Moses and Akhenaten by Ahmed Osman

west-Semitic language, and to differentiate between them and the Palestinians, whom they called ‘Aamu’. (Later on, in the early centuries AD, the word ‘Shasu’ became the Coptic word shos, meaning shepherd.) The full account of this campaign against the Shasu, here identified as a people by the determinative that can indicate either a people or a land, is found in Seti I’s war reliefs which occupy the entire exterior of the northern wall of the great Hypostyle Hall in Amun’s temple at Karnak (see Appendix A (i): The Shasu Wars). The extreme point in the king’s first war, shown on the bottom row of the eastern side of the wall and dated to his first year, is the capture of the city of Pe-Kanan (Gaza).
    The second and middle row of this eastern wall shows a further war of Seti I to the north. Shortly after his coronation, Seti I set out again for western Asia. On this occasion the king marched with his army up the Mediterranean coast until he reached a point in north Palestine on the same level as the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, probably the city of Acco. He then divided his army into three divisions which moved eastward in three different branches to the cities of Yanoam in the north, Beth-Shan in the centre and Hammath in the south. The extreme end of this row shows the princes of Canaan felling the cedars in the Lebanon for the sacred boat of Amun in Thebes where, in his yearly festivals, the god was carried in a celebratory procession indicating the submission of the whole of Canaan and the Phoenician coast to the Pharaoh.
    The first row of scenes at the bottom of the western wall of the Karnak temple façade depicts a war against the Hittites, who were at the time in northern Syria, where their strong centre was the city of Kadesh on the Orontes river, but the Hittite power was not broken. Although here again we have no date for the Hittite war, it is accepted that it could not have taken place in Year 1 of Seti I. The second, middle row of this western wall deals with two separate wars Seti I fought against the Libyans. No date is given, but they could have occurred any time after Year 1. The third, and top, row is again lost apart from a scene on the right extremity representing the war with the Hittites at Kadesh.
    Ramses II, who followed his father, Seti I, on the throne in the early part of the thirteenth century C, spent the first decade fighting in Asia. His first campaign began in Year 4 when he swept through Canaan and along the Phoenician coast, probably as far as Simyra, which had been under the control of the kingdom of Amurru, to the east in northern Syria. He then attacked Amurru itself, which had an allegiance with the Hittite king, Muwatallis.
    In the spring of the following year Ramses II returned to Syria, this time to conquer Kadesh. After fierce fighting, in which the king himself played a courageous role, he succeeded in defeating the Hittites and capturing the city. His third Asiatic campaign took place in Year 8 of his reign. On this occasion he had first to crush unrest in Galilee before embarking on other campaigns – recovery of the area of Damascus, strengthening his hold upon the Phoenician coast lands and attacking the Amurrite city of Dapur to the north of Kadesh. Two years later, in Year 10, the king engaged in a second attack upon Dapur, which had rebelled: ‘Sometime in regnal Year 10, or shortly afterwards, Ramses II appears to have left Egypt; perhaps at this time he conducted the campaigns into Transjordan that are represented at the walls of Luxor since they do not fit into the accounts of his earlier campaigns.’ 2
    Ramses II returned to Beth-Shan in Year 18, after which negotiations began between himself and Hattusili III, the new King of the Hittites, that resulted ultimately in a treaty of peace and alliance between them in Year 21. This treaty was later consolidated by a marriage between Ramses II and a Hittite princess in his