dune

Conception gyptienne Mconnue: lAkhit ou soi-disant horizon, Bulletin de lInstitut Franais

dArchologie Orientale 17 (1920).
335 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 5.
336 Kuentz, Autour dune conception gyptienne mconnue: lAkhit ou soi-disant horizon, 121: lines
4-7.

69

O Venerable one, primeval god, foremost of the position in the land of the
horizon-dwellers, the palace of the god is presented with life, the sacred nest of
Horus in which this god is refreshed is his pure place of enjoyment upon the hills
of gods land.
Amun calls himself the creator of Punt in the inscriptions at Deir el-Bahari:337
ir.n.<i> n.i s<y> r sAbi ib.i,338 <I> made it for myself in
order for my heart to tarry.339 These texts reveal Punts uniqueness among the
neighboring lands and peoples known to the Egyptians. Because Punt was located at the
south-easternmost horizon, at essentially the edge of the human world, it warranted a
special, divine designation of gods land.340 As an extension, it is possible that, in the
minds of the Egyptians, the inhabitants of gods land were endowed with some
sacredness.
Although the texts and reliefs are incomplete and poorly preserved, the most
attractive and complete record of Egyptian-Puntite relations is from the 18th Dynasty
expedition to Punt recorded at Hatshepsuts mortuary temple of Deir el-Bahrari.341 In
only two instances at Deir el-Bahari, however, are the inhabitants of Punt referred to by
an ethnonym342:

pwntyw, Puntites, and

nw pwntyw, of the Puntites (referring to a commodity) and nothing meaningful is said

about their ethnicity. The inscription lists a group of Puntites brought back to Egypt with
their children by this expedition, but they are only called mryt,343 subjects or serfs.344
The Egyptians were, however, aware of leaders among the Puntites. Their leaders were
called wr,345 Great One, as was common for labeling foreign rulers of moderate
influence. A register of reliefs at Deir el-Bahari contains a row of men who are labeled

337 Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari III, plate 84.

338 Note that the second ir should be read as the r of purpose.

339 See also Amuns titles associating him with Punt and Medja on page 76.
340 Gerald Moers, The World and the Geography of Otherness in Pharaonic Egypt, in Geography and

Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 173.
341 Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari III, plate 77.
342 From Amuns speech to the Queen: Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari III, plate 84: line 15.
Below the trees: Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari III, plate 78.
343 Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari III, plate 74. Kitchen, The Elusive Land of Punt revisited, 39.
344 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache II, 106.
345 Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari III, plate 69.

70

wrw nw pwnt, Great Ones of Punt, below a register of

Southerners also labeled wrw, Great Ones, of Irem and Nemiu.346
The Deir el-Bahari texts include a curious epithet unique to the Puntites347:
xbstyw, bearded.348 The physical characteristic bearded was also
used to describe myrrh harvesters in the Ptolemaic Period, and the Egyptian king himself
when he offered myrrh to the gods.349 The beard may have been a physical feature that
the Egyptians associated with the gods, and so became associated with the myrrh (and
Puntites) that was harvested for them.350 In another place, the Puntites submission to the
Egyptian queen is likened to the behavior of Tsmw, dogs.351 It is interesting to note that
in the inscriptions at Deir el-Bahari, Punt and Puntites are not given negative epithets of
any kind, while Kush is called Xst, wretched or defeated, within the same text Punt is
mentioned.352 This may be due to the simple fact that Punt never necessitated defeating or
subduing, as the word Xsy implies.353
A unique attribution of ethnicity to the land of Punt is briefly alluded to in the
Festival of Min at Medinet Habu.354 A man who takes part in the Festival and solely
recites a hymn to Min is labeled355:

nHs n pwnt, Nehesy of

Punt.356 As is explored in the next chapter, the term Nehesy(u) was used by the

346 Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari III, plate 76. Anthony J. Spalinger, Covetous Eyes South: The

Background to Egypts Domination over Nubia by the Reign of Thutmose III, in Thutmose III: A New
Biography (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 365.
347 Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari III, plate 84: line 15.
348 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache III, 255.
349 Meeks, Locating Punt, 65.
350 See, for example, the deceased assuming the divine beard of Osiris in their transformation of
identity for the afterlife. Gay Robins, Hair and the Construction of Identity in Ancient Egypt, c 1480-
1350 B.C., Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 36 (1999): 68.
351 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 321: line 11.
352 Refer to page 84 for full text.
353 Lorton, The So-Called Vile Enemies of the King of Egypt, 65.
354 The same text was also inscribed at the Ramesseum: Henri Gauthier, Les ftes du dieu Min (Cairo:
Imprimerie de lInsitut Franais DArchologie Orientale, 1931), 200-202.
355 Epigraphic Survey, Medinet Habu IV: Festival Scenes of Ramesses III (Chicago: The Oriental
Institute, 1940), plate 203: lines 10, 16. Dimitri Meeks, Coptos et les Chemins de Pount, Topoi,
supplement 3 (2002): 284.
356 Note that his artistic representation is that of a typical Egyptian man. While he is identified as a
foreigner there is nothing in the visual record to corroborate this. Epigraphic Survey, Medinet Habu
IV: Festival Scenes of Ramesses III, plate 203.

71

Egyptians to refer to their southern neighbors the inhabitants of Kush and the various
other political factions that existed in modern-day north Sudan. This text corroborates the
connection between Punt and the southern countries, but may reflect the myth of Mins
exotic origins as an element of the Festival, more so than it identifies the inhabitants of
Punt as a Nehesy.357
The Medjay358
The inquisition of the ethnic identity of the

mDAy,359 Medjay

Medja360 in Egyptian written records is

and the location of their homeland

on going in Egyptology, most specifically targets the relationship between the ethnic
group apparent in Old Kingdom texts and the official titles frequent in New Kingdom
texts. The oldest references to the Medjay seem to reference an ethnic group associated
with Egypts southern neighbors; did the name refer to an ethnic group throughout, or
when was the title Medjay adopted for the title of policeman during the New Kingdom?
In the late Old Kingdom, the perception of the Medjay is that of a people
belonging to the Nehesyu, the southern neighbors and the inhabitants of such polities as
Wawat, Kush, Irtjet and Yam.361 The earliest reference to the land of Medja is recorded in
the Dahshur Decree of Pepi I362, where it was listed alongside Yam and Irtjet363 but the
only foreign peoples mentioned in the text (later) are Nehesyu. Twice in the
autobiography of Weni the inhabitants of Medja are associated with the southern regions.
Among the Egyptian army formed to repel the Aamu, Weni records representatives of
foreign lands also364:

357 Gauthier, Les ftes du dieu Min, 89.

358 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache II, 186.
359 For the purposes of this thesis mDAy will be transliterated Medjay. Other common spellings

include: Mazoi, Mezaiu, Medjai, Madjai, and Mejay.

360 For a list of locations within the land of Medja see: Kate Liszka, We have Come to Serve
Pharaoh: A Study of the Medjay and Pangrave as an Ethnic Group and as Mercenaries from C.2300
BCE until C. 1050 BCE (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2012), 146-147.
361 OConnor, The Locations of Yam and Kush and Their Historical Implications, 27.
362 Sethe 1933, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 209: line 16.
363 An individual is named imy-r nw mDA imAm [i]rTt, overseer of Medja, Yam and Irtet.
364 Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 101: lines 13-16.

72

m irTt nHsyw mDA nHsyw iAm nHsyw m wAwAt nHsyw m kAAw nHsyw m tA TmHw
from Irtjet Nubians, Medja Nubians, Yam Nubians, from Wawat Nubians, from
Kaau Nubians and from the land of Tjemeh.
Near the end of the inscription is the record of barges made from acacia wood365:

isT HqAw xAswt nw irTt wAwAt iAm mDA Hr sTA xt r.s<n>

then, the rulers of the foreign lands of Irtjet, Wawat, Yam, Medja conveyed the
timber to them.
Another such Old Kingdom association comes from the reign of Meryenre, where again,
the rulers (HqAw) of Medja, Irtjet and Wawat pay obeisance to the Egyptian king
together.366 In an Execration Text from Giza the inhabitants of the land of Medja were
also identified as Nehesyu367:

nHs nb sbit.f m irT<t> wAwAt sATw iAm kAAw anxi mAsit mDA mtrti
every Nehesyu who rebels in Irtjet, Wawat, Satju, Yam, Kaau, Ankhi, Masit,
Medja, and Meterti.
A similar association of the lands of Medja and Wawat appear in a 6th Dynasty letter in
which

Tswt nt mDA wAwAt, the troops of Medja

365 Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 109: line 2.
366 Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 110: line 15. Note that an apparent duplicate of this text, albeit

with lacunae, from the same reign exists: Sethe, Urkunden des Alten Reichs, 111.
367 Jurgen Osing, chtungstexte aus dem Alten Reich (II), Mitteilungen des Deutschen
Archologischen Instituts 32 (1976): 148.

73

and Wawat are mentioned.368 Clearly, in the Old Kingdom the Egyptians believed the
inhabitants of Medja were similar enough to the inhabitants of southern (i.e. Nubian)
polities that they could be identified by the same ethnonym, Nehesyu.
In the Middle Kingdom the Medjay, perhaps through increased interaction or
immigration into Egyptian areas, experienced the development of a unique ethnonym in
Egyptian sources: the topo-ethnonym (demonym) mDAyw. The appearance of this
demonym relays that in the Egyptian mind the Medjay were deserving of representation
distinct from the Nehesyu, and one that tied them to their homeland.369 This development
is illustrated in yet another execration figure, this one from the early Middle Kingdom370
that differentiates between the Medjay and the Nehesyu371:

mDAyw nb nw wbAt-spt nHsyw nb nw wAwAt kS SAat bqs

all the Medjay of Webet-Sepet;372 all the Nubians of Wawat, Kush, Shaat,
Beqes.
The Instructions of Amenemhat I also made a distinction between the two of these topoethnonyms, and compares each to a separate animal373:

iw qnbw.n.i mAiw in.n.i msHw iw dAir.n.i [wA]wAyw in.n.i mDAyw

I captured lions and I took crocodiles. I seized the [Wa]wayu; and I took the

368 Paul C. Smither, An Old Kingdom Letter concerning the Crimes of Count Sabni, The

Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 28 (1942): 17: line 12.

369 See also the Middle Kingdom fort at Serra East named xsf mDAyw, Repelling the Medjay. Alan H.
Gardiner, An Ancient List of the Fortresses of Nubia, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 3 (1916):
185. Lszl Trk, Between Two Worlds: The Frontier Region between Ancient Nubia and Egypt 3700
BC - AD 500 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 88.
370 Dated to the reigns of Senusret I or Amenemhat II by Parkinson. Richard B. Parkinson, Voices from
Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Middle Kingdom Writings (London: British Museum Press, 1991), 125.
371 Georges Posener, Cinq Figurines DEnvotement (Cairo: Institut Franais darchologie orientale
du Caire, 1987), 45-47.
372 Karola Zibelius-Chen, Afrikanische Orts und Vlkernamen in hieroglyphischen und hieratischen
Texten (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1972), 104.
373 From the ostracon Petrie 77. Helck, Der Text der Lehre Amenemhets I. fr seinen sohn, 76-77.

74

Medjay.374
Here, lions and crocodiles are not similes simply for the purpose of derision: through
comparison with these two ethnic groups, they relay the power of the people, and the
expertise of the King in subduing them.
The mention of the Medjay in Egypt during a time of peace in the Instructions of
Ipuwer from the Middle Kingdom or Second Intermediate Period may describe a group
of Medjay soldiers who were under Egyptian employ375:
mDAyw nDm.w Hna kmt, the Medjay
are friendly with Egypt. The 17th Dynasty biography of Sobeknakht at El Kab376
recorded a military alliance of the Medjay with Egypts southern and eastern
neighbors,377 against a threat presented by Kush378:

snhp.n.f wHyt wAwAt [] nbt xAswt nw xnt-Hn-nfr pwnt mDA

he (Kush) stirred up the families of Wawat, [] the countries of Khent-hennefer, Punt and Medja.379
In the badly preserved inscription from the chapel of Mentuhotep Nebhepetre II at
Gebelein, the Medjay fulfill the role of the eastern neighbors, opposite the Tjemeh as the
western neighbors.380 Further evidence of Medjas association with the east is found in
the Hymn to Amun-Re in Papyrus Boulaq XVII381:

374 Refer to the Aamu also compared to a crocodile on page 52.
375 Gardiner, Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage, 90.
376 W. Vivien Davies, Sobeknakhts Hidden Treasure, British Museum Magazine 46 (2003): 18-19.

377 W. Vivien Davies, Sobeknakht of Elkab and the Coming of Kush, Egyptian Archaeology 23 (2003)
378 W. Vivien Davies, Kush in Egypt: A New Historical Inscription, Sudan & Nubia 7 (2003): 53.
379 It is unclear due to the lacuna if the ethnonym or the toponym is meant here for the Medjay.
380 Labib Habachi, King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep: his monuments, place in history, deification and

unusual representations in the form of gods, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archologischen Instituts 19
(1963): fig. 6. Marochetti, The Reliefs of the Chapel of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep at Gebelein, fig. 27b.
381 Eugene Grebaut, Hymne Ammon-Ra: des papyrus gyptiens du muse de Boulaq (Paris: A. Franck,
1874), 303: lines 4-5. Maria Michela Luiselli, Der Amun-Re Hymnus des P. Boulaq 17 (P. Kairo CG
58038) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004), 2.

75

mrr nTrw sTy.f xft ii.f m pwnt wr iAdt hAi.f <m> mDAyw
His fragrance the gods love, when he comes from Punt. Great One of dew
(when) he descends <from> the Medjay.
The hymn also describes incense and myrrh coming from Medja, commodities that were
closely associated with Punt and the east.382 The associations between the two lands
continue through related titles of Amun: the lord (nb) of the Medjay and ruler (HqA) of
Punt.383
The awareness of the Medja homeland persisted in Middle Kingdom tomb
biographies as a location from which Egyptian officials received goods from the HqAw
xAswt, rulers of the foreign lands, of Medja.384 By far the most interesting written
records of the Medjay are a pair of Dispatches sent by unknown scribes at the fort of
Semna to an unknown individual during the reign of Amenemhat III.385 The scribe, who
dutifully noted the days happenings, recorded the emergence of several Medjay from the
desert, associating them directly with a nomadic lifestyle.386 Dispatch No. 3 records the
discovery of Medjay individuals by Egyptian and Medjay scouts in their employ387:

gm.n.n st Hr rsy pA aD Hr Xrw tA xti nt Smw

We found them south of the desert-edge388 under the engraving of Shemu.
Semna Dispatch No. 5 contains a further association of the Medjay with the desert389:

382 Luiselli, Der Amun-Re Hymnus des P. Boulaq 17 (P. Kairo CG 58038), 26.
383 Grebaut, Hymne Ammon-Ra: des papyrus gyptiens du muse de Boulaq, 301: line 4.
384 Autobiography of Sarenput. Kurt Sethe, Historisch-biographische Urkunden des Mittleren Reiches

(Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1935), 2: line 1.

385 Paul C. Smither, The Semnah Despatches, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 31 (1945): 4-5.
386 Liszka, We have Come to Serve Pharaoh, 269-272.
387 Smither, The Semnah Despatches, plate 3a: line 12.
388 aD, translated here as desert-edge, is defined: das Land am Wstenrande an der Grenze des
regelmssig bewsserten Gebietes. Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache I, 239.
389 Smither, The Semnah Despatches, plate 5a: lines 7-8.

76

swDA-ib.k snb.ti anx.ti r ntt mDAyw 2 mDAywt 3 [] 2 hAi.w Hr xAst

Be informed, may you be well and living, that 2 Medjay men and 3 Medjay
women390 and 2 [] descended from the desert.
These Medjay were so considered so acquainted with the desert that the Egyptians of the
fort inquire of them its condition,391 before they were392:

hdt [r]

xAst.sn, dismissed [to] their desert. These dispatches say more about the association of
the Medjay to the desert than any other written source, and it is upon these brief lines that
much of their character in modern scholarship is based.
In the New Kingdom, the term mDAy was transformed into an element in
numerous titles393 for individuals who formed communities of policemen or institutional
guards.394 The textual evidence for the Medjay ethnicity during this period is scarce. The
land of Medja did not disappear from written records, however. It became the duty of the
Viceroys of Nubia to collect revenue from Medja.395

390 Note the feminine form of the ethnonym in the hieroglyphs.
391 To which they reply: n

sDm.n xwt nbt iw tA xAst Hr [mt] m-a Hqr, We do not hear anything; the desert
is [dying] from hunger. Smither, The Semnah Despatches, plate 5a: lines 9-10.
392 Smither, The Semnah Despatches, plate 5a: line 10.
393 Including Hry mDAy, Captain of the Medjay, wr n mDAy Chief of the Medjay, and idnw n mDAy,
Deputy of the Medjay, Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache II, 186. Liszka,
We have Come to Serve Pharaoh, Table 15. Danile Michaux-Colombot, The MD3Y.W, not
Policemen but an Ethnic Group from the Eastern Desert, in tudes nubiennes: conference de Genve:
actes du VIIe Congrs international dtudes nubiennes, 3-8 septembre 1990 (Genve: Socite dtudes
nubiennes, 1992), 29-30. Torgny Sve-Sderbergh, gypten und Nubien (Lund: Ohlssons, 1941), 232-
233.
394 Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica I, 73-89. Liszka, We have Come to Serve Pharaoh, 316-
375. Some scholars believe that the title Medjay was adapted for the policemen because the original
members of the police force had been, ethnically, of Medjay-descent: Stephan Johannes Seidlmayer,
Nubier im gyptischen Kontext im Alten und Mittleren Reich, in Akkulturation und
Selbstbehauptung: Beitrge des Kolloquiums am 14.12.2001 (Halle-Wittenberg:
Orientwissenschaftliches Zentrum der Martin-Luther-Universitt, 2002), 99.
395 Refer to the Inscription of Turo, Viceroy of Nubia under Amenhotep I: Wolfgang Helck, Historisch-
biographische Texte der 2. Zwischenzeit und neue Texte der 18. Dynastie (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1983), 115. Labib Habachi, The First Two Viceroys of Kush and their Family, Kush 7 (1959): 49.

77

Summary
Surprisingly little can be extrapolated from Egyptian written records about their
eastern neighbors, in comparison to other orientations. Unsurprisingly, they are
associated with both the deserts and the coasts, as is consistent with Egypts eastern
borders. Few wars, if any, were conducted against these neighbors, presumably providing
little opportunity to apply the vocabulary of humiliation to them. Three main features that
identify an ethnic group can be found in Egyptian texts concerning Egypts eastern
neighbors:
1. The use of common proper names for referring to individual ethnic groups (Shasu,
Puntites, Medjay)
2. The awareness of cultural elements, including their lifestyle (Shasu); the division into
sub-cultural units or families (Shasu); a trademark physical characteristic (Puntites);
and cultural or political leaders with tailored titles (Shasu, Puntites, Medjay)
3. The awareness of homelands for each ethnic group (Shasu, Punt, Medja) as well as a
distinct topographical element of their homeland (Shasu)

78

Chapter 5. The Southerners

Interaction between Egyptian and southern cultures are consistently attested for
thousands of years, appearing in written records during the first Egyptian dynasties, but
certainly occurring even before then.396 Egyptians and their southern neighbors inhabited
a similar environment, connected by the flow of the Nile from south to north and broken
only by the six cataracts. Traditionally, the First Cataract in modern-day Aswan (ancient
Swenet) marked the boundary line between Egypt and the southern lands, although during
periods of expansion and colonization, especially during the 13th and 18th Dynasties,
direct Egyptian influence extended as far as the Fourth Cataract. It was within Egyptian
interests to establish forts along the southern Egyptian border, between the second and
third cataracts,397 as well as towns and temples at strategic points further south to
maintain administration in the area.398
Ethnonyms and Homelands
The earliest extant use of the toponym

tA-sty, Land of the Bow,399

for the lands south of Egypt was during the 1st Dynasty reign of King Aha.400 During the
Middle Kingdom, the Egyptian word for the bow was modified for use as the nisbe
adjective

styw to denote the inhabitants of tA-sty.401 An early example of

396 Jane Roy, The Politics of Trade: Egypt and Lower Nubia in the 4th Millennium BC (Leiden: Brill,

2011). Trk, Between Two Worlds, 36.

397 Bruce Williams, Second Cataract Forts, in Ancient Nubia: African Kingdoms on the Nile (Cairo:
American University in Cairo Press, 2012), 340-347. Stuart Tyson Smith, To the Supports of Heaven:
Political and Ideological Concepts of Frontiers in Ancient Egypt, in Untaming the Frontier in
Anthropology, Archaeology, and History (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2005), 211.
398 William Y. Adams, The First Colonial Empire: Egypt in Nubia, 3200-1200 B.C., Comparative
Studies in Society and History 26 (1984): 44-66.
399 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 253. tA-sty was also the name of the first Upper
Egyptian nome that formed the borderland of Egypt and the south: Nigel Strudwick, Texts from the
Pyramid Age (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 117. Robert Morkot, The Black Pharaohs:
Egypts Nubian Rulers (London: Rubicon Press, 1996), 53.
400 Label of Aha from Abydos. De Wit, Enemies of the State, 173-174. And translation in: Wolfgang
Helck, Untersuchungen zur Thinitenzeit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987), 145.
401 Note the name of the Egyptian fort at Semna South: dAi sti, subduer of the Land of Sety, or
subduer of the Setyu. Louis V. abkar, Semna South: The Southern Fortress, The Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 61 (1975): 42.

79

this is found on a fragmented stele of Khasekhemwy from Hierakonpolis, on which a

bow is carved above the head of an enemy to identify his identity as a southern
neighbor.402 It also appears numerous times in the Pyramid Texts.403 Another early
tA-nHs, Land of the Nehesy appears in the 4th Dynasty on the

toponym

Palermo Stone404 and anticipated the appearance of

nHsy,405 Nehesy, the

primary ethnonym for all of Egypts southern neighbors. Nehesyu is conventionally

translated Southlander,406 Nubian,407 or, in archaic translations, Negro.408 By the
middle of the Old Kingdom,409 more specific toponyms for southern polities410 can be
Medja,411

found in Egyptian texts, including:

Wawat,

Irtjet, and

Yam,412
Setjau.413 By the New

Kingdom, Egyptian written records include contact with the major southern polities of

402 De Wit, Enemies of the State, 243-244.

403 Alejandro Jimnez-Serrano, Two Different Names of Nubia before the Fifth Dynasty, Studien zur

Altgypischen Kultur 35 (2006): 142.

404 Record of Sneferu relocating thousands of men, women and cattle. Jimnez-Serrano, Two
Different Names of Nubia before the Fifth Dynasty, 142. Trigger believes this was to: pacify the
region and perhaps also to secure manpower for their projects in the north. Bruce G. Trigger, New
Light on the History of Lower Nubia, Anthropologica 10 (1968): 88.
405 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 137. Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der
Aegyptischen Sprache II, 303.
406 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache II, 303.
407 Nubia and Nubian are the most common names by which Egyptologists refer to the southern
lands (modern-day Sudan) as a whole, and their inhabitants in general. These terms will be avoided
for the purpose of this thesis because of the impression of ethnic homogeneity they promote.
408 Junker believes that this term does not in any way indicate the blackness of the ethnicity, but
was used generally for Egyptian neighbors to the south and south-east, only later to be applied to
Egypts black neighbors: Hermann Junker, The First Appearance of the Negroes in History, The
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 7 (1921): 124-125. Redford, on the other hand, believes that its very
definition was bronzed/burnt: Donald B. Redford, From Slave to Pharaoh: The Black Experience of
Ancient Egypt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 5.
409 Gerald E. Kadish, Old Kingdom Egyptian Activity in Nubia: Some Reconsiderations, The Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 52 (1966).
410 For a complete compendium of southern toponyms see: Zibelius-Chen, Afrikanische Orts- und
Vlkernamen in hieroglyphischen und hieratischen Texten.
411 Refer to the Medjay on page 72.
412 Julien Cooper, Reconsidering the Location of Yam, Journal of the American Research Center in
Egypt 48 (2012). OConnor, The Locations of Yam and Kush and their Historical Implications, 27. D.
M. Dixon, The Land of Yam, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 44 (1958).
413 Sve-Sderbergh, gypten und Nubien, 11-30. Morkot, The Black Pharaohs: Egypts Nubian Rulers,
48.

80

Irem414 and
415

Wawat.

Kush, along with continued records of

The Egyptians considered the inhabitants of these countries to be Nehesyu,

although in some cases separate ethnonyms developed for these polities, such as
wAwAyw416 for the people of Wawat, and
kASw417 for the inhabitants of Kush, appearing only infrequently in written records.
Similar to their treatment of the northerners, the Egyptians employed a number of
secondary ethnonyms for their southern neighbors, including

iwntyw418

(translated interchangeably as pillar people, Bedouin, tribesmen, bowmen,419 or,

archaically, troglodytes), which was likely a nisbe adjective derived from
420

bow.

iwnt,

This moniker appears in Old Kingdom literature, as at the Mortuary temple of

Sahure where it was named alongside the Montiu.421 It has been consistently translated as
a pejorative in Egyptology,422 especially through the heavy use of troglodytes, although
the word itself, and the contexts in which it appears, do not lend themselves to this
interpretation. The Southerners are also called

pDty, bowmen, or

foreigners,423 although this designation was not exclusive to them.424 Both of these
labels were designed to function as nicknames that call attention to a cultural
characteristic for which the Southerners were known; they were not proper ethnonyms.

414 David OConnor, The Location of Irem, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 73 (1987): 100.
415 Morkot, The Black Pharaohs: Egypts Nubian Rulers, 59-90.
416 Refer to the Instruction of Amenemhat I on page 74.
417 William Flinders Petrie, A Season in Egypt, 1887 (London: Field and Tuer, 1888), plate 13, no. 340.
418 Note the existence of an Egyptian fort in Lower Nubia named

xsf iwntyw,
Repelling the Iuntyu. Gardiner, An Ancient List of the Fortresses of Nubia, 185.
419 Note that the Egyptian god Min is called hry-tp iwntyw, foremost of the bowmen. Kuentz, Autour
dune conception gyptienne mconnue: lAkhit ou soi-disant horizon, 122: line 18.
420 Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache I, 55. Bowmen in: Faulkner, A Concise
Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 13.
421 Borchardt, Das Grabdenkmal des Knigs Shu-re, plate 5.
422 Vinogradov suggested that its absence from the texts of the 25th Dynasty might indicate it did, in
fact, have an insulting connotation. Alexey K. Vinogradov, On the Rendering of the Toponym T3 STJ,
Chronique dgypte 75 (2000): 230: note 36.
423 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 97.
424 Espinel, Etnicidad y territorio en el Egipto del Reino Antiguo, 127.

81

Orientation: The Southern Homelands

The Land of the Nehesy, the Land of the Bow, and the other topographically
proximate lands named above consistently represented the south in Egypts political
world. While the north was associated with the marshlands of the Delta or of sTt, the
south was associated with the wind.425 Akhenaten, largely criticized for his apparent
disregard for expanding his political borders, was nonetheless aware of the geographic
elements of his world and proclaimed his dominion over them426:

rsy mi mHtt imnt iAbt [] Hry-ib n wAD-wr m hnw n kA.f tA.<f>-rsy r a TAw mHtt r
sHDwt itn
The south, as well as the north, the west and the east [and the islands] in the
midst of the sea are in praise to his kA. <His> south-land is at the region of the
wind, (his) northern is at the shining of Aten.
The Hymn to the Aten, also composed during the reign of Akhenaten, is a religious work
that describes the world and all of its elements as the creations of the god. In one instance
it names the northern (Kharu) and southern (Kush) regions of the world, and Egypt
between them.427 Seti Is stele at Qasr Ibrim also expresses his dominion over the entire
world by naming the symbolic north and south428:

tAS.f rsy r a Taw mHty Dd.f429 pHwy wAD-wr

425 Liverani, International Relations in the Ancient Near East, 1600-1100 BC, 31.
426 From the Hymn to the Rising Sun in the tomb of Ahmose. Note that most of this inscription is

now damaged and was reconstructed by Davies for publication from photographs and through
comparisons with 2 other versions of this hymn. Norman de Garis Davies, The Rock Tombs of El
Amarna III: The Tombs of Huya and Ahmes (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905), plate 29. William
J. Murnane, Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 156.
427 Refer to page 11 for text.
428 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical I, 99: line 11.
429 Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian II, 276.

82

his southern boundary is at the region of the wind, the northern (boundary), it
penetrates the border of the sea.
Spell 162 of the Coffin Texts, designed to offer the deceased control of the four winds
also associates the wind with the south and, more specifically, the Southerners430:

rsw pw rsw m nHs rsyt

it is the south-wind, the south-wind as a Nehesy of the south.
Historical records provide much documentation of the Egyptians contact with
their southern neighbors, specifically descriptions of sailing southward, or upstream
along the Nile, to the southern countries. Travel between Egypt and the regions of their
southern neighbors was arguably the easiest for the Egyptians to reach, by journeying up
the Nile; the regions to the north, west and east were only approachable across a sea,
desert, or mountain range. This fact made maintained control of the southern regions
essential.
The earliest written records of Egyptian expeditions to the south contain an
awareness of numerous foreign countries and their inhabitants. The Autobiography of
Ahmose, son of Abana, records a southern campaign during the reign of Ahmose I. The
inscription includes both a primary and a secondary ethnonym for the Southerners431:

wn.in.f Hr xntyt r xnt-Hn-nfr r sksk iwntyw styw

he (the king) went on a southern voyage to Khent-hen-nefer in order to destroy
the Setyu bowmen.
Both iwntyw and styw are conventionally translated individually as bowmen, although
Setyu functions as a proper topo-ethnonym and iwntyw as an informal moniker. In the

430 Adriaan de Buck, The Egyptian Coffin Texts vol. II: Texts of Spells 76-163 (Chicago: The Oriental

Institute, 1938), 397-398.

431 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 5.

83

same inscription, but from Ahmoses service to Amenhotep I, these Setyu-bowmen are
mentioned again, though this time the name of their homeland is specified432:

iw.f m xntyt r kS r swsx tASw kmt wn.in Hm.f Hr sqr iwntyw styw pf m Hr-ib mSA.f
he (the king) was on a southward voyage to Kush in order to extend the
boundaries of Egypt. Then, his Majesty struck down that Setyu-bowman in the
heart of his (the Setyu) army.
As established in the previous chapter, the land of Punt was occasionally
mentioned alongside these southern countries, as in the Deir el-Bahari inscriptions of
Hatshepsuts expedition. What is notable about these inscriptions is the perpetual use of
hsy, wretched, or defeated, to designate Kush, while Punt is listed simultaneously but
without an epithet433:

xrp biAw n pwnt Spssw n tA-nTr m-ab inw n xAswt rsyt nw bAkw n kS Xst gAwt nt tAnHs
bringing the wonders of Punt and the riches of gods land, together with the
tribute of the southern countries, and of the revenues of defeated Kush, and the
tribute of the land of the Nehesy.
A similar text in which a southern land is given the special designation Xsy is the stele of
Amenhotep III from his mortuary temple. It identifies Kush as the representative of the
south in the Egyptian cosmography434:

di.i Hr ir rsy biAy.i n.k di.i pXr n.k wrw kS Xst hr inw.sn nb Hr psd.sn

432 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 7.

433 Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari III, plate 77.
434 Petrie, Six Temples at Thebes, plate 12: lines 27-28.

84

I turn my face to the south; I make a miracle for you: I cause the Great Ones of
defeated Kush to surround you, under all their tribute upon their backs.
This text is a notable one: Amun presents the king with each of the four directions of the
earth along with their inhabitants, as representatives of the whole earth to signify his
dominion over its entirety. Of the four lands included (Kush, sTt, Tjehnu, and Punt) only
the southern neighbor is given an epithet: Xsy. This phenomenon will be explored below
further.
Common Culture: Language, Dress, and Physical Characteristics
Egyptian written sources contain some descriptions of the Southerners culture
that agree with their bright and intricate representation in Egyptian visual sources.
Papyrus Anastasi IIIA, a single-sheet papyrus containing a list of luxury items and other
trade goods from the south provides a vivid description of Southerners brought to Egypt
and their adornments435:

nHsyw nfrw n kS n-SAw436 Hbs bhA iw.w tby m T<b>wt437 HD TAy m

sfry nAy.sn krmt r Drwt
fine Nehesyu of Kush fit for giving a fans shelter. They are shod with white
sandals and clad in fine linen(?), their bracelets on (their) hands.
Papyrus Koller contains a similar description of a different southern ethnic group and
their ornamentation, with similar language. Paser, an Egyptian official438 penned a letter
to an unnamed southerner, presumably a ruler, regarding the presentation of tribute to
Egypt. He invited the southerner to imagine the scene439:

435 From Papyrus Anastasi IIIA 6-7. Gardiner, Late Egyptian Miscellanies, 33: lines 8-10.
436 Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian II, 108.
437 The b is missing from the original text, but it was often dropped from the orthography: Lesko, A

Dictionary of Late Egyptian II, 228.

438 Possibly a Kings Son of Kush, although that specific title is not given: Gardiner, Late Egyptian
Miscellanies, 118: line 15. Also refer to: Gardiner, Egyptian Hieratic Texts I, 40: note 1.
439 From Papyrus Koller 4, 5-7. Gardiner, Late Egyptian Miscellanies, 119: lines 14-16.

85

Trk440 qAy m sDy bhA.sn m nbw qAy mHwt nAy.sn krmt m Tst sxt nHsyw aSA m tnw nb
tall Terek people in sedjy-garments,441 their fans of gold, (wearing) long feathers,
their bracelets with woven knots, and many Nehesyu consisting of every and all.
These types of Nehesyu may have referred to the inhabitants of the different southern
polities, such as the Wawayu, Kashu, and Terek442 already mentioned. In addition, Paser
also mentioned the inhabitants of Irem443:

irmi444 qnw r-HAt pA inw

many Irem-folk at the head of the tribute.
These texts highlight two items of adornment that the Egyptians associated with the
southern cultures: bracelets (krmt)445 and fans (bhA). That they are mentioned among the
accouterment of two separate southern ethnic groups (Nehesyu and Terek) may indicate
the homogenous nature of the Egyptians perception of southern cultures and peoples.
This conclusion is supported by the frequent appearance of numerous southern ethnic
groups in Egyptian tribute scenes in tandem.
Despite the absence of a written language unique to the southern peoples until
Meroitic,446 their spoken language (or languages) were notably foreign to the Egyptians,

440 Following Caminos transliteration: Ricardo A. Caminos, Late-Egyptian Miscellanies (London:

Oxford University Press, 1954), 438 and note (4,5) on page 444.
441 This ambiguous garment is not unique to the Southerners but appears in the same text worn by an
Egyptian: Gardiner, Late Egyptian Miscellanies, 118: line 11. For other texts that mention this
garment see: Gardiner, Egyptian Hieratic Texts I, 40: note 1.
442 Sve-Sderbergh, gypten und Nubien, 157: note 4.
443 Gardiner, Late Egyptian Miscellanies, 119: line 11.
444 Following Caminos transliteration: Caminos, Late-Egyptian Miscellanies, 438 and note (4,3-4) on
page 444.
445 Inge Hofmann, Herbert Tomandl, and Michael Zach, k3rm.t Armband aus Elefantenhaar?
Gttinger Miszellen 74 (1984): 7-9.
446 Susan K. Doll, Texts and Writing in Ancient Nubia, in Ancient Nubia: African Kingdoms on the Nile
(Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2012), 154-166.

86

as is commented upon in the Sallier Papyrus. The letter details a scribes frustration with
his stubborn student447:

Tw.k m-di.i m nHsyw Aaa.ti iw in.f m pA inw

You are in my employ as the jabbering Nehesyu, when he is brought with the
tribute!
This description of the sounds of the Nehesyu language uses the same word the Egyptians
used in the Old Kingdom reference to the language of Tjehnu. The word Aaa probably
served as an amiable imitation of sounds and words unknown to the Egyptians, and its
use confirms that the language of the Nehesyu was not familiar to the Egyptians.448
A medical papyrus in Berlin (B. Papyrus 3038) contains a method for determining
if a woman will give birth that comments on a physical difference between the Nehesyu
and the Aamu449:

ky mAA rdit rx.kwi aHa st m wmwt nt dwAt ir gm.k twt nw irt.st wa mi aAmw kt ti mi
nHsy nn msi.s ir gm.<k> st m inm n wa iw.st r msi
Another observation causing that I know: when she stands in the reveal of a
doorway - if you find the pupils of her eye (that) one is like an Aamu, and another
is like a Nehesy, she will not give birth. If <you> find them having the
appearance450 of one,451 she will give birth.

447 From Papyrus Sallier I 8,1. Gardiner, Late Egyptian Miscellanies, 85: lines 10-12.
448 See note 77.
449 Walter Wreszinski, Der groe medizinische Papyrus des Berliner Museums (Pap. Berl. 3038)

(Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1909), plate 23: lines 1-2.

450 While the hieratic clearly reads inm, skin, perhaps

character, was meant. Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian I, 33.

451 Or, if you find them as the same color.

87

inw, appearance, color, or

While this papyrus does not specify the type of difference meant by this text between the
eyes of the Aamu and the eyes of the Nehesyu (color, expression, shape, or size), it
indicates that the Egyptians were so aware of the physical differences between the two
ethnicities that the author did not need to specify how to identify that difference.
Associations, Epithets, and Descriptions
A common description of the Southerners in written sources is their propensity for
bStw, rebellion.452 The inscription of Thutmose II from Aswan contains a lengthy
discussion of a rebellion in Kush. The text contains the announcement of the rebellion
and the kings response en force453:

ii.tw r rdit wDA-ib n Hm.f r ntt kS Xst wA.ti r bStw wnw m nDt nt nb tAwy xmt.<w> n
kA sbit wA r Hwt.f rmT kmt r xnp mnmnt Hry-sA nn mnnww qd.n it.k m nxtw.f
One came in order to inform his Majesty that: defeated Kush are fallen into
rebellion, those who are serfs of the lord of the Two Lands! <They> are plotting
of the rebels plan, readying to strike the Egyptians, namely, stealing these cattle
of the fortress which your father built out of his victories.
Thutmose IV, the great-grandson of Thutmose II, left a similar inscription of a
rebellion454:

452 Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 85. For a discussion of bStw, translated

alternatively as rising up, or troublesome, see: Patrik Lundh, Actor and Event: Military Activity in
Ancient Egyptian Narrative Texts from Tuthmosis II to Merneptah (Uppsala: Akademitryck, 2002), 75.
453 J. De Morgan and others, Catalogue des Monuments et Inscriptions de LEgypte Antique (Vienna:
Adolphe Holzhausen, 1894), 2-3.
454 Helck, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, 1545.

88

iw.tw r Dd n Hm.f nHsy hA.w m-hAw wAwAt kAi.n.f bStw r kmt sHwy.f n.f
SmAw nb bSttyw nw kt xAst
One came to say to his Majesty: The Nehesy is descending in the area of
Wawat; he planned a rebellion against Egypt! He is assembling to himself all the
foreigners and the rebels of another country.
Amenhotep III also recorded a rebellion in Kush455:

iw.tw r Dd n Hm.f pA xrw n kS Xst kA.n.f bStw m ib.f

One came in order to say to his Majesty: The fallen of defeated Kush has plotted
rebellion in his heart.
Another such rebellion was recorded during the reign of Akhenaten.456 These texts follow
a formula:457 a messenger makes an announcement to the king that the Southerners were
actively planning harm against Egypt, or against the Egyptians themselves, and were
assembling a force of rebels. While other foreign peoples were also called rebels,458
the frequency of the rebellions in the south indicates a special relationship with the
Egyptians, one that required continual intervention and management.
The autobiography of Ameny from his tomb at Beni Hassan contains the earliest
application of xsy, defeated, to the Southerners.459 What is notable about this text is

455 De Morgan and others, Catalogue des Monuments et Inscriptions de LEgypte Antique, 4. Helck,

Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, 1666: lines 3-4.

456 Wolfgang Helck, Ein Feldzug unter Amenophis IV gegen Nubien, Studien zur Altgyptischen
Kultur 8 (1980): 117-126.
457 For the iw.tw formula, see Anthony J. Spalinger, Aspects of the Military Documents of the Ancient
Egyptians (London: Yale University Press, 1982), 1-33.
458 Refer to page 37 for the Sherden and page 66 for the Shasu.
459 Identified by Lorton as the earliest use of Xsy in a historical text. Lorton, The So-Called Vile
Enemies of the King of Egypt (in the Middle Kingdom and Dyn. XVIII), 66. Sethe, Urkunden des
Mittleren Reiches, 14.

89

that Kush was not described as xsy until after the Egyptian king travelled south to
overthrow them460:

sni.[i] kS m xntyt in.n.i Drw tA in.n.i inw nb.i Hst.i pH.s pt aHa.n Hm.f
wDA m htp sxr.n.f xfty.f m kS Xst
[I] passed by Kush going southward; I reached the limits of the land. I brought
away the tribute of my lord, and my praise it reached the sky. Then, his Majesty
set out in contentment, (for) he had overthrown his enemies in defeated Kush.
The Southerners were not the only foreigners to which this term (Xsy) was applied; it
appears in historical and political texts more than any other term concerned with
foreignness.461 Lorton concluded that the term emphasizes the defeat of the ethnic
group, not the intrinsic wretchedness. Its frequent application to the Southerners
stemmed from the absolute necessity for them to be, and to remain defeated, not
necessarily because the threat they represented was greater than that of other foreign
groups, but because their threat was closer to home.
The Stele of Senusret III established at Uronarti includes the most aggressively
berating example of Egyptian perceptions of Southerners. In the text the king first
establishes his authority south of Egypt462:
iw ir.n.i tAS Xnty itw.i, I have made the border going southward (more than) my
forefathers. Then he addresses the character of the Nehesyu463:

460 Percy E. Newberry, Beni Hasan I (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner & Co, 1893), plate 8. Sethe,

Urkunden des Mittleren Reiches, 14.

461 Lorton devoted an article to exploring the use and accuracy of the translations of this term.
Lorton, The So-Called Vile Enemies of the King of Egypt (in the Middle Kingdom and Dyn. XVIII),
68.
462 Jozef M. A. Janssen, The Stela (Khartoum Museum No. 3) from Uronarti, Journal of Near Eastern
Studies 12 (1953): 52: line 2.
463 Janssen, The Stela (Khartoum Museum No. 3) from Uronarti, 52: line 9 -53: 11.

90

Ad.t<w> r.f dd.f sA.f Hm-xt.<tw> wA.f r Ad n rmT is nt Sfyt st Hwrw pw sDw ibw
iw mA st Hm.i nn iwms464
When one is aggressive against him, he gives his back; when <one> retreats, he
falls into aggression. They are not people of respect; they are wretches, broken of
heart. My Majesty has seen them - it is no misstatement.
A letter by the king to Amenhotep IIs Viceroy of Nubia (or Kings son of Kush465)
Usersatet warned him to beware of the Nehesyu and their magic while he was with
them466:

ky Dd n pA sA-nsw m nait n nHsy m-kfAt sAw.tw r nAy.sn rmT Hna nAy.sn HkAw
m ir sDm n mdwt.sn m Dar wpwt.sn
Another saying for the kings son: do not be lenient to the Nehesy.467 Indeed, one
should take care against their people and their magicians Do not listen to their
words. Do not search out their messages!
This text indicates that distrust and caution were recommended for Egyptian officials for
dealing with the southern neighbors, and gives at least one cause: their use of magic.

464 The m before iwms should have been an A

making Aims, a variant spelling of iwms. Faulkner, A

Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 13.
465 George E. Reisner, The Viceroys of Ethiopia, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 6 (1920): 28-
55.
466 Helck, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, 1344.
467 Another inscription with a similarly aloof practice of interacting with the Southerners is the
Middle Kingdom graffito of Khuisobek, who said he performed his duties: without placing a Nubian
in my heart. Josef W. Wegner and Josef Wegner, Regional Control in Middle Kingdom Lower Nubia:
The Function and History of the Site of Areika, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 32
(1995): 150.

91

Historical texts are not the only ones to contain insight into the Egyptians
perceptions of the Southerners. A figurative comparison of southern ethnic groups with
animals from a historical inscription has already been included in Chapter 4: I captured
lions and I took crocodiles. I seized the Wawayu; and I took the Medjay.468 The 18th
Dynasty Instruction of Ani, not to be confused with the well-known Book of the Dead of
Ani, contains instructions to a scribe. In one section, the author names several animals,
including a dog, a monkey and a goose, and describes how they should normally behave,
followed by a reference to the Nehesyu469:

Twtw <Hr> sbA nHsyw mdwt rmT n kmt xAr xAsty nbt mitt i Dd{.i}470 iry.i m iAwt nbt
sDm.k rx.k pA iri.w
One teaches the Nehesyu the language of the people of Egypt, the Kharu and any
foreign land likewise. Say: I will act as all the animals. You should listen and
you should learn what they do.
In another letter to a wayward student the author makes a similar allegory of the south471:

pA kry Hr sDm mdwt in.tw.f Hr kS

The ape understands speech, (yet) he is brought from Kush.
Within academic study, these texts are usually presented as examples of the foreigner
topos472 - the way in which all foreigners, as outsiders, were pejoratively portrayed both

468 Refer to page 74 for text.

469 Papyrus of Ani 10, 5-7, from P. Cairo CG 58042 (formerly P. Boulaq 4). Joachim Friedrich Quack,

Die Lehren des Ani: Ein neugyptischer Weisheitstext in seinem kulturellen Umfeld (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 335.
470 Refer to the variant text in P. Louvre E 30144 (formerly P. Guimet 16959) in which this seated
man is absent. Quack, Die Lehren des Ani: Ein neugyptischer Weisheitstext in seinem kulturellen
Umfeld, 335. Volten comments that this error for Dd occurs twice in this papyrus: Aksel Volten,
Studien zum Weisheitsbuch des Anii (Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, 1937), 29, 160.
471 From the Bologna Papyrus 1094. Gardiner, Late Egyptian Miscellanies, 3: lines 15-16.

92

visually (as bound captives or subjugated enemies) and textually (as wretched or
rebels). On the contrary, the purpose of these letters was not the degradation of the
Southerners. They create an arena in which the innate differences and functions of the
Southerners and the Egyptians could be explored allegorically. The moral for the students
was that all people, like animals, are prescribed actions and behavior according to their
identity (an ape, an animal foreign to Egypt, was competent in its functions even when it
was removed from its natural environment), and not that the Southerners were
comparable to apes. These animals, and foreigners, were used as positive examples of
beings fulfilling their purpose, as the disobedient student was not.
The autobiography of Ahmose, son of Abana, contains other descriptions of the
Southerners. The Setyu are called

xrw fallen,473 and

styw pf Xsy, the defeated Setyu.474 Their behavior is described as

bsi n a xAst, an intrusion475 to the desert region.476 Also during
the reign of Thutmose I, the Southerners are called477:

nbdw-qd

on the Tombos Stele - a nfr-Hr construction translating as those of bad character,478

although this epithet was not exclusively applied to the Southerners.479
Summary
The Egyptians always had a clear awareness of their southern neighbors the
primary and secondary ethnonyms and the toponyms appear in written records early on in
Egyptian chronology and maintain much consistency throughout. The south was
associated with the wind. Southerners were often discussed as rebels engaging in

472 As in: Smith, Wretched Kush, 27.
473 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 8.
474 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 9.

475 bsi is generally used to describe a flow of water: Erman and Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen

Sprache I, 474.
476 Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV, 8.
477 Lepsius, Denkmler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien III, plate 5a.
478 Erroneously translated by Breasted as curly-haired: Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt II, 30.
See brief discussion in: Wilhelm Hlscher, Libyer und gypter (Glckstadt: Augustin, 1937), 34.
Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 130.
479 Also see its application to foreign rulers in general: Lepsius, Denkmler aus Aegypten und
Aethiopien III, plate 61.

93

rebellion against Egypt. The word Xsy was applied to Southerners more frequently than
other foreign groups because their geographic proximity to Egypt made it essential that
they remain defeated. Three main features that identify an ethnic group can be found in
Egyptian texts concerning Egypts southern neighbors:
1. The use of multiple, common proper names (in many cases topo-ethnonyms), and
pseudo-ethnonyms for referring to individual ethnic groups (Nehesyu, Setyu,
Wawayu, Kashu, Terek, Irmi)
2. The awareness of cultural elements, including items of personal adornment (Nehesyu
and Terek); a distinct physical characteristic (Nehesyu); and a language foreign to the
Egyptians (Nehesyu)
3. The awareness of a homeland for each ethnic group (Wawat, Irem, Kush, Yam, Irtjet,
Satju)

94

Concluding Remarks
This work highlights the ethnonyms used by the Egyptians for their neighbors, as
well as their developed vocabulary of foreignness. Because the origins of these
ethnonyms remain uncertain, they should be categorized as exonyms, a name applied to
the ethnic group by an outsider.480 The exonym may or may not reflect the name that the
ethnic group uses reflexively, its endonym,481 but the relationships between Egyptian
exonyms and their neighbors endonyms unfortunately cannot be determined with any
degree of precision. The Egyptian exonyms can be divided into two types: primary
ethnonyms and secondary ethnonyms.482 In the Egyptian language, primary ethnonyms
were occasionally formed with the nisbe, plural ending tyw to the Egyptian name for the
homeland.483 Secondary ethnonyms484 were often formed in one of two ways: by
referencing the groups living environment485 or an ethnic characteristic.486 For the
purpose of this thesis the determination of secondary ethnonyms was based on several
factors, including their symbiotic use with other ethnonyms, and the etymology of their
root words. Primary ethnonyms received the most frequent use, although they could also
be accompanied by a secondary ethnonym, perhaps for clarification or perhaps as a
cultural comment. While in some cases it is impossible to ascertain whom exactly the
Egyptians were discussing, it appears that they could use more than one primary or
secondary ethnonym for the same ethnic group.
This thesis presented a sampling of Egyptian texts that provide insight into the
ancient Egyptians perceptions of their neighbors. These examples were selected based

480 Note that endonyms and ethnonyms can also be used to refer to external and internal place names

and not only to ethnic names. For an explanation of these types of ethnonyms in modern contexts,
see the following: Drago Kladnik, Semantic Demarcation of the Concepts of Endonym and Exonym,
Acta Geographica Slovenica 49 (2009): 396; Paul Woodman, The Nature of the Endonym,
Typescript for the 25th UNGEGN session (Nairobi: 2009); Bright, What IS a Name? Reflections on
Onomastics, 671.
481 Proschan, We are all Kmhmu, Just the Same: Ethnonyms, Ethnic identities, and Ethnic groups,
91.
482 Refer to the Appendix.
483 For example, sTt becomes sTtyw, pwnt becomes pwntyw, and tA-sty becomes styw.
484 Or, what Espinel calls pseudoetnminos. The present author does not make use of this term
because the English pseudo relays a sense of fakery and phoniness. Espinel, Etnicidad y territorio en
el Egipto del Reino Antiguo, 118. The present work does not agree, however, with all of his ethnonym
placements within the categories.
485 For example, Hryw-Say.
486 For example, iwntyw and possibly mnTw.

95

upon their commonalities, reoccurring themes and insightful comments about Egypts
neighboring peoples. This work attempted to present the general pictures of the
Egyptians ethnic neighbors as perceived by the Egyptian population. For this purpose,
the texts included came from a variety of genres, including historical and biographical,
religious, and literary.

Figure 5: Fragment of a map of the cosmos Image from Othmar Keel, The Symbolism of
the Biblical World (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 40.

At times in royal literature, the Egyptians selected ethnic groups associated with
the four cardinal directions to represent the elements of the entire world. Upon
inspection, there exist clear, permanent associations for some ethnic groups and an
overlap of associated cardinal-point orientations for others. The Libyan peoples were
decisively linked with the west, and the Nubian peoples were decisively linked with the
south. Among the Northerners and Easterners, however, there are shifting associations
over time: the people of Keftiu as western and northern, the Aamu and Shasu as eastern
and northern, and the Puntites and Medjay as eastern and southern. While reaching any of
Egypts neighbors required crossing expansive deserts, seas, or mountains, those to the
north and east (island inhabitants, Aamu, Puntites) were located the furthest away. There
seems to be a direct correlation between the absoluteness of the ethnic groups cardinal

96

orientation and their geographical proximity to Egypt. The Egyptians exhibited little
confusion over the orientation of the Westerners and Southerners because of their
immediate presence on the Egyptian western and southern borders. However, in the cases
of the Northerners and Easterners, they reconsidered their orientations possibly to
account for their locations at ordinal rather than cardinal directions or to make room for
newly prominent ethnic groups in the region. A number of further remarks can be made
regarding each orientation, and the ethnic groups associated with them.
The Egyptian cosmography naturally associated elements of the world with the
cardinal directions, and these associations carried over into their discussions of the
peoples who inhabited those regions. The Egyptians associated the Westerners with
elements of the western cosmography: the sky and the stars.487 Befitting Egypts northern
geographical border at the Mediterranean Sea, the north in the Egyptian cosmography
was associated with the sea, and it follows that many of the ethnic groups included in this
section were also associated with the sea. The east was firstly associated with the sunrise,
although the Egyptians easterly journeys also included their awareness of the Red Sea.
The southern boundary was associated with the wind.488
The most recurring names for the Westerners were: Tjehnu, Tjemeh, Meshwesh
and Rebu, although others also existed. The four major ethnic groups that inhabited the
west were identified by topo-ethnonyms identical to the Egyptian names for their
homelands (Tjemeh, Tjehnu, Meshwesh, Rebu). The Egyptians considered these ethnic
groups as distinct entities with separate ethnonyms, homelands, and cultural elements that
distinguished them from each other. Of the western peoples, the Rebu were the most
maliciously described in Egyptian texts. They were seen as the instigators of a mass
immigration from the west during the beginning of the 20th Dynasty that involved a
number of western ethnic groups.489 This unwanted intrusion into the Egyptian homeland
caused the Westerners to be characterized as ruinous,490 plotters of evil,491 and violators
of the Egyptian boundaries.492

487 Refer to excerpts from the Pyramid Texts on page 27.
488 Refer to the inscription of Seti I from Qasr Ibrim on page 82.
489 Refer to mobilizing armies on page 31 and causing confusion in footnote 132.
490 Refer to page 30.
491 Refer to page 31.
492 Refer to page 30.

97

The people of Keftiu, the Keftiuiu, were associated with the west493 and the
northern sea.494 The ethnicities collectively dubbed The Sea Peoples in Egyptology are
described as being from the islands or the sea at Egypts northern border (Table 2). They
collaborated together to form a confederation of rebels against Egypt several times
during the 20th Dynasty.495 Egyptian texts about northerners use a number of primary and
secondary ethnonyms, and often in combination. The Aamu were doubly associated with
the north and the east, and, understandably, with the desert and desert herds.496 They
inhabited a number of different regions, none of which were directly associated to their
Egyptian exonym. Their environment was described as a place of hardship.497 In terms of
their character, Egyptian texts contain much judgment of the Aamu: they are described as
cowardly and aggressive,498 and as thieves.499 The Aamu Delta rulers are described as
ruinous of Egypt500 and servants of Seth.501
The Shasu only appear in texts during the New Kingdom and later periods. They
were primarily associated with the east during the Late New Kingdom,502 although they
were also affiliated with the northerners at the Battle of Qadesh.503 The Egyptian
awareness of the Shasu included their practice of dividing their people into family units
consisting of both male and female members504 called mhwt. The leaders of these family
units were known as aAw, magnates.505 Like the Aamu, the Shasu homelands were also
described as a place of hardship,506 and they contained a topographical feature, the Tswt,
hills that were frequently mentioned.507

493 Refer to the Hymn of Victory on page 41.

494 Refer to the inscription from the Book of the Day on page 41.
495 Refer to the inscriptions from Medinet Habu on page 37.
496 Refer to the Prophecy of Neferty on page 48.
497 Refer to the Instruction of Merikare on pages 49.
498 Refer to the Instruction of Merikare on page 50.

499 Refer to the Instruction of Merikare and the Prophecy of Neferty on page 50.
500 Refer to the Kamose Inscription on page 53 and Hatshepsuts Obelisk on page 54.
501 Refer to the Narrative of Apophis and Seqenenre on page 54.
502 Refer to page 61.
503 Refer to the Battle of Qadesh inscription on page 58.
504 Refer to the determinative of mhwt on page 58.
505 Refer to the Battle of Qadesh inscription in which the Shasu spies use this term about their own

leaders on page 58.

506 Refer to the Papyrus Anastasi I on page 63.
507 Refer to the Ramesside inscription from Tell el-Retaba on page 63.

98

David OConnor and Stephen Quirke rightly suggested that some foreign peoples
were more alien than others.508 This is briefly exemplified by the people of Alasiya in
the Report of Wenamun, but perfectly defines the Egyptians positive portrayal of the
Puntites. The Puntites were spared negative comments or epithets in Egyptian written
sources entirely. With no political tension between their rulers, and no infringement on
Egyptian resources through immigration, the Puntites presented little necessity for
interaction with the Egyptians, aside from their faithful procurement of commodities for
them, and this may explain their absence in Egyptian texts. Punt, as the source of
incense, also provides the exception to the rule that every foreign land necessitated an
association with Seth or godlessness.509 The Puntites and the Medjay were both closely
associated with Egypts eastern borders and with the Southerners. During the Old
Kingdom, the Egyptians considered the inhabitants of Medja similar enough to the
inhabitants of the southern polities, to warrant calling them Nehesyu also.510 The
Egyptians did not develop an ethnonym for the Medjay that was reflective of their
homeland, Medja, until the Middle Kingdom. This was reflected in their continued
association with southern peoples during the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate
Period.511
Egyptians also used a number of primary and secondary ethnonyms for the
Southerners, sometimes in conjunction, although Nehesyu was overwhelmingly the most
common. In texts that mention numerous peoples (the best example is the stele of
Amenhotep III), the south is the only one to be singled out with a negative epithet.512
They are presented as untrustworthy513 and aggressive.514 The Southerners are often
described rebelling against Egypt, and subsequently being repeatedly defeated. Southern
regions, but especially Kush, were consistently called defeated515 after the construction
of the Egyptian forts along the southern border, but not before. This was not because the

508 David OConnor and Stephen Quirke, Introduction: Mapping the Unknown in Ancient Egypt, in

Mysterious Lands (London: University College London Press, 2003), 17.

509 Refer to the stele of Mentuhotep IV on page 69.
510 Refer to the autobiography of Weni on page 73.
511 Refer to the inscription of Sobeknakht on page 75 and the execration figure on page 74.
512 Refer to the stele of Amenhotep III on page 84 and the inscription from Deir el-Bahari on page 84.
513 Refer to the letter of Amenhotep II on page 91.
514 Refer to the inscription of Senusret III on page 91.
515 Following Lortons preferred translation of Xsy. Lorton, The So-Called Vile Enemies of the King
of Egypt.

99

Nehesy posed a greater threat than other foreign peoples, but because the Southerners
lived in such close proximity to Egypt. The cataracts were the only things obstructing
passage down the Nile into Egypt. The forts and the epithet Xsy performed a similar and
complimentary function: it was not only important for the Southerners to be defeated, but
to stay defeated.
The above considerations of Egyptian perceptions of individual ethnic groups lead
to additional conclusions about foreigners in ancient Egypt and their conception of
foreignness in general. There is a strong sense that for each region of the world there is a
designated inhabitant: kmt, the Black Land was the homeland of the Egyptians, the
islands were the homes of Tjeker, Pelest, and Danuna, and Shasu-land was for the Shasu,
etc. This understanding of the cosmos led to the belief that the worst offense was when
foreigners, en masse, approached the Egyptian border and tried to enter. Foreigners who
succeeded in entering Egypt in large migrations were described as ruining it.516 In some
cases, an even greater travesty could occur: foreigners representing a number of different
ethnic groups formed a united enemy intent on entering Egypt together. In these
instances, the foreign peoples were described as making plans for Egypt.517 These
intruders went against mAat and the ordered world,518 and were condemned by the State,
and repelled by the king. This insistence that foreigners belonged outside of Egypt should
not be interpreted as a sign of xenophobia in the Egyptian culture, or as the
inferiorization519 of foreigners. This prevalent assessment of the way Egyptians thought
of foreignness no doubt owes much to the explicit smiting scenes predominantly
displayed on temples and stelae, and the bound captive motif frequently found in tombs,
on thrones and footstools, boundary stelae, and also on temple exteriors. The negative
language prevalent in Egyptian texts concerning foreigners, including Xsy and xrw,
performed the same symbolic function that the foreigners on royal floor tiles and shoe

516 Refer to the Hyksos on page 54 and the Westerners on page 30.
517 Refer to the Westerners on page 30, and the Sea Peoples on page 37.
518 The ordered world is exemplified by a Map of the Cosmos on the lid of the 30th Dynasty

sarcophagus of Wereshnefer (MMA 14.7.1a) and a fragmentary map in the Yale Map Collection (61).
Gerry Dee Scott III, Ancient Egyptian Art at Yale (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 155.
519 This term was used to categorize the perception of foreigners in the Egyptian mindset alongside
the term dehumanizing in: Moers, The World and the Geography of Otherness in Pharaonic Egypt,
176-179.

100

soles did: to ensure their eternal subjugation.520 Although there is no evidence that a
hierarchy of races existed in the collective Egyptian mind,521 there was the
understanding that a place existed for every group of people, and every group was meant
to be in its place. The Egyptians vocabulary of foreignness should be interpreted as the
recognition that foreign peoples were undeniably different, and being different
necessitated their own, unique regions.

Lion
Westerners
Northerners
Easterners
Southerners

Crocodile

X
X

Bird
X
X

Dog
X
X
X

Fish

Ape

Desert
Herds

X
X

Table 4: Sample of Animals associated with Foreigners

Animals were often used as allegories for certain aspects of foreignness in

Egyptian texts. The modern instinct is to assume that these comparisons were of
derogatory functions by nature, although this was certainly not the case. The Egyptian
king was often compared to animals in military records and within his titles, and indeed,
many of those same animals were applied to foreigners.522 In the Egyptian worldview the
associated animal itself did not necessitate a pejorative intent in the same way that calling
someone an ape or an ass would in many modern societies; instead they functioned
as a framework for comparative behavior. The dog represented obedience, subservience,
and submission.523 Comparisons to fish, locusts, mice, or flocks of birds, evoked imagery
of easily caught, and therefore easily defeated, masses.524 Lions and crocodiles, both used
as symbols of the Egyptian king,525 represented power, dominance, and strength.

520 Stuart Tyson Smith, Ethnicity and Culture, in The Egyptian World (New York: Routledge, 2007),

223-224. Leahy, Ethnic Diversity in Ancient Egypt, 228.

521 This is a relatively modern philosophy that has unfortunately been transposed into our
understanding of ancient Egyptian perceptions of their ethnic neighbors.
522 Hsu, Figurative Expressions Referring to Animals, 3-12.
523 Galn, What is he, the dog? 179.
524 Teeter, Animals in Egyptian Literature, 268.
525 Hsu, Figurative Expressions Referring to Animals in Royal Inscriptions of the 18th Dynasty, 9-10.
Teeter, Animals in Egyptian Literature, 267.

101

Egyptian discourse about Egypts ethnic neighbors reveals a number of possible

titles for the ruling class of neighboring peoples including HqA or HkA-xAswt, wr, and aA.
Before the New Kingdom, HqA was the primary title of foreign rulers in Egyptian texts,
while wr was reserved for Egyptian vassals, landowners and nobles.526 Reflecting this,
there are extant examples for the Aamu and Nehesy rulers being referred to by either
title.527 The Shasu, however, did not seem to have a complex political structure and their
leaders were only called aA, magnate. This is attributed to the functions of HqA and wr:
the title HqA was used to refer to leadership over a geographical area rather than a group of
people,528 while wr evolved from an indication of high social rank indebted to the
Egyptian king.529 This discussion of a hierarchy of political titles can be supplemented by
the fact that Ramesses II calls himself HqA while he calls Hattusili, the Hittite king, wr.530
The purpose of this thesis was to examine the ways in which the ancient
Egyptians wrote about their ethnic neighbors. Ironically, the task of presenting these
sources has raised a number of issues concerning the ways in which foreigners appear in
Egyptological discourse. One aspect of this is the common understanding that in the
Egyptian worldview: [ + AUSLNDER] = [ - rmT].531 This prevalent idea prompted
Anthony Leahy to write532:
Egyptian vocabulary made a similarly sharp distinction between the
inhabitants of the Nile Valley, who were rmT (remetj), or people,
and the rest of humankind, who were not.
Although it is commonly believed in Egyptology533 that foreigners were never
referred to as rmT, this is not the case. Most uses of rmT refer to the inhabitants of Egypt,

526 Lorton, The Juridical Terminology, 61.
527 For the Aamu refer to the narrative of Apophis and Seqenenre on page 54, for the Nehesyu refer to

the stele of Amenhotep III on page 84.

528 Lorton, The Juridical Terminology, 23.
529 Lorton, The Juridical Terminology, 62-63.
530 Liverani, International Relations in the Ancient Near East, 1600-1100 BC., 39. For further examples
of the Egyptians calling foreign kings wr, see: Lorton, The Juridical Terminology, 62.
531 Loprieno, Topos und Mimesis, 22.
532 Leahy, Ethnic Diversity in Ancient Egypt, 226.
533 Gardiner stated this attitude similarly: the Egyptians were, they themselves considered, the
only true men, the only people really entitled to bear the name rme. Normally she was
contemptuous of her nearest neighbors, to whose chieftains she invariably applied the epithet vile.
Alan H. Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs: An Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 37.

102

and may have even been their self-defining ethnonym,534 but the word more broadly
meant humankind.535 It functioned as the semantic plural of the singular s536 and as
the plural of rmT, man,537 but included the seated woman determinative (Gardiner SignList B 1) to indicate the general populace.538 The distinction between rmT and xAstyw is
not as black and white as Leahy asserts; the word rmT was also used to refer to foreigners.
Several examples were included in this thesis: twice rmT referred to the Nehesyu,539 once
to the Shasu,540 and twice to the inhabitants of Alasiya.541 Another example is found in
Thutmose IIIs stele at Gebel Barkal when the king boasts of capturing542: rmT.sn nbt in m
sqrw-anx, all their people (of Naharen), brought as living prisoners. The Egyptians
acknowledged that the foreign peoples surrounding Egypt were people, they recognized
that they were people of a very different sort. These foreign neighbors were
simultaneously rmT, people, but not rmT, Egyptians.
The conceptualization of Egypts foreigners as only three types (Fig. 3) glosses
over the numerous ethnic divisions that exist in textual records. While the ancient
Egyptians certainly conceptualized humankind as composed of four races, they also
acknowledged that ethnic differences among those four races existed. Greater care should
be taken in the translation of some of the ethnonyms, such as iwntyw as troglodytes543
or barbarians,544 or a great number of the northern and eastern ethnonyms that are

534 In some cultures the generic word for people is the same word used for their reflexive

ethnonym. This may have been the case for the Egyptians, creating a dualistic meaning of the word
rmT. For a discussion of the phenomenon in a modern context, see: Proschan, We are all Kmhmu,
Just the Same: Ethnonyms, Ethnic Identities and Ethnic Groups.
535 Espinel, Etnicidad y territorio en el Egipto del Reino Antiguo, 107-109.
536 Denise M. Doxey, Egyptian Non-Royal Epithets in the Middle Kingdom: A Social and Historical
Analysis (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 191.
537 Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 77.
538 Fischer takes the usual inclusion of the seated woman determinative (Gardiner Sign-list B 1) in
the orthography of the word rmT as a sign of the good opinion of women. Henry George Fischer,
Women in the Old Kingdom and the Heracleopolitan Period, in Womens Earliest Records: From
Ancient Egypt and Western Asia (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 24.
539 Refer to both texts on page 91.
540 Refer to the Great Harris Papyrus on page 65.
541 Refer to the Report of Wenamun on page 39.
542 De Buck, Egyptian Readingbook I, 57: line 13.
543 For comments on this translation see: W. F. Albright, Notes on Egypto-Semitic Etymology. III,
Journal of the American Oriental Society 47 (1927): 211: note 13.
544 For example, used in: Margaret R. Bunson, Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: Revised Edition (New
York: Facts on File, 2002), 185.

103

homogenously translated as Bedouin.545 Similar care should be taken in the use of

homogenous terms like Libyan,546 and Nubian.547 Although most of the reflexive
ethnonyms of Egypts neighbors remain unknown, their Egyptian exonyms are well
documented. Unfortunately, these ethnonyms have been replaced in Egyptological
discourse, no doubt for convenience, by the all-encompassing terms Libyan,548
Nubian, and Asiatic. Although convenient, these umbrella terms are misleading and
destructive to the ethnic uniqueness represented by individual ethnonyms.549 The
evidence for distinctions within these large, homogenous labels for the foreigners is
ignored when these terms are used. In these instances, translation is at its best a loss, and
at its worst a lie. If scholars continue to think of Egypts neighbors in this restricted
manner, they will come to believe that the Egyptians were also not aware of the subtle
distinctions between their foreign neighbors, a fact unsupported by the Egyptians use of
a plethora of ethnonyms and descriptors. Indeed, acknowledging the fluid and nuanced
identities of people groups, whether those of self-identification or of external observation,
is at the very heart of conceptualizing ethnicity.

545 Including Hryw-Say, nmiw-Say, mnTw, and Shasu. See Appendix.
546 As in the recent conference title: G. P. F. Broekman, R. J. Demaree, and Olaf E. Kaper, The Libyan

Period in Egypt: Historical and Cultural Studies into the 21st-24th Dynasties: Proceedings of a Conference
at Leiden University, 25-27 October 2007 (Leiden: Peeters, 2009).
547 As in the publication title: Morkot, The Black Pharaohs: Egypts Nubian Rulers.
548 According to Gardiner, the name Libyan is both a misnomer and an anachronism, since the
important tribe of the
Libu is first heard in the reign of Merneptah. Gardiner, Egypt of
the Pharaohs: An Introduction, 35.
549 In the same way that referring to all indigenous North American tribes as Indian refuses them
the acknowledgement of their unique ethnicities.

104

Bibliography:
Adams, Matthew J. and Margaret E. Cohen. The Sea Peoples in Primary Sources. In
Philistines and Other Sea Peoples in Text and Archaeology, edited by Ann E.
Killebrew and Gunnar Lehmann, 645-664. Atlanta: Archaeology and Biblical
Studies, 2013.
Adams, William Y. The First Colonial Empire: Egypt in Nubia, 3200-1200 B.C.
Comparative Studies in Society and History 26, no. 1 (Jan. 1984): 36-71.
Albright, W.F. Notes on Egypto-Semitic Etymology. III. Journal of the American
Oriental Society 47 (1927): 198-237.
Ashton, Sally-Ann. Foreigners at Memphis? Petries Racial Types. In Never Had the
Like Occurred: Egypts View of its Past, edited by John Tait, 187-196. London:
University College London Press, 2003.
Assmann, Jan. The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Baines, John. Contextualizing Egyptian representations of society and ethnicity. In
The study of the ancient Near East in the twenty-first century: the William
Foxwell Albright Centennial Conference, edited by Jerrold S. Cooper and Glenn
M. Schwartz, 339-384. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1996.
________. Visual and Written Culture in ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007.
Baines, John and Christina Riggs. Ethnicity. In UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology,
edited by Jacco Dieleman, Willeke Wendrich. Los Angeles, 2012.
Bates, Oric. The Eastern Libyans: An Essay. Library of African Study. London: Frank
Cass and Company Ltd., 1914.
Beekes, Robert. Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Biase-Dyson, Camilla Di. Foreigners and Egyptians in the Late Egyptian Stories:
linguistic, literary and historical perspectives. Probleme der gyptologie 32.
Leiden: Brill, 2013.
Bilde, Per, ed. Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1992.
Booth, Charlotte. The Role of Foreigners in Ancient Egypt: A Study of NonStereotypical Artistic Representations. Oxford: Basingstoke Press, 2005.
Borchardt, Ludwig. Das Grabdenkmal des Knigs Shu-re. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1913.

105

Bradbury, Louise. Reflections on Traveling to Gods Land and Punt in the Middle
Kingdom. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 25 (1988): 127156.
Breasted, James Henry. Ancient records of Egypt: historical documents from the
earliest times to the Persian conquest I-V. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1906-1907.
Bresciani, Edda. Foreigners. In The Egyptians, edited by Sergio Donadoni, 221-253.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Bright, William. What IS a name? Reflections on Onomastics. Language and
Linguistics 4, no. 4 (2003): 669-681.
Bryce, Trevor R. Lukka Revisited. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 51, no. 2 (Apr.
1992): 121-130.
Broekman, G.P.F., R.J. Demaree, Olaf E. Kaper, eds. The Libyan Period in Egypt:
Historical and Cultural Studies into the 21st-24th Dynasties: Proceedings of a
Conference at Leiden University, 25-27 October 2007. Leiden: Peeters, 2009.
Bunson, Margaret R. Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: Revised Edition. New York: Facts
on File, 2002.
Caminos, Ricardo A. Late-Egyptian Miscellanies. London: Oxford University Press,
1954.
Capart, Jean. Primitive Art in Egypt. London: H. Grevel & Co., 1905.
erny, Jaroslav. Coptic Etymological Dictionary. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1970.
erny, Jaroslav and Alan H. Gardiner. Hieratic Ostraca I. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1957.
Challis, Debbie. The Archaeology of Race: The Eugenic Ideas of Francis Galton and
Flinders Petrie. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
Chimko, Corey J. Foreign Pharaohs: self-legitimization and indigenous reaction in
art and literature. Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 30
(2003): 15-58.
Clere, J.J. and J. Vandier. Textes de la Premire Priode Intermdiaire et de la XIme
Dynastie. Brussels: Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, 1948.

106

Cline, Eric H. The Sea Peoples Possible Role in the Israelite Conquest of Canaan. In
Doron: Festschrift for Spyros E. Iakovidis, edited by Despoina Danielidou, 191198. Athens: Athens Academy, 2009.
Cline, Eric H. and David OConnor. The Mystery of the Sea Peoples. In Mysterious
Lands, edited by David OConnor and Stephen Quirke, 107-138. London:
University College London Press, 2003.
Cohen, Ronald. Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology. Annual Review of
Anthropology 7 (1978): 379-403.
Conwell, David. On Ostrich Eggs and Libyans. Expedition 29, no. 3 (1987): 25-34.
Cooney, William A. Egypts encounter with the West: Race, Culture and Identity. PhD
diss., Durham University, 2011.
Cooper, Julien. The Geographic and Cosmographic Expression T3-ntr. The Bulletin of
The Australian Centre for Egyptology 22 (2011): 47-66.
________. Reconsidering the Location of Yam. Journal of the American Research
Center in Egypt 48 (2012): 1-21.
David, Arlette. Devouring the Enemy: Ancient Egyptian Metaphors of Domination.
The Bulletin of The Australian Centre for Egyptology 22 (2011): 83-100.
David, Rosalie. The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of
Pharaohs Workforce. 1986. Reprint, New York: Routledge, 1996.
Davies, Nina M. Foreigners in the Tomb of Amenemhab (No. 85). The Journal
of Egyptian Archaeology 20, no. 3/4 (Nov., 1934): 189-192.
________. Nubians in the Tomb of Amunedjeh. The Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 28 (Dec. 1942): 50-52.
Davies, Norman de Garis. The Rock Tombs of El Amarna III: The Tombs of Huya
and Ahmes. London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905.
________. The Tomb of Huy. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1926.
Davies, Nina M. and Norman de Garis Davies. Syrians in the Tomb of Amunedjeh. The
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 27 (Dec. 1941): 96-98.
Davies, W. Vivien. Kush in Egypt: A New Historical Inscription. Sudan & Nubia 7
(2003): 52-54.
________. Sobeknakhts Hidden Treasure. British Museum Magazine 46 (Summer
2003): 18-19.
________. Sobeknakht of Elkab and the Coming of Kush. Egyptian Archaeology 23
(2003): 3-6.
Davies, W. Vivian and L. Schofield, eds. Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant:

107

Interconnections in the Second Millennium BC. London: British Museum Press,

1995.
Davis, Simon. Race Relations in Ancient Egypt: Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew, Roman.
London: Methuen and Co., 1951.
de Buck, Adriaan. The Egyptian Coffin Texts, vol. II: Texts of spells 76-163. Chicago:
The Oriental Institute, 1938.
________. Egyptian Readingbook vol. I: Exercises and Middle Egyptian Texts. Leiden:
Nederlandsch Archaeologisch-Philologisch Instituut, 1948.
Demedchik, A. A Note to 141 of Sir A.H. Gardiners Egyptian Grammar. Gttinger
Miszellen 134 (1993): 29-30.
De Morgan, J., U. Bouriant, G. Legrain, G. Jquier and A. Barsanti. Catalogue des
Monuments et Inscriptions de lEgypte Antique. Vienna: Adolphe Holzhausen,
1894.
De Wit, Tonny J. Ethnicity and State Formation in Egypt: Ideology and Practice. In
Proceedings of the Fourth Central European Conference of Young Egyptologists,
Budapest, 31 August 2 September, 2006, edited by Kata Endreffy and Andrs
Gulys. 401-415. Budapest: Studia Aegyptiaca XVIII, 2007.
________. Enemies of the State: Perceptions of otherness and State Formation in
Egypt. MA thesis. Leiden University, 2008.
________. Egypt as an "invention of tradition"? Ethnicity and the emergence of the
state. In Vorspann oder formative Phase? gypten und der Vordere Orient 35002700 v. Chr., edited by Ludwig D. Morenz and Robert Kuhn, 187-208.
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011.
Dixon, D. M. The Land of Yam. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 44 (Dec. 1958):
40-55.
________. The Transplantation of Punt Incense Trees in Egypt. The Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 55 (Aug. 1969): 55-65.
Dodson, Aidan and Dyan Hilton. The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Cairo:
American University in Cairo Press, 2004.
Doll, Susan K. "Texts and Writing in Ancient Nubia." In Ancient Nubia: African
Kingdoms on the Nile, edited by Marjorie Fisher, Peter Lacovara, Salima Ikram
and Sue DAuria, 154-166. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2012.
Doxey, Denise M. Egyptian Non-Royal Epithets in the Middle Kingdom: A Social and
Historical Analysis. Leiden: Brill, 1998.
Ebers, Georg. "Das Grab und die Biographie des Feldhauptmanns Amn em hb."
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlndischen Gesellschaft 30 (1876): 391-394.

108

Edgerton, William F. and John A. Wilson. Historical Records of Ramesses III: The Texts
in Medinet Habu volumes I and II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936.
Eide, Tormund, et al. Fontes Historiae Nubiorum I: Textual Sources for the History of
the Middle Nile Region Between the Eighth Century BC and the Sixth Century
AD. Bergen: University of Bergen, 1994.
Emanuel, Jeffrey P. Srdn from the Sea: The Arrival, Integration and Acculturation of a
Sea People. Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 5, no. 1. (2013): 1427.
Emberling, Geoff and Norman Yoffee. Thinking about Ethnicity in Mesopotamian
Archaeology and History. In Fluchtpunkt Uruk: Archologische Einheit Aus
Methodischer Viefalt, edited by H. Nissen and H. Khne, 272-281.
Rahden/Westf.: Verlag Marie Leidorf, 1999.
Epigraphic Survey. Earlier Historical Records of Ramses III. Chicago: The Oriental
Institute, 1930.
________. Later Historical Records of Ramses III. Chicago: The Oriental Institute,
1932.
________. Medinet Habu vol. IV: Festival Scenes of Ramesses III. Chicago: The Oriental
Institute, 1940.
________. The Beit El-Wali Temple of Ramesses II. Chicago: The Oriental Institute,
1967.
________. Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak, vol. IV: The Battle Reliefs of King Sety I.
Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1986.
Erichsen, Wolja. Papyrus Harris I: Hieroglyphische Transkription. Brussels: Bibliotheca
Aegyptiaca, 1933.
Espinel, Andrs Diego. Etnicidad y territorio en el Egipto del Reino Antiguo. Barcelona:
Institut dEstudis del Prxim Orient Antic, 2006.
Erman, Adolf and Hermann Grapow. Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache I-V
Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1926-1961.
Faulkner, Raymond O. The Papyrus Bremner-Rhind (British Museum No. 10188).
Brussels: Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, 1933.
________. A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian. 1962. Reprint, Oxford:
Griffith Institute, 1991.
________. Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
Fenton, Steve. Ethnicity, Racism, Class and Culture. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc., 1999.

109

Fischer, Henry George. Women in the Old Kingdom and the Heracleopolitan Period,
in Womens Earliest Records: From Ancient Egypt and Western Asia, edited by
Barbara Lesko, 5-24. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989.
________. Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom and of the Heracleopolitan
Period. 2nd ed. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.
Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn and Kharyssa Rhodes, eds. Race and Identity in the Nile
Valley: Ancient and Modern Perspectives. Red Sea Press, 2004.
Galn, Jos M. What is he, the dog? Ugarit Forschungen 25 (1993): 173-180.
________. Victory and Border: Terminology related to Egyptian Imperialism in the
XVIIIth Dynasty. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1995.
Gardiner, Alan H. Egyptian Hieratic Texts Series I: Literary Texts of the New Kingdom.
Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1911.
________. The Defeat of the Hyksos by Kamose: The Carnarvon Tablet, No. 1. The
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 3, no. 2/3 (April-July 1916): 95-110.
________. An Ancient List of the Fortresses of Nubia. The Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 3, no. 2/3 (April-July 1916): 184-192.
________. Notes on the Story of Sinuhe. Paris: Librairie Honor Champion, 1916.
________. The Tomb of a Much-Travelled Theban Official. The Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 4, no. 1 (Jan. 1917): 28-38.
________. Late Egyptian Stories. Brussels: Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, 1932.
________. Late Egyptian Miscellanies. Brussels: Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, 1937.
________. Daviess Copy of the Great Speos Artemidos Inscription. The Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 32 (Dec. 1946): 43-56.
________. Egyptian Grammar, 3rd ed. Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1957.
________. The Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramesses II. Oxford: Griffith Institute University
Press, 1960.
________. Egypt of the Pharaohs: An Introduction. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961.
________. Ancient Egyptian Onomastica vol I-II. London: Oxford University Press,
1968.
________. The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1969.
Garstang, John. El Arbah: A Cemetery of the Middle Kingdom; Survey of the Old
Kingdom Temenos; Graffiti from the Temple of Sety. London: B. Quaritich, 1901.
Gauthier, Henri. Les ftes du dieu Min. Cairo: Imprimerie de LInstitut Franais
DArchologie Orientale, 1931.
Gee, John. Overlooked Evidence for Sesostris IIIs Foreign Policy. Journal of the
American Research Center in Egypt 41 (2004): 23-31.
Giveon, Raphael. Toponymes ouest-asiatiques Soleb. Vetus Testamentum 14, no. 3
(July 1964): 239-255.
________. The Shosu of the late XXth Dynasty. Journal of the American

110

Research Center in Egypt 8 (1969): 51-53.

________. Les bdouins Shosou des documents gyptiens. Leiden: Brill, 1971.
________. Asiaten. In Lexikon der gyptologie vol. I, edited by Wolfgang Helck and
Eberhard Otto, 462-471. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1975.
Giuliana, Serena. Medja Sources in the Old Kingdom. Discussions in Egyptology 42
(1998): 41-54.
Goedicke, Hans. An Additional Note on 3 Foreigner. The Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 52 (Dec. 1966): 172-174.
________. Papyrus Lansing 3,9- 3,10. Journal of the American Research Center in
Egypt 7 (1968): 128-130.
________. The Report of Wenamun. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1975.
________. Harkhufs Travels. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 40, no. 1 (Jan.
1981): 1-20.
________. Abi-Sha(i)s Representation in Beni Hasan. Journal of the American
Research Center in Egypt 21 (1984): 203-210.
________. Three Passages in the Story of Sinuhe. Journal of the American Research
Center in Egypt 23 (1986): 167-174.
________. The Perimeter of Geographical Awareness in the Fourth Dynasty and the
Significance of the w nbwt in the Pyramid Texts. Studien zur Altgyptischen
Kultur 30 (2002): 121-136.
________. Sinuhes Epistolary Salutations to the King (B 206-211). Journal of the
American Research Center in Egypt 41 (2004): 5-22.
Gordon, Andrew. Foreigners. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, edited
by Donald Redford, 544-548. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Gordon, F.G. The Keftiu Spell. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 18, no. 1/2 (May
1932): 67-68.
Goudriaan, K. Ethnicity in Ptolemaic Egypt. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1988.
Grebaut, Eugene. Hymne Ammon-Ra: des papyrus gyptiens du Muse de Boulaq.
Paris: A. Franck, 1874.
Habachi, Labib. The First Two Viceroys of Kush and their Family. Kush 7 (1959): 4562.
________. King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep: his monuments, place in history,
deification and unusual representations in the form of gods. Mitteilungen des
Deutschen Archologischen Instituts 19 (1963): 16-52.
________. The Second Stela of Kamose and his Struggle against the Hyksos ruler
and his capital. Glckstadt: Augustin, 1972.
Hall, Emma Swan. The Pharaoh Smites his Enemies: A Comparative Study. Berlin:

111

Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1986.

Haring, B. Libyans in the Late Twentieth Dynasty. In Village Voices: Proceedings of
the symposium Texts from Deir el-Medina and their Interpretation, Leiden, May
31- June 1, 1991, edited by R.J. Demare and Arno Egberts, 71-80. Leiden:
Center of Non-Western Studies, 1992.
________. Occupation: foreigner. Ethnic difference and integration in pharaonic
Egypt. In Ethnicity in ancient Mesopotamia: papers read at the 48th Rencontre
Assyriologique Internationale Leiden, 1-4 July 2002, edited by W. H. Van Soldt,
R. Kalvelagen, and D. Katz, 162-172. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het
Nabije Oosten, 2005.
Harvey, Stephen P. Interpreting Punt: Geographic, Cultural, and Artistic Landscapes.
In Mysterious Lands, edited by David OConnor and Stephen Quirke, 81-91.
London: UCL Press, 2003.
Helck, Wolfgang. Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Heft 17-22. Urkunden des gyptischen
Altertums IV. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1955-1961.
________. Die gypter und die Fremden. Saeculum 15 (1964): 103-114.
________. Eine Briefsammlung aus der Verwaltung des Amuntempels. Journal
of the American Research Center in Egypt 6 (1967): 135-151.
________. Die Lehre des dw3-Htjj, vol. I-II. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1970.
________. Die Beziehungen gyptens zu Vorderasien im 3. und 2. Jahrtausend v.
Chr. Wiesbaden: gyptologische Abhandlungen 5, 1971.
________. Fremde in gypten. In Lexikon der gyptologie vol. II, edited by W. Helck
and W. Westendorf, 306-310. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1977.
________. Fremdvlkerdarstellung. In Lexikon der gyptologie vol. II, edited by W.
Helck and W. Westendorf, 315-321. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1977.
________. Ein Feldzug unter Amenophis IV gegen Nubien. Studien zur
Altgyptischen Kultur 8 (1980): 117-126.
________. Historisch-biographische Texte der 2. Zwischenzeit und neue Texte der 18.
Dynastie. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983.
________. Der Text der Lehre Amenemhets I. fr seinen sohn. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1986.
________. Untersuchungen zur Thinitenzeit. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987.
________. Die Lehre fr Knig Merikare. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988.
________. Die Prophezeiung des Nfr.tj. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992.
Hodge, Carelton T. The Medjay/misri. Language Sciences 8 (1969): 11-12.
Hoffmeier, James K. The Walls of the Ruler in Egyptian Literature and the
Archaeological Record: Investigating Egypts Eastern Frontier in the Bronze
Age. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 343 (Aug. 2006): 120.
Hofman, Inge, Herbert Tomandl and Michael Zach. k3rm.t - Armband aus

112

Elefantenhaar? Gttinger Miszellen 74 (1984): 7-9.

Holmes, Y. L. The Location of Alashiya. Journal of the American Oriental Society 91,
no. 3 (July Sep. 1971): 426-429.
Hlscher, W. Libyer und gypter. Glckstadt: Augustin, 1937.
Hsu, Shih-Wei. Figurative Expressions Referring to Animals in Royal Inscriptions of
the 18th Dynasty. Journal of Egyptian History 6 (2013): 1-18.
Hubschmann, Caroline. Who Inhabited Dakhleh Oasis? Searching for an Oasis Identity
in pharaonic Egypt. Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 20 (2010): 51-66.
________. Searching for an Oasis Identity: Dakhleh Oasis in the Third Intermediate
Period. In Egyptology in Australia and New Zealand 2009: Proceedings of the
Conference held in Melbourne, September 4th-6th, edited by Christian M.
Knoblauch and James C. Gill, 61-70. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2012.
Hutchinson, John and Anthony D. Smith. Ethnicity. New York: Oxford University Press,
1996.
Janssen, Jozef M.A. The Stela (Khartoum Museum No. 3) from Uronarti. Journal of
Near Eastern Studies 12, no. 1 (Jan. 1953): 51-55.
Janzen, Mark D. Iconography of Humiliation: The Depiction and Treatment of Bound
Foreigners in New Kingdom Egypt. PhD diss., The University of Memphis,
2013 (ProQuest No. 3570931).
Jquier, Gustav. Les Pyramides des Reines Neit et Apouit. Cairo: Imprimerie de lInstitut
Franais dArchologie Orientale, 1933.
Jimnez-Serrano, Alejandro. Two Different Names of Nubia before the Fifth
Dynasty. Studien zur Altgyptischen Kultur 35 (2006): 141-145.
Johnson, Janet H. Ethnic Considerations in Persian Period Egypt. In Gold of Praise:
Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of Edward F. Wente, edited by Emily Teeter
and John A. Larson, 211-222. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1999.
Jones, Sin. The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and
Present. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Junge, Friedrich. Late Egyptian Grammar: An Introduction. Griffith Institute
Publications. Oxford: Griffith Institute, 2001.
Junker, Hermann. The First Appearance of the Negroes in History. The Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 7, no. 3/4 (October, 1921): 121-132.

113

Kadish, Gerald E. Old Kingdom Egyptian Activity in Nubia: Some Reconsiderations.

The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 52 (Dec. 1966): 23-33.
Kahn, Danel. Who is Meddling in Egypts Affairs? The Identity of the Asiatics in the
Elephantine Stele of Sethnakhte and the Historicity of the Medinet Habu Asiatic
War Reliefs. Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 2, no. 1 (2010): 1423.
________. The Campaign of Ramesses III against Philistia. Journal of Ancient
Egyptian Interconnections 3, no. 4 (2011): 1-11.
Keel, Othmar. The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography
and the Book of Psalms. Translated by J. Hallett. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns,
1997.
Kitchen, Kenneth. Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical, vol. I-VIII.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1969-1990.
________. The Land of Punt. In The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals, and Towns,
edited by T. Shaw, 587-608. London: Routledge, 1993.
________. The Elusive Land of Punt Revisited. In Trade and Travel in the Red Sea
Region, edited by Paul Lunde and Alexandra Porter, 25-31. Oxford:
Archaeopress, 2004.
________. Egyptian New-Kingdom topographical lists: an historical
resource with "literary" histories. In Causing his name to live: studies in
Egyptian epigraphy and history in memory of William J. Murnane edited by Peter
J. Brand and Louise Cooper, 129-135. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009.
Kladnik, Drago. Semantic Demarcation of the Concepts of Endonym and Exonym.
Acta Geographica Slovenica 49, no. 2 (2009): 393-428.
Koenig, Yvan. The Image of the Foreigner in the Magical Texts of Ancient Egypt. In
Moving Across Borders: Foreign Relations, Religion, and Cultural Interactions in
the Ancient Mediterranean, edited by P. Kousoulis and K. Magliveras, 223-238.
Leuven: Peeters, 2007.
Kuentz, M. Charles. Autour dune Conception gyptienne Mconnue: LAkhit ou SoiDisant Horizon. Bulletin de l'Institut Franais d'Archologie Orientale 17
(1920): 121-190.
Kyriakidis, Evangelos. Indications on the Nature of the Language of the Keftiw from
Egyptian Sources. gypten & Levante 12 (2002): 211-219.
Labib, Pahor Cladio. Die Herrschaft der Hyksos in gypten und ihr Sturz. Glckstadt:
Augustin, 1936.
Langdon, S. and Alan H. Gardiner. The Treaty of Alliance between Hattuili, King of

114

the Hittites, and the Pharaoh Ramesses II of Egypt. The Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 6, no. 3 (July 1920): 179-205.
Leahy, Anthony. The Libyan Period in Egypt: An Essay in Interpretation. Libyan
Studies 16 (1985): 51-65.
________. Ethnic Diversity in ancient Egypt. In Civilizations of the ancient
Near East Vol. I, edited by Jack Sasson, 225-234. New York: Charles Scribners
Sons, 1995.
________. Libya, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, edited by Donald
Redford, 290-293. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Legrain, Georges. Sur un Fragment DOblisque Trouv a Karnak. Recueil de travaux
relatifs la philologie et l'archologie gyptiennes et assyriennes 23 (1901):
195-196.
Lepsius, Carl Richard. Denkmler aus gypten und thiopien. Abt. I-VI, Berlin:
Nicolaische Buchhuandlung, 1849-1859.
Lesko, Leonard H. and Barbara Lesko, eds. A Dictionary of Late Egyptian, vols. I-II.
Providence: B.C. Scribe Publications, 2002-2004.
Levy, Thomas E., Russell B. Adams, and Adolfo Muniz. Archaeology and the Shasu
Nomads: Recent Excavations in the Jabal Hamrat Fidan, Jordan. In Le-David
Maskil: A Birthday Tribute for David Noel Freedman, edited by Richard Elliott
Friedman and William H. C. Propp, 63-89. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004.
Lichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature I-III. 1973-1980. Reprint,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
________. Ancient Egyptian Autobiographies Chiefly of the Middle Kingdom:
A Study and an Anthology. Freiburg: Universitatsverlag, 1988.
Liszka, Kate. 'Medjay' (no. 188) in the onomasticon of Amenemope. In Millions of
jubilees: studies in honor of David P. Silverman, edited by Zahi Hawass and
Jennifer Houser Wegner, 315-331. Cairo: Conseil Suprme des Antiquits, 2010.
________. "We have come from the well of Ibhet": ethnogenesis of the Medjay.
Journal of Egyptian History 4, no.2 (2011): 149-171.
________. We have come to serve Pharaoh: A Study of the Medjay and Pangrave as
an Ethnic Group and as Mercenaries from C.2300 BCE until C.1050 BCE. PhD
diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2012 (ProQuest No. 3509198).
Liverani, Mario. International Relations in the Ancient Near East, 1600-1100 B.C. New
York: Palgrave, 2001.
Loprieno, A. Topos und Mimesis: Zum Auslnder in der gyptischen
Literatur. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988.
________. ed. Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms. Leiden: Brill, 1996.

115

________. Travel and Fiction in Egyptian Literature. In Mysterious Lands

edited by David OConnor and Stephen Quirke, 31-51. London: University
College London Press, 2003.
Lorton, David. The So-Called Vile Enemies of the King of Egypt (in the Middle
Kingdom and Dyn. XVIII). Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt
10 (1973): 65-70.
________. The Juridical Terminology of International Relations in Egyptian Texts
Through Dyn. XVIII. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.
Luiselli, Maria Michela. Der Amun-Re Hymnus des P. Boulaq 17 (P. Kairo CG 58038).
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004.
Lundh, Patrik. Actor and Event: Military Activity in Ancient Egyptian Narrative Texts
from Tuthmosis II to Merneptah. Uppsala: Akademitryck, 2002.
Manassa, Colleen. The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah: Grand Strategy in the
13th Century BC. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Marochetti, Elisa Fiore. The Reliefs of the Chapel of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep at
Gebelein. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Maspero, Gaston. History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria in the Light of
Recent Discovery. Vols. I-IX. London: The Grolier Society Publishers, 1906.
Meeks, Dimitri. Coptos et les Chemins de Pount. Topoi, supplement 3 (2002): 267-335.
________. Locating Punt: Geographic, Cultural and Artistic Landscapes. In
Mysterious Lands, edited by David OConnor and Stephen Quirke, 53-80.
London: UCL Press, 2003.
Michaux-Colombot, Danile. The MD3Y.W, not Policemen but an Ethnic Group from
the Eastern Desert. In tudes nubiennes: confrence de Genve: actes du VIIe
Congrs international dtudes nubiennes, 3-8 septembre 1990, edited by Charles
Bonnet, 29-36. Genve: Socite dtudes nubiennes, 1992.
Moers, Gerald. The World and the Geography of Otherness in Pharaonic Egypt. In
Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies,
edited by Kurt Raaflaub, 169-181. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Moran, William L. The Amarna Letters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1992.
Morkot, Robert. The Black Pharaohs: Egypts Nubian Rulers. London: Rubicon Press,
1996.
Muhlestein, Kerry. Execration Ritual. In UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, edited by

116

Jacco Dieleman, Willeke Wendrich. Los Angeles, 2008.

Mller, W. Max. Asien und Europa nach Altgyptischen Denkmlern. Leipzig: Verlag
von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1893.
________. Egyptological Researches: Results of a Journey in 1904. Washington, D.C.:
Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1906.
Murnane, William J. Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt. Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1995.
Murray, G. W. Harkhufs Third Journey. The Geographical Journal 131, no 1 (March
1965): 72-75.
Naunton, Christopher. Libyans and Nubians. In A Companion to Ancient
Egypt vol. 1, edited by Alan B. Lloyd, 120-139. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Naville, Edouard. The Temple of Deir El Bahari III. London: Egypt Exploration Fund,
1898.
________. The XIth Dynasty Temple at Deir el-Bahari I-III. London: Egypt Exploration
Fund, 1907-1913.
________. Les Anu. Recueil de travaux relatifs la philologie et l'archologie
gyptiennes et assyriennes 32 (1910): 52-61.
Newberry, Percy E. Beni Hasan Part I. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner & Co,
1893.
Nibbi, Alessandra. The stt Sign. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 64 (1978): 5664.
________. Ancient Egypt and Some Eastern Neighbors. Park Ridge: Noyes,
1981.
________. The nhsy.w of the Dahshur decree of Pepi I. Gttinger Miszellen 53 (1982):
27-32.
________. Lapwings and Libyans in Ancient Egypt. Oxford: DE Publications,
1986.
________. Shat of the Nine Bows: A Speculative Note. Discussions in Egyptology
26 (1993): 59-70.
O Connor, David. The Locations of Yam and Kush and Their Historical
Implications. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 23 (1986): 2750.
________. The Location of Irem. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 73 (1987): 99136.
________. Egyptians and Libyans in the New Kingdom, Expedition 29 no. 3
(1987): 35-37.
________. The Nature of the Tjemhu (Libyan) Society in the Later New

117

Kingdom. In Libya and Egypt: c 1300 750 BC, edited by Anthony Leahy.
London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1990.
________. Egypt, 1552-664 BC. In The Cambridge History of Africa vol. I: From the
Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, edited by J. Desmond Clark, 830-940. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997.
________. The Sea Peoples and the Egyptian Sources. In The Sea Peoples and
Their World: A Reassessment, edited by E.D. Oren, 85-102. Philadelphia:
University Museum Publications, 2000.
________. Egypts Views of Others. In Never Had the Like Occurred: Egypts
View of its Past edited by John Tait, 155-186. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press,
2003.
OConnor, David and Stephen Quirke. Introduction: Mapping the Unknown in
Ancient Egypt. In Mysterious Lands, edited by David OConnor and Stephen
Quirke, 1-21. London: University College London Press, 2003.
Osing, Jurgen. chtungstexte aus dem Alten Reich (II). Mitteilungen des Deutschen
Archologischen Instituts, 32 (1976): 133-185.
________. Libyen, Libyer. In Lexikon der gyptologie vol. III, edited by Wolfgang
Helck and Wolfhart Westendorf, 1015-1033. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag,
1980.
Panagiotopoulos, D. Foreigners in Egypt in the Time of Hatshepsut and Thutmose
III. In Thutmose III: A New Biography, edited by E.H. Cline and David
OConnor, 370-412. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.
Parkinson, R. B. Voices from Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Middle Kingdom Writings.
London: British Museum Press, 1991.
Payne, Willis Ernest. Ancient Egyptian Ethnicity: A Case of Obscurantism. MA
thesis, California State University, 1988 (ProQuest No. 1335091).
Petrie, William Flinders. Racial Photographs from Egyptian Monuments. London: British
Association, 1887.
________. A Season in Egypt, 1887. London: Field and Tuer, 1888.
________. Tanis - Part II: Nebesheh (Am) and Defenneh (Tahpanhes). London: Gilbert
and Rivington, Limited, 1888.
________. Six Temples at Thebes. London: B. Quatrich, 1897.
________. The Races of Early Egypt. The Journal of the Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 31 (Jan. - Jun., 1901): 248-255.
Petrik, Mt. Foreign groups at Lahun during the late Middle Kingdom. In From
Illahun to Djeme: papers presented in honour of Ulrich Luft, edited by Eszter
Bechtold, Andrs Gulys, and Andrea Hasznos (eds), 211-226. Oxford:
Archaeopress, 2011.

118

Phillips, Jacke. Punt and Aksum: Egypt and the Horn of Africa. The Journal of
African History 38, no. 3 (1997): 423-457.
Posener, Georges. La Premiere Domination Perse En Egypte. Cairo: Institut Francais
dArchaeologie Orientale, 1936.
________. Princes et Pays dAsie et de Nubie: Textes hiratiques sur des figurines d'
envotement du moyen empire. Brussels: Fondation gyptologique rein lisabeth,
1940.
________. Les Asiatiques en Egypte sous les XIIe et XIIIe Dynastie. Syria 34
(1957): 145-163.
________. Les textes denvoutement de Mirgissa. Syria 43, no. 3/4 (1966):
277-287.
________. Cinq Figurines DEnvotement. Cairo: Institut Franais darchologie
orientale du Caire, 1987.
Proschan, Frank. We are all Kmhmu, Just the Same: Ethnonyms, Ethnic identities, and
Ethnic groups. American Ethnologist 24, no. 1 (Feb. 1997): 91-113.
Pu, Muzhou. Enemies of Civilization: Attitudes Toward Foreigners in Ancient
Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and
Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.
Quack, Joachim Friedrich. Die Lehren des Ani: Ein neugyptischer Weisheitstext in
seinem kulturren Umfeld. Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994.
Rainey, Anson F. The Soldier-Scribe in Papyrus Anastasi I. Journal of Near Eastern
Studies 26, no. 1 (Jan. 1967): 58-60.
________. Israel in Merneptahs Inscription and Reliefs. Israel Exploration
Journal 51, no. 1 (2001): 57-75.
Redford, Donald B. A Gate Inscription from Karnak and Egyptian Involvement in
Western Asia During the Early 18th Dynasty. Journal of the American Oriental
Society 99, no 2 (April June 1979): 270-287.
________. Egypt and Asia in the New Kingdom: Some Historical Notes. Journal of the
Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 10 (1978): 63-70.
________. Egypt and Western Asia in the Old Kingdom. Journal of the
American Research Center in Egypt 23, (1986): 125-143.
________. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. Cairo: American University in
Cairo Press, 1995.
________. Textual Sources for the Hyksos Period. In The Hyksos: New Historical and
Archaeological Perspectives, edited by Eliezer D. Oren, 1-44. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1997.
________. The Wars in Syria and Palestine of Thutmose III. Leiden: Brill,
2003.
________. From Slave to Pharaoh: The Black Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2004.

119

Reisner, George E. The Viceroys of Ethiopia. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 6,

no. 1 (1920): 28-55.
Ritner, Robert K. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice.
Chicago: Oriental Institute Press, 1993.
________. Libyan vs. Nubian as the Ideal Egyptian. In Egypt and Beyond: Studies
Presented to Leonard H. Lesko upon his Retirement from the Wilbour Chair of
Egyptology at Brown University, June 2005, edited Stephen E. Thompson and
Peter Der Manuelian, 305-14. Providence: Brown University Press, 2008.
________. The Libyan Anarchy: Inscriptions from Egypts Third Intermediate Period.
Boston: Brill, 2009.
________. Egypt and the Vanishing Libyan: Institutional Responses to a Nomadic
People. In Nomads, Tribes and the State in the Ancient Near East: CrossDisciplinary Approaches, edited by Jeffrey Szuchman, 43-56. Chicago: Oriental
Institute Press, 2009.
________. Fragmentation and Re-integration in the Third Intermediate Period. In The
Libyan Period in Egypt. Historical and Cultural Studies into the 21st -24th
Dynasties: Proceedings of a Conference at Leiden University, 25-27 October
2007, edited by G. P. F. Broekman, R. J. Demare and O. E. Kaper, 327-40.
Leiden: Peeters, 2009.
Roberts, Gareth. The Sea Peoples and Egypt. PhD diss., University of Oxford,
2008.
Robins, Gay. Hair and the Construction of Identity in Ancient Egypt, c. 1480-1350
B.C. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 36 (1999): 55-69.
Rodriguez, Roberto. Ethnicity and interethnic relations during Egypts Old Kingdom.
Advances in Egyptology 1 (2010): 43-51.
Roy, Jane. The Politics of Trade: Egypt and Lower Nubia in the 4th Millennium BC.
Leiden: Brill, 2011.
Saleh, Heidi. Investigating Ethnic and Gender Identities as Expressed on Wooden
Funerary Stelae from the Libyan Period (c. 1069-715 B.C.E.) in Egypt. PhD
diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2006 (ProQuest No. 3254059).
Sandars, Nancy K. The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean. London:
Thames & Hudson, 1985.
Saretta, Phyllis. Egyptian Perceptions of West Semites in Art and Literature during the
Middle Kingdom. PhD diss., New York University. 1997 (ProQuest No.
9731433).
Sauneron, Serge. La diffrenciation des langages daprs la tradition gyptienne.

120

Le Bulletin de lInstitut Franais dArchologie Orientale 60 (1960): 31-41.

Sve-Sderbergh, Torgny. gypten und Nubien. Lund: Ohlssons, 1941.
________. The Hyksos Rule in Egypt. The Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 37 (Dec. 1951): 53-71.
Schipper, Bernd U. Die Erzhlung des Wenamun: Ein Literaturwerk im Spannungsfeld
von Politik, Geschichte und Religion. Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2005.
Schneider, Thomas. Foreign Egypt: Egyptology and the Concept of Cultural
Appropriation. gypten und Levante 13 (2003): 155-161.
________. Auslnder in gypten whrend des Mittleren Reiches und der Hyksoszeit, vol.
2: Die auslndische Bevlkerung. Weisbaden, 2003.
________. Foreigners in Egypt: Archaeological Evidence and Cultural
Context. In Egyptian Archaeology, edited by Willeke Wendrich. Malden: WileyBlackwell, 2010.
Scott, Gerry Dee., III. Ancient Egyptian Art at Yale. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1986.
Seidlmayer, Stephan Johannes. Nubier im gyptischen Kontext im Alten und
Mittleren Reich. In Akkulturation und Selbstbehauptung: Beitrge des
Kolloquiums am 14.12.2001, edited by Leder, Stefan and Bernhard Streck, 89113. Halle-Wittenberg: Orientwissenschaftliches Zentrum der Martin-LutherUniversitt, 2002.
Sethe, Kurt. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde gyptens. Leipzig: J.C.
Hinrichs, 1896.
________. Urkunden der 18. Dynastie. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1906-1958.
________. Die Altgyptischen Pyramidentexte nach den Papierabdrucken und
Photographien das Berliner Museums vol. I-II. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1908.
________. Die chtung feindlicher Frsten, Vlker und Dinge auf altgyptischen
Tongefsscherben des mittleren Reiches: nach den Originalen im Berliner
Museum. Berlin: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1926.
________. Urkunden des Alten Reichs. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1933.
________. Historisch-biographische Urkunden des Mittleren Reiches. Leipzig: J. C.
Hinrichs, 1935.
Shennum, David. English-Egyptian Index of Faulkners Concise Dictionary of Middle
Egyptian. Malibu: Undena Publications, 1977.
Simons, J. Handbook for the Study of Egyptian Topographical Lists Relating to
Western Asia. Leiden: Brill, 1937.
Simpson, William Kelly. Nubia: The University Museum Yale University
Expedition. Expedition 4, no. 2 (1962): 28-39.

121

________. Heka-Nefer and the Dynastic Material from Toshka and Arminna.
Philadelphia: University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, 1963.
________. The Literature of Ancient Egypt: an anthology of stories,
instructions, stelae, autobiographies, and poetry. London: Yale University Press,
2003.
Smith, H.S. and A. Smith. A Reconsideration of the Kamose Texts. Zeitschrift fr
gyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 103 (1976): 48-78.
Smith, Stuart Tyson. Wretched Kush: Ethnic Identities and Boundaries in Egypts
Nubian Empire. New York: Routledge, 2003.
________. To the Supports of Heaven: Political and Ideological Concepts of Frontiers in
Ancient Egypt. In Untaming the Frontier in Anthropology, Archaeology, and
History, edited by Bradley J. Parker and Lars Rodseth, 207-237. Tucson: The
University of Arizona Press, 2005.
________. Ethnicity and Culture. In The Egyptian World, edited by Toby
Wilkinson, 218-241. Routledge, 2007.
________. Colonial Gatherings: The New Kingdom Presentation of Inu and the British
Imperial Durbar, a Comparison. Abstract. 65th Annual Meeting of the American
Research Center in Egypt (2014): 79.
Smither, Paul C. An Old Kingdom Letter concerning the Crimes of Count Sabni. The
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 28 (Dec. 1942): 16-19.
________. The Semnah Despatches. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 31
(Dec. 1945): 3-10.
Snape, Steven. The Emergence of Libya on the Horizon of Egypt. In Mysterious
Lands, edited by David OConnor and Stephen Quirke, 94-106. London:
University College London Press, 2003.
Snowden Jr., Frank M. Images and Attitudes: Ancient Views of Nubia and the
Nubians. Expedition 35, no. 2 (1993): 40-50.
Spalinger, Anthony J. Some Notes on the Libyans of the Old Kingdom and Later
Historical Reflexes. Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities Journal 9
(1979): 125-162.
---------. Northern Wars of Seti I: An Integrative Study. Journal of the American
Research Center in Egypt 16 (1979): 29-47.
________. Aspects of the Military Documents of the Ancient Egyptians. London: Yale
University Press, 1982.
________. Covetous Eyes South: The Background to Egypts Domination over Nubia
by the Reign of Thutmose III. In Thutmose III: A New Biography, edited by E.H.
Cline and David OConnor, 344-370. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2006.
________. A Garland of Determinatives. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 94
(2008): 139-164.

122

Sparks, Kenton L. Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the Study of
Ethnic Sentiments and their Expression in the Hebrew Bible. Winona Lake:
Eisenbrauns, 1998.
Spiegelberg, Wilhelm. Varia. Recueil de travaux relatifs la philologie et
l'archologie gyptiennes et assyriennes 14 (1893): 39-43.
Strange, John. Caphtor/Keftiu: A New Investigation. Leiden: Brill, 1980.
Strudwick, Nigel. Texts from the Pyramid Age. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,
2005.
Teeter, Emily. Animals in Egyptian Literature. In A History of the Animal World in the
Ancient Near East, edited by Billie Jean Collins, 251-270. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
Thriault, Carolyn A. The Instruction of Amenemhet as Propaganda. Journal of the
American Research Center in Egypt 30 (1993): 151-160.
Trk, Lszl. Between Two Worlds: The Frontier Region between Ancient Nubia and
Egypt 3700 BC - AD 500. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Trigger, Bruce G. New Light on the History of Lower Nubia. Anthropologica 10, no. 1
(1968): 81-106.
Uphill, Eric. The Nine Bows. Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux 19 (1966): 393-420.
Valbelle, Dominique. Les Neuf Arcs: LEgyptien et les trangers de la prhistoire
la conqute dAlexandre. Paris: Armand Colin, 1990.
Van Seters, John. A Date for the Admonitions in the Second Intermediate Period. The
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 50 (Dec. 1964): 13-23.
Vassiliev, Alexandre. The localization of the Shasu-land of Ramesses II's rhetorical
texts. In Current research in Egyptology 2006: Proceedings of the seventh
annual symposium which took place at the University of Oxford, April 2006,
edited by Maria Cannata and Christina Adams, 162-168. Oxford: Oxbow, 2007.
Velde, H. Te. Seth, God of Confusion: A Study of His Role in Egyptian Mythology and
Religion. Leiden: Brill, 1977.
Vercoutter, Jean. Les Haou-Nebout. Bulletin de l'Institut Franais d'Archologie
Orientale 48 (1949): 107-209.
Vinogradov, Alexey K. On the rendering of the toponym T3 STJ. Chronique dgypte
75 (2000): 223-234.

123

Volten, Aksel. Studien zum Weisheitsbuch des Anii. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard,
1937.
Wainwright, G. A. The Keftiu-People of the Egyptian Monuments. Annals of
Archaeology and Anthropology 6 (1914): 24-83.
________. Alashia-Alaa and Asy. Klio 14 (1914-1915): 1-36.
________. Keftiu. The Journal of Hellenic Studies 52, no. 1 (1932): 118-119.
________. Some Sea-Peoples and Others in the Hittite Archives. The Journal
of Egyptian Archaeology 25, no. 2 (Dec. 1939): 148-153.
________. Asiatic Keftiu. American Journal of Archaeology 56, no. 4 (1952): 196-212.
________. The Teresh, The Etruscans and Asia Minor. Anatolian Studies 9 (1959):
197-213.
---------. Some Sea-Peoples. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 47 (Dec. 1961):
71-90.
________.The Meshwesh. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 48 (1962),
89-99.
________. Shekelesh or Shashu? The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 50 (Dec.
1964): 40-46.
Wallman, Sandra. Ethnicity Research in Britain. Current Anthropology 18, no. 3 (Sep.
1977): 531-532.
________. The Boundaries of Race: Processes of Ethnicity in England. Man 13, no. 2
(June 1978): 200-217.
Ward, William A. Egypt and the East Mediterranean World, 2200-1900 BC: Studies in
Egyptian Foreign Relations during the First Intermediate Period. Beirut:
American University of Beirut Press, 1971.
________. The Shasu Bedouin: Notes on a Recent Publication. Journal of
the Economic and Social History of the Orient 15, no. 1/2 (June 1972): 35-60.
________. Early Contacts between Egypt, Canaan, and Sinai: Remarks on the Paper by
Amnon Ben-Tor. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 281
(Feb. 1991): 11-26.
________. Foreigners Living in the Village. In The Villagers of Deir El Medina, edited
by Leonard H. Lesko. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Wegner, Josef W. and Josef Wegner. Regional Control in Middle Kingdom Lower
Nubia: The Function and History of the Site of Areika. Journal of the American
Research Center in Egypt 32 (1995): 127-160.
Wicker, F.D.P. The Road to Punt. The Geographic Journal 164, no. 2 (Jul. 1998): 155167.
Wilkinson, Richard H. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London:
Thames & Hudson, 2003.

124

Wilkinson, Toby A. H. Royal Annals of Ancient Egypt: The Palermo Stone and its
Associated Fragments. London: Routledge, 2000.
________. Reality versus Ideology: The Evidence for Asiatics in
Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt. In Egypt and the Levant: Interrelations
from the 4th through the Early 3rd Millennium BCE. edited by E. C. M. van den
Brink, 514 520. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2002.
Williams, Bruce. Second Cataract Forts. In Ancient Nubia: African Kingdoms on the
Nile, edited by Marjorie Fisher, Peter Lacovara, Salima Ikram and Sue DAuria,
340-347. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2012.
Wilson, John A. The Eperu of the Egyptian Inscriptions. The American Journal of
Semitic Languages and Literatures 49, no. 4 (July 1933): 275-280.
Woodman, Paul. The Nature of the Endonym. Typescript for the 25th UNGEGN
session. Nairobi, 2009.
Woudhuizen, Frederik Christiaan. The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples. PhD diss.,
Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, 2006.
Wreszinski, Walter. Der groe medizinische Papyrus des Berliner Museums (Pap. Berl.
3038). Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1909.
________. Der Londoner Medizinische Papyrus (Brit. Museum Nr. 10059) und der
Papyrus Hearst. Lepzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1912.
Wright, Mary. Literary Sources for the History of Palestine and Syria: Contacts between
Egypt and Syro-Palestine during the Protodynastic Period. The Biblical
Archaeologist 48, no. 4 (Dec. 1985): 240-253.
Wright, Mary and Dennis Pardee. Literary Sources for the History of Palestine and
Syria: Contacts between Egypt and Syro-Palestine during the Old Kingdom. The
Biblical Archaeologist 51, no. 3 (Sep. 1988): 143-161.
Yurco, Frank J. Merneptahs Canaanite Campaign. Journal of the American Research
Center in Egypt 23 (1986): 189-215.
________. Merenptah's wars, the 'Sea Peoples,' and Israel's origins. In Ancient
Egypt, the Aegean, and the Near East: studies in honour of Martha Rhoads Bell,
edited by Jacke Phillips, 497-506. San Antonio: Van Siclen Books, 1997.
abkar, Louis V. Semna South: The Southern Fortress. The Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 61 (1975): 42-44.
Zandee, J. De Hymnen aan Amon van Papyrus Leiden I 350. Leiden: Brill, 1948.
Zibelius-Chen, Karola. Afrikanische Orts und Vlkernamen in hieroglyphischen und
hieratischen Texten. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1972.

125

________. Die Medja in altgyptischen Quellen. Studien zur

Altgyptischen Kultur 36 (2007): 391-405.
Zyhlarz, Ernest. The Countries of the Ethiopian Empire of Kash (Kush) and Egyptian
Old Ethiopia in the New Kingdom. Translated by M. Jackson. Kush 6 (1958): 738.

126

Appendix: Sample of ethnonyms in ancient Egyptian written sources

This appendix is not comprehensive of all ethnonyms found in Egyptian
sources, nor does it illustrate the vast orthographic variations that existed for each
ethnonym. It is intended to present some common ethnonyms, which were discussed in
this thesis according to their orientation, for reference and to provide an idea of the
number of distinct ethnonyms found in Egyptian texts. The ethnonyms are listed along
with their common English translation(s) for clarity.

Western ethnonyms
Hieroglyphs

Translations
Tjehnu /
Libyans

Text
Story of
Sinuhe

Status
Primary

Tjemeh /
Libyans

Prophecy of
Neferty

Primary

Meshwesh /
Libyans

Medinet Habu

Primary

Rebu / Libyans

Merneptahs
Athribis Stele

Primary

Text
Great Speos
Artemidos
Inscription
Stele of
Ramesses II

Status
Primary

Stele of
Sobek-khu

Secondary

Autobiography
of Pepi-Nakht

Secondary

Northern ethnonyms
Hieroglyphs

Translations
Aamu/
Asiatics
Setyu /
Asiatics
Montiu /
Asiatics /
Bedouin
Hryw-Say /
Sandfarers/
Bedouin

127

Primary

nmiw-Say /
Sandfarers /
Bedouin
Shekelesh

Story of
Sinuhe

Secondary

Medinet Habu

Primary

Peleset/
Philistines

Medinet Habu

Primary

Tjeker /
Zekeru

Medinet Habu

Primary

Sherden

Qadesh Battle
Inscriptions

Primary

Lukka

Qadesh Battle
Inscriptions

Primary

Weshesh

Medinet Habu

Primary

Teresh

Medinet Habu

Primary

Ekwesh

Medinet Habu

Primary

Keftiui

BM writingtablet
EA29558
Quarry
Inscription of
Neferperet
Papyrus of Ani

Primary

Fenkhu /
Syrians /
Phonecians?
Kharu /
Syrians /
Hurrians

128

Primary

Primary

Eastern ethnonyms
Hieroglyphs

Translations

Text

Status

Shasu /
Bedouin

Stele of
Ramesses II
from Tanis

Primary

Puntyu /
Puntite

Deir el Bahari
Hatshepsuts
Mortuary
Temple
Papyrus Boulaq
XVII

Primary

Medjay

Primary

Southern ethnonyms
Hieroglyphs

Translations
Nehesyu /
Nubians

Text
Papyrus
Sallier

Status
Primary

Setyu / Nubians

Autobiography
of Ahmose,
son of Abana

Primary

iuntyu /
Bowmen

Autobiography
of Ahmose,
son of Abana

Secondary

Wawayu

Instruction of
Amenemhat I

Primary

Kashu /
Kushites

Inscription of
Senusret III

Primary

Terek-folk

Papyrus Koller

Primary?

Irem-folk

Papyrus Koller

Primary?

129

Other ethnonyms
Hieroglyphs

Translations
Kasa
Apiru

130

Text
Papyrus Lansing

Status
Unclear

Papyrus Leiden I

Unclear