The Egyptian Empire in Palestine: A Reassessment
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James M. Weinstein
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 241 (Winter, 1981), 1-28. Stable URL:
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The Egyptian Empire in Palestine: A Reassessment*
James M. Weinstein
Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853
The beginning of the Late Bronze Age witnessed the rise of the Egyptian empire in Western Asia. Much has been written about the Palestinian segment of this empire, with Egyptian control in this area often being seen as a more or less continuous military, political, and economic domination throughout the Late Bronze Age. W. F. Albright expressed this viewpoint clearly in his classic work, The Archaeology of Palestine:
During this whole period Palestine remained an integral part of the Egyptian Empire; there is no evidence that any of the frequent rebellions lasted for more than a few years at most (1960: 99).
Such an interpretation may have been justified by the evidence available as recently as the mid 1960s, but a careful evaluation of the archaeological and historical data which have since become available, when combined with a fresh examination of the earlier materials, results in a somewhat different perspective on the Egyptian empire in Palestine. In fact, this empire can now be viewed as a rather complex entity, one which rose, flourished, endured both internal and external pressures, and ultimately fell over the course of about 400 years. In this article we shall look at some of the major developments in the history of this empire and suggest possible solutions to several long-debated problems of Late Bronze Age history and archaeology.
I. The Rise of the Empire
Two closely related events—the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt and the rise of the Egyptian
New Kingdom empire in Western Asia—historically mark the end of the Middle Bronze Age and beginning of the Late Bronze Age in Palestine. As a result of a series of military campaigns by the Egyptian kings of the 16th and early 15th centuries B.C., the political and military power of the MB city-states of Palestine was broken, and their rulers came under an Egyptian hegemony.
Two important questions fundamental to our understanding of the rise of the Egyptian empire in Palestine have been raised in recent years: (1) Did the destructions that occurred at many Palestinian sites in about the middle of the 16th century B.C. break the back of the Hyksos power and result in a relatively quick absorption of Palestine into a rapidly expanding Egyptian empire? (2) Were the Egyptians responsible for these destructions in the first place?
Regarding the first question, Kenyon (1979: 180) has allowed only about 20 years for the Egyptian conquest of Palestine, while Wright (1961: 91) has stated that "the initial Egyptian reconquest was rapid, and the destruction of 'Hyksos' cities in Palestine was not a gradual process scattered over a century." On the other hand, Seger (1975a: 44*-45*) has argued that the destruction of Hyksos power in Palestine was a prolonged process in which some individual Hyksos cities held out until the early 15th century, with Thutmose Ill's conquest of Megiddo finally putting an end to this resistance.
That the Egyptians were responsible for most if not all the destructions of the MB cities of Palestine has long been a basic assumption in virtually all
This issue published with the assistance of a grant from Lila Acheson Wallace.
Copyright © 1982 by the American Schools of Oriental Research.
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reconstructions of Palestinian history and archaeology of this period. Now, however, at least two scholars have brought even this supposition into doubt. Redford (1979: 273) has asserted that the early 18th-Dynasty campaigns, being limited to only one or two per reign, could not have been responsible for so many destructions, while Shea has claimed that "there is very little inscriptional evidence from Egypt to indicate that the Egyptians had anything to do with these destructions" (Shea 1979: 3), and so "some other explanation for the destructions of these sites should therefore be sought" (Shea 1979: 4).
The scepticism expressed by Seger, Redford, and Shea about the standard interpretations requires us to reexamine the available archaeological and textual materials for the rise of the Egyptian empire. This material comes from three basic sources: (1) the stratigraphic evidence from Palestine; (2) the Egyptian textual sources; and (3) the Hyksos royal-name scarabs from the Levant.
Stratigraphic Evidence from Palestine
The principal evidence for the traditional view of a quick conquest has been the stratigraphic and ceramic material from a relatively large number of Palestinian sites that appear to have been destroyed in about the middle of the 16th century B.C. and, with only a few exceptions, were subsequently abandoned for varying lengths of time. The MB cities that Wright (1961: chart 6) and Dever (1976: chart 2) include in this category are as follows:
1. Tell el-cAjjfll (City iii and Palace i)
2. Tell el-Farcah (South)
3. Tell el-Hesi
4. Lachish
5. Tell Beit Mirsim
6. Jericho
7. Bethel
8. Shechem (two closely-spaced destructions)
9. Tell el-Farcah (North)
10. Beth-shan (?)
11. Hazor
12. Dan
The evidence is inconclusive for destructions at three of these sites: Tell el-Farcah (South), Tell el-Farcah (North), and Beth-shan. The Tell el-Farcah (South) excavation reports do not specifically point out a destruction level for the end of the Hyksos period, and, while a destruction may well have occurred, it is conceivable that the site was simply abandoned at this time. The meager evidence for
occupation at Tell el-Farcah (South) between MB IIC and LB II comes from a few LB I sherds on the tell (Macdonald, Starkey, and Harding 1932: 27-30) and some tombs in the nearby 600 cemetery (Kenyon 1973a: 553; Oren 1969: 129, 134). At Tell el-Farcah (North), the MB II (Niveau 5) and LB (Niveau 4) levels were poorly preserved, but there does seem to have been a break in occupation here from the end of the Middle Bronze Age down to perhaps the beginning of LB II (de Vaux 1952:552-58; Kenyon 1973a: 543). As for Beth-shan, although both Wright and Dever indicate (though with question marks) the presence of a transitional MB IIC/LB IA destruction level separating Levels XB and XA, it would now appear that the transition from XB to XA took place still within MB II, with XA continuing on down into LB I A; thus there may not have been any stratigraphic break between MB IIC and LB IA at this site (Oren 1973: 99-100; EAEHL 1:212). The archaeological picture for the succeeding LB I period is unclear. Although no LB I architecture was identified within the excavated area, substantial quantities of LB I pottery were found in the fill beneath the Level IX temple, and five tombs with LB I burials were discovered in the Northern Cemetery (Oren 1973: 68-100). It is therefore possible that Beth-shan may have witnessed continuous occupation from MB IIC down into the 15th century B.C., if not all the way to the LB II period.
The names of at least eight other sites where archaeological evidence indicates destructions or abandonments or both at the end of MB IIC or early in the Late Bronze Age can be added to the lists of Wright and Dever:
13. Tell en-Nagila
14. Malhata
15. Ashkelon
16. Beth-zur
17. Beth-shemesh
18. Gibeon (?)
19. Shiloh
20. Tacanach
At Tell en-Nagila, a "sparsely built settlement" arose in LB I on the ruins of the destroyed MB IIB-C city (Amiran and Eitan 1965: 115; EAEHL 3: 897). At Malhata, the late MB IIC destruction (Kochavi 1972: 594; EAEHL 3: 772) was followed by some sort of minor resettlement, still within the MB II period, and then an abandonment of the site until the beginning of the 10th century B.C. (Kochavi 1967: 272-73). The Ashkelon destruction
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(Phythian-Adams 1923: 65, figs. 2, 4) cannot be dated with any precision; the site was destroyed either at the end of MB IIC or early in LB IA. If there was an occupational gap on the tell following the destruction, it must have ended by the mid 15th century, since an envoy from this city is mentioned in Papyrus Hermitage 1116A (below), which dates to the reign of Amenhotep II. Beth-zur is another city whose destruction is difficult to date. The excavation report (Sellers et al. 1968: 37,41) cited a date at the end of the 15th century for the destruction of the MB city, but this was immediately recognized as being much too late (Lapp, in Sellers et al. 1968: iii). More recently, this destruction has been placed at ca. 1550 B.C. (EAEHL 1: 265), in the late 16th century (EAEHL 1: 263), and even possibly in the early 15th century (Dever 1971: 460 and n. 3). Following the destruction, Beth-zur was unoccupied through the remainder of the Late Bronze Age. The Beth-Fig. 1. Middle Bronze Age Sites Destroyed in ca. Mid 16th Century B.C.
shemesh destruction was dated for a long time to ca. 1520-1500 B.C. on the basis of some LB Cypriot pottery that was discovered in the otherwise purely MB IIB-C Stratum V (Grant and Wright 1939:104-6). However, if this small amount of Late Cypriot material came from mixed Stratum V and IV deposits, as Wright has now suggested (EAEHL 1: 251; cf. Stewart 1955: 48), then the demise of Stratum V could be placed back in the mid 16th century. Any succeeding abandonment is unlikely to have been very long, and the subsequent occupation represented by Stratum IVa is one of the classic LB IB levels in Palestine (Wright 1961: 91, 94, chart 7; Grant and Wright 1939: 111-18; Kenyon 1973a: 547-48).
The problems associated with the Gibeon materials are somewhat different than for the other sites discussed here. The remains of a storeroom which had been "destroyed by fire" were found in a limited sounding on the west side of the tell in Square 15-K-18 (Pritchard 1964: 43), while a floor on the same level in the adjoining Square 15-L-18 was covered by "a thick layer of debris" (Pritchard 1964: 44). The pottery associated with these Level 4 remains in both squares is said to be best paralleled by material from Jericho tomb groups II-IV and Tell Beit Mirsim Strata E-D (Pritchard 1964: 45-47). Even if the inconclusive stratigraphic evidence (particularly from Square 15-K-18) does suggest a possible destruction level at Gibeon, the ceramic materials allow for a destruction slightly earlier than the end of MB IIC. No LB I occupational materials or tombs occur at the site, indicating that, whatever happened at Gibeon, there was a subsequent abandonment through the second half of the 16th as well as the 15th century. At Shiloh, the terminal MB IIC destruction (Buhl and Holm-Nielsen 1969: 60) was followed by nearly complete abandonment here in LB I, with only scattered LB I sherds on the mound providing any indication of domestic occupation prior to the telFs reoccupation in LB IIA. At Tacanach, only a very limited destruction was noted in the various excavated areas, with considerable continuity apparently existing between the predestruction MB IIC and the postdestruction LB IA periods of occupation (Lapp 1969: 4-5, 22-25; EAEHL 4: 1146). The succeeding LB IA period saw "certainly one of the most prosperous periods in Taanach's history" (Lapp 1969: 30), following which the site suffered a massive destruction (probably at the hands of Thutmose III) and then declined until it was
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abandoned at the end of the 15th century; its final LB occupation took place in the 13th century.
Finally, it should be noted that a possible destruction level has been observed at Tell el-Mazar in the Jordan Valley. Ibrahim, Sauer, and Yassine (1976: 54) report finding "a thick LB I burn layer exposed at the base of the tell by modern trenching," but further evidence will be required before an attempt can be made to fit this site into any historical reconstruction.
The 20 MB sites listed above are shown on the map in fig. 1. Note that all of these sites are located in southern Palestine as well as in the central and northern inland regions of the country. The destructions and abandonments at these sites seem to fit into a generally consistent geographical and chronological pattern. It would appear that at the end of the Middle Bronze Age or very early in the Late Bronze Age, a large series of destructions occurred in a geographical arc stretching from southwestern Palestine eastward across the southern part of the country, up through the Judean hills—with at least one destruction in the Jordan Valley, at Jericho—and then north past the Sea of Galilee and westward across the Plain of Esdraelon at least as far as Tacanach.
Turning now to the western Shephelah, the Sharon, and the Mediterranean coast, a somewhat different archaeological situation presents itself. The following list includes those sites whose destructions or abandonments can be assigned to the period from the end of the Middle Bronze Age down through the LB IA period. (To this list might be added Ashkelon and City Ill-Palace I at Tell el-cAjjul, both of whose destructions have already been considered above.)
1. Tell el-cAjjul (City II and Palace II)
2. Gezer
3. Tell Jerishe
4. Jaffa
5. Aphek
6. Tell Mevorakh
7. Tell Megadim
8. Acco
9. Achzib 10. Nahariya
Although the end of City II and Palace II at Tell el-cAjjul cannot be dated with any real confidence due to the imprecise excavating and recording techniques employed at this crucial site,recent efforts to raise the chronological framework for City Ill-Palace I and City Il-Palace II are not
convincing. Specifically, the attempts by Stewart (1974: 62-63), Kempinski (1974: 147-50), and Tufnell (EAEHL 1: 60) to end City III and Palace I within the MB IIC period, and then to date the destruction of the subsequent City II and Palace II at the time of Ahmose's initial campaign into Palestine in the mid 16th century, have resulted in a chronology for this site which, based on the ceramic evidence, is too high (Weinstein, in preparation). A late 16th- or early 15th-century date is therefore to be preferred for the end of City II and Palace II. The succeeding "Palace III" (Petrie 1932: 4, pi. 48) may have been a fortress or administrative center for an Egyptian garrison at the time of Thutmose Ill's Megiddo campaign (below).
The fiery destruction of Stratum XVIII at Gezer, dated initially to the time of Thutmose IV (Dever, Lance, and Wright 1970: 55) and then to the first Asiatic campaign of Thutmose III (Dever et al. 1971: 103, 127), has now been assigned to the second half of the 16th century (possibly to the time of Amenhotep I or Thutmose I) on the basis of the pottery and scarabs discovered in the destruction debris (Seger 1973: 250; 1975b; 1976: 133 and n. 3). While Kenyon (1973b: 171) and Sauer (1979: 71) have suggested pushing the date of this destruction even further back, the presence of Cypriot Monochrome, Bichrome, and Base-Ring I materials in the destruction debris (Dever 1972: 159; Seger 1975b) indicates that a mid-16th-century B.C. dating would be too early. Whatever occupational gap may have followed this destruction, the tell was certainly reoccupied by 1482 B.C., since Gezer is mentioned in the topographical list for Thutmose Ill's Megiddo campaign.
The stratigraphic evidence from Tell Jerishe is uncertain. The excavator, E. L. Sukenik, stated (1944: 199) after the fourth season of excavation that "there was no clear break or conflagration between this period [the Middle Bronze Age] and the following Late Bronze Age, during which the Middle Bronze fortification system continued in use." On the other hand, Avigad (EAEHL 2: 578), apparently on the basis of an unpublished fifth season of excavation conducted in 1950 in which he was a participant (cf. EAEHL 2: 575), claims that Tell Jerishe was destroyed at the time of the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt, therefore, presumably in the mid 16th century B.C. However, no specific evidence for this destruction or its dating has been published.
The scanty archaeological data published so far
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from Jaffa (Kaplan 1972: 77-78) indicate a destruction here later than the mid 16th century, and since a famous Egyptian tale recounts the story of the capture of Jaffa by a general namd Djehuti in the reign of Thutmose III (ANET: 22-23), it is presumed that Jaffa was conquered rather later than most of the other Palestinian sites. There is also a destruction level at Aphek, where a complete sequence of MB II-LB I remains is broken only in the 15th century (Gal 1980).
Tell Mevorakh was originally thought to have been abandoned at the end of the MB IIC period and then left unoccupied until a sanctuary was built there in the late 15th century (Stern 1976: 200; EAEHL 3: 869). However, it is now believed (personal communication from Ephraim Stern, 19 September 1979) that the site "had definitely been destroyed and not abandoned," and this destruction "should be attributed to a campaign of Tuthmosis I." According to Stern, a break in occupation of only about half a century followed the destruction, and the LB sanctuary was built just after Thutmose Ill's Megiddo campaign, that is, evidently at the end of LB IA or early in LB IB. The stratigraphy of Tell Megadim is still uncertain. It has been reported that the LB city was "apparently . . . preceded by an interruption in occupation," though the earlier MB II occupation is so far known "only through unstratified sherds" (EAEHL 3: 824). At Acco, a thick layer of debris and ashes was discovered on a floor associated with the LB I Stratum 12 (M. Dothan 1976: 17). The succeeding Stratum 11 is assigned to "the end of LB I or to the beginning of LB II." At Achzib, the relevant city deposits have not yet been excavated; the fortifications give evidence of having been destroyed early in the Late Bronze Age (Prausnitz 1963: 337; 1965: 257; EAEHL 1: 28), though a dating at the end of MB IIC has also been claimed (Prausnitz 1975: 207). The MB sanctuary at Nahariya evidently remained in use until well into the LB IA period, since the last phase of the temple complex included Base-Ring, White-Slip, and Bichrome (as well as White-Painted) wares (M. Dothan 1956: 22, 24).
Although the stratigraphic situation at several of these western Shephelah, Sharon, and Mediterranean coast sites is still unclear, probably most of the destructions and abandonments in these areas occurred later than those in the southern and inland regions of the country. Gezer, Jaffa, Tell Mevorakh, Aphek, Acco, and Nahariya probably all
survived the mid 16th century B.C. without destructions. Achzib may also fit in with this group of sites, while it is still too early to say much about the sites of Tell Jerishe and Tell Megadim. As for Tell el-cAjjfil, City III and Palace I at this site were destroyed at the end of MB IIC (as was perhaps Ashkelon), while City II and Palace II evidently lasted until the late 16th or early 15th century B.C. In summary, none of the westernmost sites north of Ashkelon need necessarily have been destroyed or abandoned as early as the mid 16th century B.C. In this respect, these sites are quite different from most of those in the southern and inland parts of Palestine.
Having presented the stratigraphic evidence of the 16th- and early 15th-century B.C. destructions and abandonments in Palestine, we return to a question asked earlier in this paper: Were the Egyptians responsible for all of this devastation? If Redford and Shea were justified in their scepticism about the Egyptians being the culprits, then perhaps new explanations for these events would be required. Alternative explanations are not really needed, however, for there is both archaeological and textual evidence that points to the Egyptians as being responsible for at least the great majority of these devastations.
Egyptian Textual Sources
Texts indicating Egyptian military action in Western Asia in the 18th Dynasty prior to the reign of Thutmose III are limited in number and very difficult to use for historical reconstructions because the Asiatic toponyms employed in these inscriptions are often frustratingly ambiguous (at least to the modern scholar). Since these texts have been discussed many times before (most recently by Redford [1979]), our examination here will be primarily for the purpose of extracting information from them on the geographical extent of, and the motivation behind, the early 18th-Dynasty campaigns.
The first king of Dynasty 18, Ahmose, expelled the Hyksos from Egypt and then undertook at least one (Vandersleyen 1971: 125-27), possibly two (Redford 1979: 274-75), campaigns in the Levant. The only specific mention of a Palestinian town in any text of this reign occurs in the autobiography of one of Ahmose's naval officers, Ahmose Son of Abana: "Then Sharuhen was besieged for three years. Then his majesty despoiled it" (Urk. IV: 4,
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14-15; ANET: 233). Although Sharuhen has generally been identified with Tell el-Farc ah (South), such an identification for this important Hyksos stronghold seems unlikely, and Tell el-cAjjul is much to be preferred as the site of this ancient city (Kempinski 1974; Stewart 1974: 62-63; Weinstein, in preparation and below).
The geographical terms included in the three remaining references to Asiatic activity in the reign of Ahmose are rather imprecise. The biographical inscription of Ahmose Pennekhbet refers to the capture of a prisoner in Djahy {Urk. IV: 35, 16-17). Djahy, however, may simply be a term for the Asiatic region in general at this time (Vandersleyen 1971: 90-100). An inscription on a jar fragment that comes from a tomb probably belonging to Ah-mose's wife, Ahmose-Nefertari, mentions the king stoppig to hunt at Kedem (Carter 1916: pi. 21, no.4; Vandersleyen 1971: 124 and n. 6). Kedem {Kdm, "the East") is perhaps to be identified as an area in southern Syria inland from Byblos (cf. Redford 1979: 271). Finally, a stela from the quarry at Masara dating to the 22nd year of Ahmose's reign refers to cattle from the "lands of the Fenkhu" (Urk. IV: 25, 12). Although this text was long thought to demonstrate Egyptian activity in the area of later Phoenicia, such a conclusion is no longer certain because "lands of the Fenkhu" may at this time have been simply a general term for the land of Canaan (Vandersleyen 1971: 102-19).
Until recently no West Asiatic campaign by Ahmose's successor, Amenhotep I, was known. However, Redford (1979) has now published some door-jamb blocks from a gate at Karnak on which five Asiatic toponyms are mentioned: Kedem, Tunip, Diiwny, Upper Retenu, and God's Land. No royal name occurs on any of these blocks, but Redford had adduced several reasons for thinking that this monument should belong to the reign of Amenhotep I. The five toponyms recorded here indicate Syria, rather than Palestine, as the focus of the king's military efforts. Assuming that this gateway belongs to Amenhotep I, there is no longer any problem of trying to explain how his successor, Thutmose I, was able to reach the Euphrates River during his brief reign without having had the groundwork laid for him in Syria by one of his two predecessors.
Thutmose I, like Amenhotep I, was apparently more interested in Syria than in Palestine. The numerous references to Western Asia from his reign collected by Redford (1979: 275-76) include the following toponyms: Retenu, Naharin, the land of
Mitanni, Niy, and the Euphrates River (on the west side of which Thutmose I erected a stela). (For this stela having been set up on the west, and not the east, side of the Euphrates, see Spalinger 1978: 38 and n. 10.)
A campaign against the Shasu is known from the reign of Thutmose II {Urk. IV: 36,12-14). Although this campaign is usually thought to have taken place in the Negev (e.g., Redford 1979: 282, n. 42; Giveon 1971: 219-20; Helck 1971: 274), Manfred Gorg (1979) has presented a reasonable case for locating the Shasu-region in this period in southern Syria or northern Palestine.
The Asiatic foreign policy of Hatshepsut has, until recently, been depicted as a rather peaceful one, and the few scattered references to the Levant from her reign have generally been considered pretentious boasts not to be taken seriously as evidence of military campaigns in this area. Now, however, Redford (1967: 60-64) claims that there is "reliable evidence" for at least two campaigns in Syria-Palestine during her time on the throne—one a "mopping-up" operation somewhere in the region, the second a campaign late in her reign in which Gaza was taken. The latter event is alluded to in the Annals of Thutmose III {Urk. IV: 648,10-11), when the king, in reaching Gaza with his army on the way to Megiddo, refers to the town as "That-Which-The-Ruler-Had-Taken."This term has been interpreted by Redford and others as indicating that Gaza had been captured at some point previous to the Megiddo campaign; hence this earlier campaign must have taken place while Hatshepsut was on the throne but with the army being under Thutmose's command. Schulman (1969-70: 33; 1979: 188 and n. 49) has registered his support for this more militaristic view of Hatshep-sut's reign, while Bjorkman (1971: 96, n. 28) has dissented on grounds that the evidence for military activity in the texts is circumstantial and not supported by the large majority of inscriptions from her reign, which seem to portray her as essentially a nonmilitarist.
While problems abound in trying to reconstruct the nature and extent of Egyptian military activity in the Levant during the early 18th Dynasty, some observations can be made about the situation, based on the textual sources. First, there is only minimal evidence for Egyptian military activity in Palestine proper after the reign of Ahmose; until the reign of Hatshepsut, most of the Egyptian campaigns seem to have been directed toward Syria. Second, there is no evidence yet for Egyptian
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garrisons or administrative personnel anywhere in the Levant in this period outside of southwestern Palestine. In the latter region, Egyptians were stationed at Sharuhen and perhaps at Gaza. The Sharuhen garrison is mentioned in the Annals of Thutmose III {Urk. IV: 648, 4-5), and as noted earlier, "Palace III" at Tell el-cAjjfil may hve been the headquarters for this garrison. As for Gaza, there is no direct evidence for a garrison at this site, but the reference to this town as "That-Which-The-Ruler-Had-Taken" in the same Annals hints that Egyptians may have been there beginning in the reign of Hatshepsut. Finally, the motivation behind these early Levantine campaigns does not appear to have been the permanent extension of Egyptian power and dominion over the cities and rulers of the region. To the contrary, as Redford (1979: 274) has so cogently pointed out:
In short, these Asiatic campaigns of the early 18th Dynasty, and especially that of Thutmose I, appear to have been extended razzias deep into Western Asia, which resulted in booty and some captives, but no permanent occupation, at least in hinterland Syria. Some attempt may occasionally have been made to bind selected foreign rulers by oath to the Egyptian sovereign, but compared to the sophisticated treaty-making practised by the Asiatic states of the time such attemps must have been juvenile and of little effect.
It will be argued below that the underlying cause behind the campaign(s) of Ahmose was a desire to destroy the hated Hyksos cities. Here it is necessary merely to point out that no effort was made in the early 18th Dynasty to establish a system of long-term control in Western Asia. The organization of the subdued territories into a true political, military, and commercial empire under the domination of Egypt did not come about until after the conquest of Megiddo in 1482 b.c.
The stratigraphic materials from Palestine support this historical reconstruction. The massive destructions in southern Palestine and interior central Palestine in about the mid 16th century b.c. were followed in most cases by an abandonment of the devastated cities. Thus any booty or tribute acquired from these cities would have been a one-shot affair, and no permanent economic benefits would accrue to the Egyptians from these early military conquests. Therefore, the creation of a commercial empire could not have been a significant factor behind the pre-Thutmose III Egyptian campaigns into southern and central Palestine.
It is also very unlikely that the establishment of a permanent military or political authority over
Palestine was the principal motivating factor in these campaigns, for had it been, one would think that the Egyptians would have directed their initial efforts toward the complete destruction or permanent occupation of the strategically important cities on the Via Maris, along the Mediterranean coast, and in the north. Yet most of these cities were either ignored altogether by the Egyptians in the mid 16th century, or else they suffered only partial or temporary setbacks and then recovered much or all of their previous prosperity. The northern sites show this situation very clearly. At Tacanach, for example, a limited destruction was followed by a time of great prosperity for the city in LB IA. At Megiddo, there is no clear evidence for a destruction separating Strata X and IX (Kassis 1973: 7-8; the mid-16th-century dating adopted by Kassis for the beginning of Stratum X seems unwarranted). Moreover, there is no archaeological evidence for a significant Egyptian presence at this site during the life of Stratum IX. As for the principal cities at the eastern and western ends of the Plain of Esdraelon, we have already seen that there is no apparent break at Beth-shan between MB IIC and LB IA, while Acco seems to have survived into LB IA before it was attacked. Even Hazor, where Stratum XVI was destroyed at the end of MB IIC, recovered within the LB IA period (Yadin 1972: 31-32, 45, 124-25; Kenyon 1973a: 535-36, 556).
In summary, if Egypt was motivated from the very outset toward building a Levantine empire, it seems incongruous to posit that the Egyptians would totally destroy so many southern and inland cities (thus ruining any possibility for annual tribute from them), while allowing the strategically and economically important northern and western cities to survive and in some cases even prosper. If one assumes that the Egyptians left the latter cities alone in order that they might supply Egypt with substantial annual tribute, then it is difficult to understand how they expected to obtain this tribute, when they seem not to have left any troops or administrators in these areas to enforce Egyptian authority. Even more difficult to explain would be why the Egyptians would leave the principal north-south and east-west roads of Palestine in Asiatic hands; this seems completely at variance with what a conqueror seeking to build an empire would do.
But if the fundamental motive behind the initial Egyptian onslaught was not the imposition of permanent domination over Palestine, then how can we assume that the Egyptians were responsible for all of the destructions which occurred in the
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southern and inland regions of the country in about the middle of the 16th century? The answer to this question, as will be demonstrated below, is that Egyptian military policy toward Palestine at this time was directed at the defeat and elimination of the hated Hyksos who had ruled over a long stretch of the Nile Valley until they were finally expelled from Egypt by Ahmose. But how can it be shown that the cities in southern and inland Palestine were among the principal centers of Hyksos power? Could not the Hyksos rulers have been concentrated in the northern and westernmost parts of the country and, still being too strong for Ahmose to take on, have forced him to avoid them by going around their flanks? Although the documentary evidence from this period provides no definitive answers to these questions, relevant information can be obtained through the study of a very important— though frequently misused—class of antiquities found on nearly all 2nd-millennium Palestinian sites, namely, scarabs. Scarabs have traditionally been used in Palestinian archaeology for chronological purposes, but they have hardly even been examined in terms of the geographical distribution of individual types.
The Evidence of the Hyksos Royal-Name Scarabs
The evidence we are looking for comes primarily from the scarabs, inscribed with the names of Hyksos rulers, that have been found on Levantine sites. The scarabs and sealings of those rulers which have such a provenience are listed in fig. 2, and the geographical distribution of these objects is shown in fig. 3. (A detailed analysis of these items will appear in Weinstein [in preparation].) In addition to the 38 entries in fig. 2, a scarab from Tomb 551 at Tell el-Farcah (South); Petrie 1930: pi. 7:11; Williams 1977: fig. 15:7 should be noted. The cartouche on this scarab contains the otherwise unattested name Mic-nb-rc and is preceded by the royal epithet "Son of Re. "It is conceivable that Mic-nb-rc is simply a corrupt version of the well-known Hyksos prenomen Afíc-íb-rc, since it would be easy for a careless craftsman to confuse the Egyptian hieroglyphs ib and nb. However, it is also possible that Mic-nb-rc is the name of an otherwise unknown Hyksos ruler or one of the innumerable, meaningless, pseudo-royal names that were so popular on scarabs in Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period and in Palestine in the contemporaneous MB IIB-C period.
At least 30 of the 38 objects noted in fig. 2 derive either from sites that appear to have been destroyed at the end of the MB IIC period or from nearby sites; these include Jericho, Lachish, Tell el-cAjjul, Tell Beit Mirsim, Tell el-Farcah (South), Tell Halif, and Tell Jemmeh. Tell el-cAjjul has the largest total number of Hyksos royal-name scarabs (18). It also has the largest number of individual Hyksos rulers named on its scarabs of any place in Palestine—6 (cm, Shc-n-rc, Miz-ib-rc, ci-wsr-rc, and CB-htp-rc), or 5 if MlQ-ib-rc is the same person as SSi (cf. Hayes 1959: 5). If the evidence provided by these scarabs can be considered a guide to the relative importance of these sites in the MB IIC period, then it seems quite probable that Tell el-cAjjfll was the principal Hyksos city in Palestine, or at least the site of the Hyksos base of operations against Egypt. This is additional evidence for supposing that Tell el-cAjjul is ancient Sharuhen, and assuming that such an identification is correct, it explains why Sharuhen is singled out for attention in the autobiography of Ahmose Son of Abana.
Among the 8 remaining royal-name scarabs, 3 come from Gezer, and there is 1 each from Amman, Tell es-Safi, Barqai (near Tell es-Asawir), Shik-mona, and Tell el-cAmr. The Tell el-cAmr piece is significant because it is the only Hyksos royal-name scarab from the entire Plain of Esdraelon. Most interesting is the fact that Hyksos royal-name scarabs and sealings have not been discovered at sites in the Galilee, the Huleh Valley, Lebanon, or Syria. (Olga Tufnell has kindly informed the author, in a letter dated 14 December 1979, that she is unaware of any such items among the unpublished scarabs from Lebanon and Syria.)
Incidentally, scarabs inscribed with the names and title of officials of the Hyksos period cannot be considered primary evidence in this matter because of the difficulty in identifying which of these officials served Hyksos rulers and which served contemporary Egyptian rulers. It is worth pointing out, however, that among the approximately three dozen name-and-title seals found in MB IIB-C contexts (Giveon 1974; 1976), the great majority derive from the same areas of Palestine as the royal-name scarabs. Sites that have produced such seals include Tell el-cAjjul, Tell el-Farcah (South), Lachish, Jericho, and cAin es-Samiya. Private name-and-title scarabs are also known from Gezer, Acco, Tell Deir cAlla, Megiddo, Acco, and Yavneh Yam; however, most of these scarabs
Provenience
Royal Name References
1. Amman	M?c-í6-rc	Ward (1966: 12, pl. 20: J. 9386).
2. Kibbutz Barqai	šši	Gophna and Sussman (1969: 10, fig. 10:1).
(near Tell el-		
Asawir)		
3.. Gezer	Hyln	Macalister (1912: II, 316:85; III, pl. 204b:16)
		Martin (1971: no. 1181a).
4. Gezer	Šši	Macalister (1908: 289, pl. 4:17).
5. Gezer	cnt	Giveon (1974: 223, no. 6).
6. Jericho	Šši	Kenyon (1965: 583, 647, fig. 301:2).
7. Jericho	Šwb (?)	Kenyon (1965: 585, 654, fig. 303:13).
		Ward (1976: fig. 2:65).
8. Jericho	cnt	Kenyon (1965: 631, fig. 295:11).
9. Lachish	Šši	Tufnell et al. (1958: 118, pl. 34:140).
10. Lachish	Šši	Tufnell et al. (1958: 122, pl. 38:267).
11. Lachish	clppí	Tufnell et al. (1958: 113, pl. 30:7).
12. Lachish	cl-htp-rc	Tufnell et al. (1958: 118, pl. 32:139).
13. Shikmona	Vkbhr	Ward (1976: fig. 1:8); presumably the same sc
		Giveon (1974: 223, no. 5).
14. Tell Beit Mirsim	Ykbmw	Albright (1938b: pl. 29:2).
		Rowe (1936: no. 203).
		Ward (1976: fig. 1:12).
15. Tell el-cAjjul	rm	Petrie (1933: pl. 3:106).
		Ward (1976: fig. 2:4).
16. Tell el-cAjjul	cm	Petrie (1931: pl. 14:144).
		Ward (1976: fig. 2:45).
17. Tell el-cAjjul	Shc-n-rc	Petrie (1933: pl. 3:92).
18. Tell el-cAjjul	Shc-n-rc	Petrie, Mackay, and Murray (1952: pl. 9:8).
19. Tell el-cAjjul	ShQ-n-rc	Petrie, Mackay, and Murray (1952: pl. 9:9).
20. Tell el-cAjjul	Šši	Petrie (1933: pl. 3:9).
		Rowe (1936: no. 206).
21. Tell el-cAjjul	Šši	Petrie (1934: pl. 5:17).
		Rowe (1936: no. 205).
22. Tell el-cAjjul	Šši	Petrie (1934: pl. 7:215).
		Rowe (1936: no. 207).
23. Tell el-cAjjul	Šši	Petrie (1934: pl. 9:274).
24. Tell el-cAjjul	Šši	Petrie, Mackay, and Murray (1952: pl. 9:5).
25. Tell el-cAjjul	Šši	Petrie, Mackay, and Murray (1952: pl. 9:6).
26. Tell el-cAjjul	MlQ-ib-rc	Petrie (1934: pl. 7:231).
		Rowe (1936: no. 208).
27. Tell el-cAjjul	MiQ-\b-ť	Petrie, Mackay, and Murray (1952: pl. 9:7).
28. Tell el-cAjjul	c l-wsr-rc	Petrie (1931: pl. 13:2).
29. Tell el-cAjjfll	c š-wsr-rc	Petrie (1931: pl. 13:44).
30. Tell el-cAjjul	ci-wsr-rc	Petrie (1931: pl. 14:143).
31. Tell el-cAjjul	cš-wsr-rc	Petrie (1932: pl. 7:77).
32. Tell el-cAjjul	cl-htp-rz	Petrie (1934: pl. 5:26).
		Rowe (1936: no. 166).
33. Tell el-cAmr	Šši	Giveon (1974: 222, no. 2).
34. Tell el-Farcah	Mic-ib-rc	Petrie (1930: pl. 7:29).
(South)		Williams (1977: 23, fig. 10:2).
35. Tell el-Farcah	Shc-n-rc	Macdonald, Starkey, and Harding (1932, pl.
36. Tell es-Safi	Swsr-n-rc	Giveon (1965a).
37. Tell Halif	M3c-/fe-rc	Giveon (1974: 223, no. 4).
38. Tell Jemmeh	Siř	Petrie (1928: pl. 17:3).
Rowe (1936: no. 204). Fig. 2. Hyksos Royal-Names Scarabs and Sealings Found in Palestine.
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come from later or unknown contexts. (It could be argued that the cAin es-Samiya scarabs should be included with those from unknown contexts, since they do not come from controlled excavations, but from illicit digging in the MB II cemetery.) Until such time as it is possible to distinguish those officals who worked in the Hyksos administration from those who served the Egyptian rulers, little can be said about the significance of the individual scarabs. However, the geographical distribution of this scarab group in its entirety suggests that the cities of southern and inland Palestine had the closest relations with Egypt in MB IIB-C. Such a situation agrees well with the evidence obtained from the Hyksos royal-name scarabs.
Summary
Only one Hyksos royal-name scarab and but a handful of contemporary private name-and-title
Fig. 3. Distribution Map of Hyksos Royal-Name Scarabs and Sealings in Palestine.
scarabs have been found north of the Carmel Ridge, while the majority of these two groups of scarabs come from sites in the same geographical arc as the sites that were destroyed so violently and deserted at the end of the Middle Bronze Age or the very beginning of the Late Bronze Age. Such a situation seems hard to explain solely on the basis of coincidence or the accidents of archaeological investigation. It is therefore proposed that the principal centers of Hyksos power in Palestine were situated in the southern and inland regions of Palestine, certainly south of the Plain of Esdraelon. The Hyksos rulers who conquered Egypt, and whose homeland has at various times been placed in so many different areas of Western Asia, were simply southern and inland Palestinian princes, and as such they were the objects of the military efforts of Ahmose, directed against their cities.
That only the Hyksos heartland was thoroughly destroyed at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty, while the majority of the western sites were ignored and most northern sites suffered limited destructions and only temporary breaks in occupation, seems to vitiate the position of those who believe that the Egyptians were already imperialistically motivated at the time of their initial drive into Palestine. Instead, the archaeological evidence supports Redford's contention about the non-imperialist attitude that Egypt held toward Syria-Palestine at this time. The complete destruction of the hated Hyksos princes and their cities was the primary goal of Ahmose's one or more campaigns into Palestine. Whether this goal was achieved within Ahmose's reign cannot, of course, be determined with the evidence at hand. Perhaps the remnants of Hyksos power were finished off by Amenhotep I or even Thutmose I; to these kings might be ascribed the problematic destruction at Beth-zur, the second destruction at Shechem, and perhaps a few other destructions in southern and inland Palestine.
As for the cities located from the Via Maris west to the Mediterranean coast, in the Plain of Esdraelon, and the Huleh Valley, Ahmose may have destroyed some of these places, particularly those up in the north, but most of the western cities were probably destroyed by his successors. In any event, there is little reason at present to connect these cities with the Hyksos princes who had conquered and occupied Egypt.
The Megiddo Campaign of Thutmose III The key event in the building of the Egyptian
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THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE IN PALESTINE
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empire in Palestine was Thutmose Ill's expedition to Megiddo in 1483-82 B.C. This campaign was directed against the cities of western Palestine, the Plain of Esdraelon, and territories farther north and east, whose princes had banded together under the leadership of the princes of Kadesh and Megiddo to make a united stand against the Egyptian king. It is one of the best documented campaigns in Egyptian history, with the primary sources of information being the Annals of Thutmose III and the extensive topographical lists at Karnak.
Thutmose Ill's topographical list of Syro-Palestinian toponyms—of which two extant copies contain 119 names, while a third copy has these 119 names plus some 231 more—has been discussed many times, with several different interpretations being offered regarding the organization and significance of the toponyms included in it. Although questions have often been raised about the accuracy and historical reliability of Egyptian topographical lists, the Thutmose III list appears to be an honest compilation of those places that were either conquered by the king or provided troops or other aid to the defenders of Megiddo. It should therefore not be viewed either as a heavily padded list of destroyed cities or a roster of places visited by the Egyptian army during the course of the Megiddo campaign. The following four pieces of archaeological and inscriptional evidence can be presented in support of this interpretation.
1. Of the approximately 65-70 names on the topographical list that have been plausibly identified (Aharoni 1967: 147-51; Helck 1971: 12, 126-32), not a single site anywhere in Palestine that had been destroyed and abandoned as the result of campaigns by earlier 18th-Dynasty kings is mentioned. One of the most striking aspects of this list is that it apparently does not record any sites in south-central Palestine, in the eastern Shephelah, in the hill country, or in the southern half of the Jordan Valley. These were, of course, the areas already badly devastated at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty, so there would have been no need for Thutmose III to go over this territory again. Thus, the king did not build up his topographical list with the names of irrelevant cities or regions, and he did not take credit for destroying cities already conquered by his predecessors and subsequently abandoned.
2. The superscriptions for one of the two short lists as well as the long list state only that the various foreign lands were "shut up in the town of the
wretched Megiddo" (Urk. IV: 780, 4-5, 16-17; ANET: 242, headings [a] and [c]). They do not assert that Thutmose III actually attacked each of these places individually, nor is such a claim ever made in the Annals. As for the superscription to the second short list, it merely speaks of the lands "which his majesty carried off as living prisoners" (Urk. IV: 780, 10-11; ANET: 242: heading [b]). Thus, it is apparent that Megiddo was the gathering point for the Asiatic princes and their forces, and there was no reason for Thutmose III to march the Egyptian army all over Palestine and southern Syria to win a great victory. Moreover, since the prince of Kadesh had entered into Megiddo to lead the Asiatic forces (Urk. IV: 649, 5-12; ANET: 235), the town of Kadesh is logically placed first in the topographical list, with Megiddo coming second.
3. Shea (1979: 5) has observed that none of Thutmose Ill's inscriptions ever state that the city of Megiddo itself was destroyed. The Gebel Barkal stela of this king reports that the princes eventually came out of Megiddo, swore allegiance to the king, and were then allowed to return home to their cities (Reisner and Reisner 1933: 32-33; ANET: 238). Despite Kenyon's assertion (1973a: 534) that "the destruction by Tuthmosis III must have been extremely severe," there is in fact no obvious destruction level at Megiddo that can be assigned to the early 15th century B.C. Whatever the decline in population and wealth at Megiddo following its capture by Thutmose III, the archaeological and textual data are in good agreement that Megiddo was not physically destroyed by the Egyptian army in 1482 B.C.
4. Thutmose III states in his Annals that "the capturing of Megiddo is the capturing of a thousand towns" (Urk. IV: 660, 8; ANET: 237). Since, in effect, the defeat of the combined enemy forces at Megiddo resulted in the king's effectively taking possession of all of the towns opposing him (or at least this is how Thutmose III seems to have looked at the situation), there was no need for him to attack every one of these towns individually. This accords well with the available archaeological data; the only Palestinian city mentioned in the topographical list that at the present time seems to provide clear evidence of a destruction in the early 15th century is Tacanach (Lapp 1969: 5, 24-26). Other identifiable cities in the topographical list that may have been destroyed at this time include Jaffa (cf. Kaplan 1972: 77-78), Aphek, and Acco (M. Dothan 1976: 17), though, as noted above, Acco may well have been destroyed earlier in LB I.
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A break in occupation of unknown duration may also have occurred at Hazor (Yadin 1972: 32; Kenyon 1973a: 536), but whether this break was due to the campaign of Thutmose III or to his successor, Amenhotep II (below), remains to be determined.
In summary, the topographical list of Thutmose III appears to be a careful and reliable historical record, but certainly not one that can be used indiscriminately to date every destruction in Palestine that is ascribed to the LB IA period.
II. Political and Economic Domination LB IB
The LB IB period—here equated somewhat arbitrarily with the period from the battle of Megiddo (1482 B.C.) to the end of the reign of Thutmose IV (1386 B.C.)—marks the beginning of a new phase in the history of Egyptian-Palestinian relations. Thutmose III followed up on his victories in Western Asia by establishing a number of military strongholds and administrative centers in Palestine and southern Syria (Alt 1950; Ahituv 1978: 94-95), and it was apparently this king who organized the conquered territories into three large administrative districts whose headquarters were at Gaza, Sumur, and Kumidi. However, while Egyptian control of its Levantine provinces in LB IB occasionally required the use of military force, the Egyptian empire in late LB IB and most of LB IIA was probably based more on political and economic controls, with the limited use of overwhelming military force being sufficient to keep the Palestinian princes in line.
A supposed characteristic of Palestine in the LB IB period is an occupational gap, evidenced by a ceramic break at many sites in the country, the result of the campaigns of Thutmose III and his predecessors. In 1961, Wright (91, 94) could only name Fosse Temple I at Lachish and Stratum IVa at Beth-shemesh as containing deposits illustrative of this period. In more recent years, LB IB materials have been found at such sites as Gezer, Tacanach, Tell Zeror, Tell Halif, and Shechem. Nonetheless, the feeling that few archaeological remains in Palestine can be ascribed to LB IB has had the unfortunate effect of dissuading scholars from studying this period. The only major survey of 15th-century Palestinian archaeology has been written by Kenyon (1973a), and her paper concentrates on the stratigraphic remains while all but ignoring the textual sources needed to interpret these archaeo-
logical materials. Even the existence of LB IB as a separate phase of the LB I period has been called into question, with many Israeli archaeologists preferring to lump the entire era of ca. 1550-1400 B.C. into one large period labelled simply "LB I." On the other hand, Tufnell (Tufnell et al. 1958: 65-67) has thought it more appropriate to combine the traditional LB IB period with the first part of LB IIA to form a period that she labels "LB II" and dates to ca. 1450-1350 B.C. Since the traditional date of ca. 1400 B.C. for the transition from LB IB to LB IIA is really an artificial creation marked by no outstanding stratigraphic, ceramic, or historical break, more attention should be given to Tufnell's chronological scheme.
Although the idea of an almost countrywide population gap has always been quite unacceptable from the standpoint of the Egyptian and cuneiform sources, until recently the archaeological data have been insufficient to dispell the notion that Palestine was a devastated country with a much reduced population in LB IB. As a consequence, scholarly attention has not been paid to the mounting evidence that the supposed LB IB population gap was largely a regional phenomenon covering most of the hill country and the south, while many towns along the Via Maris, on the coast, in the Sharon, and in the northern areas of the country were clearly occupied at this time and even had military, diplomatic, and commercial contacts with Egypt.
The inscriptional evidence for this occupation and for connections with Egypt is considerable. First to be considered will be those texts which are of a diplomatic or other official nature involving Egypt. These include the Tacanach letters, a letter found at Gezer, and Papyrus Hermitage 1116A. Of the 13 letters from Tacanach, two are of special importance for Egyptian relations (Malamat 1961: 218-27). Letter no. 6 was addressed to the prince of Tacanach by an individual named Amenhotep, who had at some point passed through the town of Gaza and was now writing to the prince to reproach him for not having appeared before this Egyptian during his stop there. Letter no. 5, whose author and recipient are the same as in no. 6, contains an order for the prince of Tacanach to send troops and tribute to Amenhotep at Megiddo the following day. Albright (1944: 27 and n. 101) suggested that the sender of these two letters was the royal prince who would later ascend to the throne as Amenhotep II. A related suggestion by Rainey (1973: 73-74) that Amenhotep II wrote these two letters during the course of an alleged "year 3" campaign
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against the princes of Takhsy, undertaken while Amenhotep II and Thutmose III were coregents, is now untenable, since it has been shown (Murnane 1977: 44-48) that there was no campaign in this year of the king's reign. Finally, Malamat( 1961:218-27) has proposed that the Amenhotep of these two letters is the king himself and that the letters were written in the course of his campaign against various Palestinian cities in the 9th year of his reign. Other Palestinian cities mentioned in the Tacanach letters, though not in connection with Egyptian activities, include Rehob, Gurra, and Rubute; the first two sites are located in the Plain of Esdraelon (Aharoni 1967: 157), while the location of the third site is uncertain (Aharoni 1969: 137, n. 2; Albright 1944: 19, n. 36).
The cuneiform tablet from Gezer contains a letter apparently written to the prince of that city by an Egyptian whose name is not preserved, but who is evidently either an important Egyptian official or the king himself (probably Amenhotep II or Thutmose IV: Albright 1943; Malamat 1961: 228-31). As in Tacanach letter no. 6, so here, too, the Egyptian chides the Asiatic ruler for not appearing before him, this time at a place called Kiddim(mu), probably biblical Gittaim, near Gezer (Mazar 1954).
Papyrus Hermitage 1116A (Golenischeff 1913) is a document of considerable importance for the archaeology and history of Palestine in the LB IB period. Its date of composition is probably the 19th or 20th year of the reign of Amenhotep II (Helck 1963: 620; Posener 1962: 292). On the verso of this papyrus are two very similar lists that record the presentation by Egyptian officials of grain and beer to the envoys of various towns in Djahy (Epstein 1963; Amir 1963). The eleven toponyms mentioned in these lists include at least seven that can be placed in northern Palestine: Megiddo, Kinnereth, Ach-shaph, Shimron, Tacanach, Mishal, and Hazor. Another town, Ashkelon, is along the southern coast. Still another name on the list is Sharon ([S]rn), here to be taken as a political entity rather than as the name of a particular town (Gorg 1975). The two remaining names—Tnn and Htm (or Httm)—cannot be identified. In a different part of the text (vs line 2), reference is made to the issuing of provisions to the envoy from Lachish.
The implication to be drawn from this papyrus is clear: the towns mentioned here must have been occupied at the time this document was written. Although it may well be true that no LB IB remains have yet been found (or at least identified) on the
/e//s at Hazor, Megiddo, and Lachish, one cannot get around the fact that envoys from these three major cities were in Thebes in ca. 1433 B.C. (based on the Wente-Van Siclen dating of Amenhotep II to 1453-1419 B.C.). Thus, there could not have been an extended occupational gap at Hazor and Megiddo covering the 2nd half of the 15th century B.C. (contrary to the conclusions reached by Kenyon [1973a: 534, 536], for example). As for Lachish, while LB IB materials still have not been isolated here other than in association with Fosse Temple I at the foot of the tell (Ussishkin 1978:91), there was probably also an occupation of the mound itself in this period.
Both Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV undertook military operations in Palestine, and the records of their achievements provide us with the names of additional towns for the LB IB period. Amenhotep II campaigned in the Levant in the 7th and 9th years of his reign (Edel 1953; A NET: 245-47). The first campaign, which was directed against various towns in western Syria, included the capture of a messenger of the ruler of Naharin in the Plain of Sharon. Another toponym mentioned in conjunction with this campaign is Shamash-Edom. Although this town has often been located in Syria (e.g., Helck 1971: 131; Edel 1953: 147), Aharoni (1960: 177-81) has offered good reasons for placing it at Qurn-Hattin in the Galilee. A topographical list at Karnak that is probably to be associated with this campaign mentions Hazor (Simons 1937:129). The year 9 campaign was directed specifically against various towns in the Sharon and the Plain of Esdraelon (Aharoni 1960: 181-83; 1967: 154-56; Yeivin 1967: 125-28). Towns captured or destroyed by the king in the Sharon include Aphek, Socho, Yehem, Mepesen, Khettjen, Keren, and Migdol-yene(t). In the Lower Galilee, Anaharath was conquered, following which Amenhotep II had the ruler of Geba-Shemen brought before him during a stop perhaps in the vicinity of Megiddo (Aharoni 1960: 182). (For the identification of Geba-Shemen with Tell el-cAmr, see Rainey 1973: 74-75).
The number and extent of Thutmose IV's campaigns in Western Asia are uncertain. Schul-man (1979: 188-89 and n. 5) feels that there is evidence for only a single campaign in the Levant during his reign, while Giveon (1969) believes that this king conducted a more active military policy in the region than is usually assumed. In any event, the only specific reference to a Palestinian town in the inscriptions of this king occurs on a stela from
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western Thebes, where Thutmose IV speaks of "the settlement of the fortification of Mn-hprw-rc with Kharu whom his majesty captured in the city of Gezer" (Urk. IV: 1556, 10-11; ANET: 248).
Since the various textual sources discussed above include the names of approximately two dozen towns in northern and western Palestine, the likelihood of a major occupation gap in these regions during the LB IB period appears small. Moreover, as Ahituv (1978: 103) has pointed out, the total number of Asiatics sent to Egypt as booty or tribute over a 20-year span (years 23-42) in the reign of Thutmose III amounted to only about 5,000 adults and children, so one cannot accuse this king of having depopulated the country in the manner of the later Assyrians and Babylonians. As for the enormous total of 101,128 Asiatic captives recorded in the account of Amenhotep H's year-9 campaign, this figure is admittedly inexplicable. However, there seems to be no way of equating the Amenhotep II and Thutmose III records of Asiatic captives with the occupation gaps identified so far in Palestine for one simple reason: most of the occupation gaps occur at sites in the hill country and extreme south, while both Thutmose III and Amenhotep II concentrated their military efforts on the cities of the Via Maris, Sharon, northern Palestine, and Syria.
An interesting feature of the Egyptian empire in Palestine in LB IB is the lack of substantial archaeological monuments left by Egyptian military and administrative personnel stationed in the country. This is especially significant when one considers the extraordinary number of such objects left by the Egyptians during the LB IIB and Iron IA periods (below). The only notable Egyptian monument in Palestine that can be associated with the LB IB period is a fragment of a royal stela which was found at Tell el-cOreimeh (Albright and Rowe 1928; Urk. IV: 1345, 10-15; Aharoni 1967: 155-56). The inscription on this peice mentions a victory over some foreigners from Mitanni, and, while no royal name appears here, a dating of this monument to the reign of either Thutmose III or Amenhotep II seems quite acceptable.
In addition to this item, several others have at one time or another been asigned to the LB IB period. Two are small stela fragments from Beth-shan. The first was discovered reused in the basilica and was thought to belong to a royal stela from the period of Thutmose III or Amenhotep II (Rowe 1930: 34, fig. 8; 1936: xxvi; James 1966: 34-35). The second fragment, thought to be perhaps part of the
same stela, was found under the floor of the northern temple in Lower Level V (Rowe 1930: 36, pi. 49:2; 1936: xxxvi; 1940: xi, 33, 71, pi. 28:21; James 1966: 34). Neither fragment, however, seems assignable to a 15th-century Egyptian presence at Beth-shan. At this point, it is probably better to consider these items as part of the evidence for Ramesside activity at this site (below).
An Egyptian architectural element that has been ascribed to the LB IB period is a stone block from the Hathor temple at Timna (Rothenberg 1972: pi. 76). The royal name inscribed on this block is unclear in the published pnotograph; Kitchen (1976) has proposed reading the name as Dhwty-ms, "Thutmose." There is no logical reason, however, for a block inscribed with the nomen of a Thutmoside king to appear in an otherwise purely Ramesside period temple, and according to a recent comment by Schulman (Leclant 1979: 402-3), the royal name here is in fact that of a Ramesside king.
While there is a paucity of large Egyptian objects in Palestine that can be associated with the LB IB period—and nothing in the way of statuary, buildings, major architectural elements, and rock inscriptions, all of which occur later on in 13th- and early 12th-century b.c. contexts—such a situation should not be interpreted as reflecting a virtual absence of Egyptian bureaucrats and military officers in Palestine in this period. The references in the textual sources to Egyptian activity in Palestine from the reign of Thutmose III on would not support such a conclusion. It would not be unfair, however, to say that the number of Egyptians permanently stationed in the southern Levant was considerably smaller in LB IB than it would become later on in LB IIB. Such an observation receives additional support from the fact that the amount of Egyptian pottery in 15th-century Palestinian contexts is negligible, while very large quantities of such pottery occur in LB IIB-Iron IA deposits (below). Perhaps the relatively small number of Egyptians permanently stationed in Palestine was due to a deliberate political and military policy established by the pharaohs of the 15th century as a reaction to the military weakness of the Palestinian princes of the era. In any event, in the LB IB period (and probably also in the LB IIA period) Egypt appears to have controlled Palestine through a limited number of garrisons and administrative centers, as well as an occasional show of overwhelming military force; only starting in the 13th century b.c. was a large permanent occupation of the country deemed necessary.
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In summary, the massive destructions and long occupation gaps in the hill country and southern regions that resulted from the campaigns of Ahmose and perhaps his successors were not repeated in the 15th century with the campaigns of Thutmose III, Amenhotop II, and Thutmose IV. Although the cities attacked by these later kings may well have been seriously weakened economically, politically, and militarily, and their populations reduced, most were not totally abandoned, at least for any significant length of time. It was in the best interests of the 15th-century kings to allow these cities along the Via Maris, the Mediterranean coast, and in the north, to survive. As numerous documents of New Kingdom date—especially the Amarna letters—make clear, these cities were the principal suppliers of food and other materials required by the colonial administration and Egyptian military forces in Palestine, and they also controlled the strategic routes up to Syria (Ahituv 1978). Obviously, on some occasions the Egyptians found it necessary to destroy completely one or more towns that had revolted against the king, if only to set an example for any Palestinian princes who might be wavering in their loyalty to the king. But in general the reign of Thutmose III should be viewed as marking a shift in Egyptian military policy, and this shift had a very beneficial effect upon the stability and economic condition of the Egyptian empire in Palestine. As a result of the new policy, the northern and westernmost areas survived much better than would have been the case if the cities in these regions had been treated as the southern and inland cities had been earlier. Most of the cities in the latter regions do not seem to have recovered from their traumatic experience until the beginning of the LB II period.
LB IIA
The LB IIA period is approximately contemporary with the reigns of the Egyptian kings Amenhotep III, Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, Ay, and Haremhab, whose combined rulerships occupied the period from 1386-1293 B.C. The era of Amenhotep III (1386-1349 B.C.) was a peaceful one for the empire, with no Egyptian military campaigns reported anywhere in the Levant. The Amarna letters from the end of Amenhotep Ill's reign and that of his son Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten make it clear that only a limited number of garrisons, staffed with small numbers of Egyptian and Nubian troops, existed in
Palestine at this time. These garrisons functioned largely to halt intercity disputes, to keep troublesome groups such as the cApiru under control, and to facilitate the movement of trade, tribute, and communications. Under this imposed pax Aegyptiaca, Palestine began to grow and prosper once again. Trade with Cyprus and Egypt expanded, while that with the Mycenaean world became significant for the first time. The LB IIA period may generally be seen as one in which Palestine, although under an Egyptian domination that was neither deliberately benevolent nor consistently effective, had a flourishing and relatively stable economy for the only time in the entire Late Bronze Age.
One of the most debated topics of LB history and archaeology is whether Egyptian rule in the Levant collapsed, or at least was seriously weakened, through the neglect of foreign policy matters by the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten (1350-1334 B.C.). An enormous body of literature exists on the reign of this curious individual, and many scholars have tended to assume—usually on the basis of the Amarna letters alone—that there was at the very least a weakening of Egyptian control in the Levant during the Amarna period.
Several attempts have been made in recent years to improve Akhenaten's image in the field of foreign affairs. According to Several (1972), the Amarna letters document four major problems that the Egyptians faced in Palestine in this period: intercity disputes, troubles with the cApiru, bureaucratic neglect and corruption, and interruptions to trade and communications. Several maintains that the first three problems are not unique to the Amarna letters, but are mentioned frequently in other Near Eastern sources. As for the fourth problem, though this type of difficulty is apparently not paralleled elsewhere, it could not have had too deleterious an effect on the Egyptian empire in Palestine since, despite occasional disruptions, communications and foreign commerce were apparently sustained in the region throughout the LB IIA period. Thus, whatever difficulties Egypt may have had in the Levant during the Amarna period, the Amarna letters do not support a theory of imperial decline in Palestine.
Schulman (1964; 1978; 1979: 178 and n. 6) has argued that Egypt's colonial officials and military garrisons were not inactive in the Levant at this time and that at the very least Akhenaten was planning a military campaign in this area shortly before his death. The statement in Tutankhamun's
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restoration stela that "if troops were sent to Djahy to extend the boundaries of Egypt, no success came of their efforts "(Urk. IV:2027,13-14) is interpreted by Schulman (1978: 45) "as additional evidence of Egyptian campaigning in Western Asia during the reign of Akhenaten, and possibly can be connected with either the Egyptian response to the Hittite raids in the Amka or with the subsequent Egyptian counterattack on Kadesh." A campaign in Syria against the Hittites, among others, is claimed for the reign of Tutankhamun on the basis of several indecisive, though suggestive, pieces of evidence (e.g., the representations of Asiatics in the Mem-phite tomb of Haremhab); such a campaign would have been led by General Haremhab (below).
A third proposal, that made by Giles (1972: 183-84, 200-2), is that only the northernmost part of Egypt's Levantine empire was lost to the Hittites during the Amarna period, while the rest of the empire remained reasonably intact. He interprets the Amarna letters as reflecting the normal state of affairs in the Late Bronze Age, with Egyptian foreign policy encouraging local princes to wrangle among themselves so that only a minimal number of troops would be required to keep the Asiatics in line. The goal of this strategy was to protect the trade routes and to ensure the continuous acquisition of tribute from princes who were too busy quarreling among themselves to unite against Egyptian domination. This divide-and-conquer theory, supported at least in part by Aldred (1975: 82, 85), has been criticized by Several (1972:129) on grounds that a deliberately divisive plan could have disastrous consequences for the Egyptians if things did not go just right.
Excavations in Israel and Jordan have failed to provide decisive evidence regarding the effect of Akhenaten's reign on the Egyptian empire in Palestine. While it is difficult to believe that Egyptian control in this area remained completely unaffected by the historical events surrounding the Amarna era, it must be admitted that no archaeological data exist to substantiate a theory of imperial collapse or even significant decline at this time in Palestine proper. Nevertheless, some clues pointing to Egyptian difficulties in its Asiatic affairs do exist, but only in regard to the regions around Palestine.
The first indication of problems in the Amarna period comes from western Sinai. At Serabit el-Khadim there is a nearly complete sequence of Egyptian royal names  from Ahmose at the
beginning of the 18th Dynasty to Ramesses VI toward the end of the New Kingdom (Gardiner, Peet, and Černý 1955: 149-92). Only two breaks exist in the royal record during this entire span of over 400 years. The first time is in the late 18th Dynasty, when none of the pharaohs from Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten to Haremhab (i.e., from 1350-1293 B.C.) is mentioned. The second interruption is in the troubled latter part of the 19th Dynasty, when the names of Amenmesse and his second successor, Siptah, are both missing at Serabit el-Khadim. Since turquoise was highly prized by the Egyptians for jewelry, inlays, and many other small items throughout the New Kingdom, these two periods of Egyptian absence from Serabit el-Khadim—particularly the half-century gap in the late 18th Dynasty—seem reasonably attributable to an inability by the Egyptians to mount and sustain royal expeditions to western Sinai.
Problems also erupted for the Egyptians in Syria during the Amarna period. Whether or not it was the result of Akhenaten's supposed neglect of foreign affairs, large areas of northern and western Syria were lost to the Hittites and their allies during the reign of this king and his successor Smenkhkare (Goetze 1975:7-20; Aldred 1975:83-84). Egypt's loss of military control, or at least of significant political and economic influence, along the Syrian coast may have had very negative repercussions for Egypt's foreign trade. Merrillees (1968: 202) has pointed" out that the end of the Amarna period marked the termination of Cypriot ceramic imports in Egypt, and the end of this Cypriot trade may have been the result of Egypt's loss of access to Syrian port cities such as Ugarit. This collapse of Cypriot trade with Egypt probably had a major impact on Cypriot-Palestinian trade, since, "rather than an end to import, a dramatic influx of Late Cypriote pottery to Palestine, perhaps a boom in trade, occurred during the Amarna Age" (Gittlen 1977: 519). It may be suggested that with the Egyptian market no longer open to her goods, the Cypriot trade that had formerly gone to Egypt now shifted over to Palestine after Akhenaten's death and continued at an expanded rate until its decline at the end of the LB IIA period. However, it remains unclear why the Egyptians could not have continued to obtain Cypriot imports indirectly through the ports of Palestine even if the Syrian coastal facilities were no longer open to them, particularly since Egyptian objects continued to reach Cyprus down into the 13th century.
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An attempt was evidently made in the period from Tutahkhamun to Haremhab to recover some of the Syrian territory lost during the Amarna era. An inscription in the Memphite tomb of Haremhab, which dates to the period before Haremhab became king, refers to the future pharaoh as being "at the feet of his lord on the battle-field on this day of slaughtering Asiatics" (Gardiner 1953: 4). In addition to this possible reference to an Asiatic campaign, there is some evidence for Haremhab having undertaken military actions specifically against the Hittites during the Amarna period (Schulman 1965; 1978: 45-46). In this regard, there must be noted a problematic inscription on a stone bowl, which records a Syrian campaign in year 16 of Haremhab that went inland from By bios as far as Carchemish (Redford 1973). Too much should not be made of this inscription; the present whereabouts of the bowl is unknown, and doubts have been cast on the authenticity of its inscription (Wente and Van Siclen 1976: 231, n. 82; Schulman 1978: 47, n. 8). Even if it occurred, the date and significance of this Syrian campaign are presently uncertain. Because of potential difficulties caused by this text for Egyptian-Hittite relative chronology if the campaign in question should have occurred during Haremhab's reign, Schulman (1978: 46) has suggested that the "year 16" in this inscription could refer to an event that took place in the reign of Akhenaten while Haremhab was still a military officer. According to this reconstruction, Haremhab would have claimed this campaign undertaken in Akhenaten's reign as his own achievement as part of the late-18th-Dynasty effort to eradicate the memory of the heretic pharaoh.
Present evidence indicates that the Palestinian segment of Egypt's West Asiatic empire stayed relatively intact during the Amarna period. The textual sources reveal that Egypt did have problems with some of the local Palestinain princes, with the cApiru, and with various corrupt colonial officials; it did sustain major losses in its territorial possessions in Syria, and it may have been unable to carry out mining operations in western Sinai. However, it is still far from certain that such difficulties seriously impaired Egypt's ability to exercise effective control in Palestine. Since the relevant materials in the Amarna letters are subject to differing interpretations, it would be convenient if there were some class of archaeological material whose absence at a particular site could be used as a guidepost for a break in Egyptian authority. Unfortunately, no such objects have yet been
identified, and not even scarabs containing the names of pharaohs of the Amarna period are useful for this purpose. Because the scarab beetle was associated in Egyptian religion with one of the many deities proscribed by Akhenaten, scarabs inscribed with the names of the kings of the Amarna era were produced in much smaller quantities than were the scarabs of earlier and later pharaohs; thus, there is almost no reason to expect that Palestinian sites would have such royal-name scarabs. Indeed, even the garrison town of Beth-shan did not produce a single scarab with the name of an 18th-Dynasty king after Amenhotep III (information based on examination of unpublished objects and field records from Beth-shan excavations in the University Museum, Philadelphia). Therefore, the absence of royal-name scarabs of this period from a particular Palestinian site cannot be considered as evidence either for an occupation gap or for determining whether the Egyptians had control of the site during the Amarna era.
III. Military Occupation
The third major phase in the history of the Egyptian empire in Palestine encompasses the 13th and early 12th centuries B.C., i.e., LB IIB and the very beginning of the Iron I period. In terms of Egyptian history, this period is contemporary with the 19th and early 20th Dynasties. In this period, both the nature and extent of Egyptian involvement in Palestine changed considerably. No longer were Egyptian interests satisfied merely by exploiting Palestine economically and politically at the smallest cost militarily. On the contrary, with the Hittites now pushing down from the north, Palestinian princes rising up against Egyptian rule in several areas of the country, and various nonurban groups (especially the Shasu and cApiru, and possibly even the people referred to as "Israel" in the Merneptah stela) growing increasingly restless, Egyptian military and administrative personnel moved into the region in large numbers. Military action against disloyal Palestinian cities and nonurban groups of individuals was required in the 19th Dynasty reigns of Sety I, Ramesses II, and Merneptah. Since these campaigns have been discussed and analyzed many times (e.g., Helck 1971: 189-224; Aharoni 1967: 164-73; Faulkner 1975: 218-21, 232-35), we need not detain ourselves here with the details of the individual campaigns. Instead we shall concentrate on a feature of Egyptian domination in Palestine in this phase that
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distinguished it from Egyptian control of the country since the very beginning of the Egyptian empire. Whereas in prior centuries Asiatic revolts had been suppressed by Egyptian troops who then either returned home or went back to one of a handful of garrisons situated at certain strategic points in the region, in the 13th and early 12th centuries B.C. the Egyptians stayed in Palestine in much larger numbers than ever before, and one can hardly doubt that Egyptian control in Palestine became more repressive than it had been in earlier times.
Evidence for this impressive Egyptian presence in Palestine is now available from a variety of archaeological and inscriptional sources in Palestine itself. Due to limitations of space, only some of the largest and more spectacular materials will be summarized here: Egyptian forts/administrative buildings/residencies; miscellaneous architectural elements; temples dedicated to Egyptian deities; and royal and private statuary, stelae, and rock inscriptions.
Egyptian Forts/Administrative Buildings/ Residencies
1. "Palace IV" at Tell el-cAjjul (Petrie 1932: 14, pi. 49; Albright 1938a: 357-59).
2. The "Residency" and adjoining building at Tell el-Farcah (South) (Petrie 1930:17-19, pi. 54; Macdonald, Starkey, and Harding 1932: 27-32, pi. 69).
3. The "Residency" buildings in Strata X-IX at Tell esh-Sharica (Oren and Netzer 1973a: 253; EAEHL 4:1062, 1065-66).
4. The "Citadel" in Strata VIII-VII at Tell Mor, perhaps followed by Egyptian use of the migdol in Strata VI-V (M. Dothan 1960: 124; EAEHL 3: 889-90, plan on 888).
5. The "Government House" at Aphek (Kochavi 1978: 14-15).
6. The migdol and adjoining residence in Level VII at Beth-shan (Rowe 1928: 1093-95, 1108; 1930:20, fig. 2).
7. Houses 1500 and 1700 in Level VI at Beth-shan (James 1966: 4-13).
The fortress known as "Palace IV" at Tell el-cAjjtil may have been the earliest of these buildings; although a precise date is not available for either its construction or demise, the possibility exists that this structure goes back to the end of the 18th Dynasty. The Tell el-Farcah (South), Tell esh-Sharica Stratum X, Tell Mor Strata VIII-VII, Aphek, and Beth-shan Level VII buildings were all 19th Dynasty constructions, while the Tell esh-Sharica Stratum IX and Beth-shan Level VI structures should be dated to the time of the early
20th Dynasty, as should perhaps also the possible Egyptian occupation of the migdol at Tell Mor.
The major buildings listed above, with the exception of the migdok, appear to have certain features in common: mud-brick construction (sometimes on stone foundations); thick exterior walls (up to ca. 2.5 m. thick); a square or rectangular shape with a length of ca. 20-27 m.; a single courtyard with rows of smaller rooms; and, in most cases, a staircase leading up to the roof or upper story. Functionally, three basic types of buildings were employed by the Egyptians: (1) the simple fortress, of which the Beth-shan and Tell Mor migdok are the only two examples; (2) the residence, with its courtyard and surrounding rooms, which is represented here by the two houses in Beth-shan Level VI and the "Residency" at Tell el-Farcah (South); and (3) a third type, with its courtyard along one side of the building and rows of long and short rooms occupying the rest of the structure except for connecting corridors. Examples of this third type include the buildings at Aphek, Tell Mor, and Stratum IX at Tell esh-Sharica, as well as possibly "Palace IV" at Tell el-cAjjul, the residence next to the migdol in Level VII at Beth-shan, and the smaller, adjoining structure at Tell el-Farcah (South). (The published materials for the latter three buildings are insufficient to classify them with any certainty.) No single function can be assigned to the buildings included in this third type; except for the smaller Tell el-Farcah (South) building, all probably served a defensive role in addition to having one or more other purposes. The cuneiform tablets associated with the Aphek building and the layout of its first floor—including a pair of long halls—suggest that at least the lowest floor of this multistoried structure was utilized for administrative and storage purposes. Until additional information is forthcoming on the Tell Mor building, little can be said about its usage. It is obviously unique in its use of external buttresses, which appear on all four sides. However, this architectural feature does not necessarily prove that the primary function of the Tell Mor building was a military one; in Egypt, buttressing occurs in architectural contexts other than just military ones. (Note the buttressing of the temenos wall for one of the temples at Amarna: Pendlebury et al. 1951:1, 92; II, pi. 16.) As for the Tell esh-Sharica Stratum IX building, the occurrence in rooms of this structure of animal bones, ritual vessels, and a series of eleven bowls and
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sherds inscribed in hieratic with texts apparently referring to taxes paid to the local fort or temple—as well as more animal bones, vessels of various types, and scarabs in two pits outside the building—has suggested to the excavator that this structure was multifunctional, being used for administrative and religious purposes as well as perhaps for defensive or residential reasons.
Miscellaneous Architectural Elements
1. Fragments of two blocks inscribed with the names of Ramesses II, found south of Gaza (Giveon 1975a).
2. Lintel fragment "bearing a royal Egyptian inscription, probably of the 19th Dynasty," unpublished, from Area G, Stratum XIII, at Ashdod (M. Dothan 1969: 244).
3. Stone block inscribed with niw-sign, reportedly found in association with materials "contemporary with the XlXth Egyptian Dynasty"(Macalister 1908:200-2, fig. 1; 1912: II, 307, fig. 446).
4. Jamb blocks from the gateway of Ramesses II at Jaffa (Kaplan 1972: 79, fig. 8).
5. Numerous jambs, lintels, doorsills, and other architectural elements, many inscribed, from Level VI at Beth-shan (James 1966: 4-8, 161-74).
As Giveon has pointed out, the two blocks discovered south of Gaza probably come from one of the 19th-Dynasty forts located on the Sile-to-Gaza road. The Jaffa materials also come from a military context. No information is available to determine the significance of either the Ashdod or Gezer building stones. As for the Beth-shan blocks, these come from buildings occupied by the Egyptian garrison during the reign of Ramesses III and his immediate successors in the first half of the 20th Dynasty. Curiously, no such inscribed blocks were found in the two levels contemporary with the 19th-Dynasty Egyptian occupation—Levels VIII and VII (James 1966: 5).
Temples Dedicated to Egyptian Deities
Although Egyptian architectural features occur in several of the Beth-shan temples, as well as in the LB temple at Lachish (Ussishkin 1978: 10-25) and the Baal-Berith temple at Shechem (G. R. H. Wright 1965), only the Hathor temple at Timna (Rothenberg 1972: 125-207) can at present be clearly shown to have been the place of worship of an Egyptian deity. In association with this small Ramesside temple dedicated to "Hathor, Lady of the Turquoise" were found votive objects containing the names of every pharaoh from Ramesses II to
Ramesses V except for Amenmesse, Siptah, and Setnakht. (Contrary to Rothenberg [1972:163], the earliest royal name at Timna is apparently not Sety I, but Ramesses II [Schulman 1976: 126, n. 2].) As with the temple of Hathor at Serabit el-Khadim in Sinai, this temple was erected for the religious needs of Egyptian mining expedition personnel.
Additional evidence for Egyptian temples in Palestine comes from a reference in Papyrus Harris I to a temple built by Ramesses III for Amun in "the Canaan" (= Gaza ?). According to this document (Erichsen 1933: 9, lines 1-2; ANET: 260-61), the temple was called "The-House-of-Ramesses-Ruler-of-Heliopolis."
There is a possible reference to an Egyptian temple at Ashkelon on an ivory plaque from Megiddo (Loud 1939:12, pi. 63). The inscription on this item identifies its owner, Kerker, as "singer of Ptah, South-of-His-Wall" (the name of the Ptah temple at Memphis). Following this comes a mention of the "great prince of Ashkelon." This text has been interpreted as indicating either that "great prince of Ashkelon" is an epithet of Ptah and, therefore, that Ptah must have had a cult at Ashkelon (ANET: 263; cf. Giveon 1978b: 23), or else that Kerker first served in the temple of Ptah at Memphis and later was employed by the prince of Ashkelon (Helck 1971:444). In view of the fact that "great prince of Ashkelon" is nowhere else employed in connection with Ptah, it seems preferable at this time to accept the latter interpretation.
Finally, a foundation deposit plaque found at Aphek has been published by Giveon (1978a; 1978b: 26-27) as possible evidence for a Ramesside temple dedicated to Isis at this site. The tablet's inscription contains the partially preserved cartouches of Ramesses II and describes the king as, among other things, "beloved of Isis the great, mother of the god, . . . Dendera (?)." Two reservations may be expressed about Giveon's suggestion. First, the plaque's discovery in an early 10th-century B.C. silo forces us to consider the possibility that this object came to Palestine well after the reign of Ramesses II and thus may have nothing to do with an Egyptian temple at Aphek. Second, if one assumes that the single hieroglyphic sign ^Iwn in this text is simply a very abbreviated version of the full writing of the word for Dendera (i.e., without the usual n and / signs or the city /town determinative), then this item must have been originally produced for an edifice at Dendera, not
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Aphek. On Egyptian foundation deposit objects the town that is named in the inscriptions is always the one in which, or close to which, the foundation deposit was located. (For a catalog and full analysis of Egyptian foundation deposits, see Weinstein 1973.) Only in the case of a misappropriated object might the inscription on an object refer to the wrong town or structure. Hence, while it is not inconceivable that this plaque could have ended up being used in some ritual function at Aphek (and then found its way into a silo), it is quite unlikely that this plaque was originally made of a temple of Isis at Aphek.
Royal and Private Statuary, Stelae, and Rock Inscriptions
1. "Four small Egyptian burial stelae of local kurkar sandstone," unpublished, from illicit excavations at Deir el-Balah (T. Dothan 1973: 138).
2. "Fragment of an Egyptian stele," unpublished, from Area G, Stratum XII, at Ashdod (M. Dothan 1968: 253).
3. Fragment of inscribed Ramesside statue, unpublished, found between Ashdod and Tell Mor (Leclant 1971:259).
4. Stela fragment, probably Ramesside, from Tell es-Safi (Bliss 1899: 197; Bliss and Macalister 1902: 42, 152, fig. 21).
5. Rock stela of Ramessesemperre and Ramesses III, near Hathor temple at Timna (Ventura 1974; Schulman 1976).
6. Rock inscription of Ramesses III at Nahal Roded (Avner 1972; Rothenberg 1972:201, fig. 62).
7. Head of sandstone sphinx, "possibly representing Ramesses II," from Hathor temple at Timna (Rothenberg 1972: 132, pi. 79).
8. Statue fragments, unpublished, from Hathor temple at Timna (Rothenberg 1972: 166).
9. Unspecified number of stelae, unpublished, from Hathor temple at Timna (Rothenberg 1969: 28).
10. Year 1 stela of Sety I, from Lower Level V at Beth-shan (Rowe 1930: 24-29, pi. 41; James 1966: 34-38, fig. 81:1; ANET: 253-54).
11. Incomplete stela of Sety I, undated, found reused in a Byzantine context at Beth-shan (Rowe 1930: 29-30, pis. 42-44; Albright 1952; ANET: 255; cf. James 1966: 34). Stela fragment found in Level V may come from this monument (Rowe 1930: pi. 45:1; James 1966: 34).
12. Year 18 stela of Ramesses II, from Lower Level V at Beth-shan (Rowe 1930: 33-36, pi. 46; Černý 1958; James 1966: 34-37, fig. 81:1).
13. Two small royal stela fragments, Ramesside (?), from Beth-shan. References cited above in discussion of Egyptian monuments in Palestine in LB IB period.
14. Statue of Ramesses III, from courtyard of northern temple in Level V at Beth-shan (Rowe 1930:36,38, pi. 51; James 1966: 35, fig. 81:3).
15. Fragment of royal statue, from beneath reservoir in northwest corner of northern temple in Level V at Beth-shan (Rowe 1930: 36, pi. 50:1; James 1966: 34).
16. Fragment of stela of Amenemopet before Mekal, from room south of Level VII temple at Beth-shan (Rowe 1930: 9-10, pi. 28:19). Rest of stela found in Level IX temple (Rowe 1930: 14-15, pi. 33). Full discussion of this stela in Thompson (1970).
17. Stela of woman before Astarte (?), from Level VII temple at Beth-shan (Rowe 1930: 19-21, pi. 48:2; 1940:8, pi. 49A:1).
18. Stela of Hesinakht before Antit, from northern temple in Lower Level V at Beth-shan (Rowe 1930:32-33, pi. 50:2; James 1966:34, 171).
19. Fragment of stela of [Amenemjopet, from southern temple in Lower Level V at Beth-shan; small piece of this stela from Level VI (Rowe 1930: 37-38, pi. 49:1; James 1966: 16-17, 39, 171).
20. Fragment of private stela, from below Locus 1522, Level V, at Beth-shan (James 1966: 7:C-4, 170-71, figs. 94:2, 95:2).
The following items from Transjordan should be added to the above list of materials from Palestine proper:
21. Upper part of stela of Sety I, from Tell esh-Shihab (Smith 1901: 347-49; Müller 1904).
22. Rock stela of Ramesses II, at Sheikh Sac id (Giveon 1965b; additional bibliography in PM VII: 383).
Finally, we might note several fragmentary statues which may or may not belong in the present catalog:
23. Upper part of royal Ramesside statue (probably 19th Dynasty), from either "Palestine or Syria, more probably the former," in British Museum (Hall 1928).
24. Two fragmentary 18th/19th Dynasty royal statues, from fill of Solomonic gate at Hazor (Yadin et al. 1961: pi. 323:4-6; Yadin 1972: 126, n. 1).
The above list of monuments is impressive not only on account of the absolute number of items in it, but also because more royal and private statues, stelae, and rock inscriptions of 19th- and early 20th-Dynasty date have been discovered in Palestine than those of Dynasties 1-18 inclusive. Most of these Ramesside objects come from temples at two sites: Beth-shan and Timna. Southwestern Palestine has also produced a number of these objects; our list includes items from Deir el-Balah, Ashdod, the area between Ashdod and Tell Mor, and Tell es-Safi. As in Egypt, so too in Palestine, the temples and tombs have produced most of the stelae and statuary.
The pharaohs represented in the above list are Sety I, Ramesses II, and Ramesses III. Stelae and statuary of Merneptah, the only other Egyptian king of this period to campaign in Palestine, have yet to be identified in the area. In fact, only a small number of objects inscribed with Merneptah's name occur at all in Palestine: (1) a seal with sphinx back, from Tell el-Farcah (South) (Petrie 1930: 10, pi. 29:243); (2) an ivory sundial, from Gezer (Macalister 1912: I, 15; II, 325, fig. 456; Pilcher
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1923); (3) a faience bowl fragment, from Timna (Rothenberg 1972: 163, fig. 49:1, pi. 85); and (4) a faience cartouche plaque with attachment loops at top and bottom (bottom one still in place), from Level VII at Beth-shan (unpublished; now in Philadelphia, University Museum 29.104.52). This situation is somewhat surprising in view of Merneptah's actions in Palestine as recorded on the "Israel Stela" and its fragmentary duplicate at Karnak. (The historicity of the Merneptah campaign, and thus the "Israel Stela," has now been demonstrated in a brief note published recently by Frank Yurco [1978].)
The two stelae from Transjordan—those at Sheikh Sacid and Tell esh-Shihab—are of great interest because they are the only true Egyptian stelae ever found in this region. (The Baluca stela from Moab [Ward and Martin 1964; Giveon 1971: 202-4, pi. 15] must be considered a pseudo-Egyptian monument.) Egyptian interest in northern Transjordan is further demonstrated by the mention of Kiriath-anab (Tell esh-Shihab?) in the Sety I topographical lists (Simons 1937: 146; Aharoni 1967: 166-68) and in Papyrus Anastasi I (A NET: AIT, Aharoni 1967: 171). As for southern Transjordan, Egyptians seem to have been militarily active in Moab (where the town of Bwtrt was plundered) and Edom (against the Shasu-land in the mountain of Secir; Kitchen 1964). (For Ramesses II not having conquered Dibon [contra Kitchen 1964: 53, 55, 65], see Ahituv 1972.)
In regard to the private Egyptian monuments in Palestine in this period, it should be noted that no private Ramesside sculpture has so far been published, while there are at most only five private funerary stelae: four at Deir el-Balah and one at Beth-shan (no. 20 in the above list) that may or may not be of a funerary nature (Ward, in James 1966: 170-71). Since many Egyptian officers and bureaucrats must have died while on official duty in Palestine, it is curious that so few private mortuary stelae and no definite private funerary statuary have yet been found. Perhaps many Egyptians were simply buried without the funerary equipment they would have had if they had died in their homeland.
While the monuments and inscriptions surveyed on previous pages form an impressive corpus of material for the Egyptian occupation of Palestine in the 19th and early 20th Dynasties, they are really only among the largest and most obvious manifestations of this occupation. In fact, considerably more evidence is available from some other
items—such as both inscribed and uninscribed alabaster and faience vessels, hieratic texts on bowls and sherds, inscribed jar handles, anthropoid coffins, shawabtis and other funerary equipment, jewelry, scarabs, amulets, plaques, and metal and ivory objects—a discussion of all of which would expand this article into a substantial monograph. However, no discussion of the Ramesside occupation of Palestine can be concluded without offering a few remarks about one of the most important, yet consistently overlooked, types of evidence available to the historian of the Egyptian empire, namely the Egyptian pottery in Palestine.
Ruth Amiran (1970: 187, 190) has written that "the scarcity of Egyptian imported wares in Palestine" during the Empire period was due to two characteristics of Egyptian trade and manufacturing: (1) Egyptian trade items in this period were not such as to require the use of large pottery vessels for their transportation, and (2) Egyptian craftsmen preferred to use stone, faience, and metal materials rather than pottery both for ordinary, daily use and for export. Although the Egyptian domination of Palestine need not have resulted in a large-scale importation of Egyptian pottery into this area, there is actually more Egyptian pottery in Palestine during LB IIB and the beginning of the Iron I period than in any other phase of either the Bronze or Iron Age. For several reasons, this Egyptian pottery has not always been easy to recognize:
(1) Most of this pottery is undecorated and occurs in relatively simple shapes, e.g., saucer bowls, cylindrical jars, and drop-shaped vessels. Hence, specimens of this material can easily be overlooked among the thousands of potsherds recovered daily from the excavation of 13th-through early 12th-century B.C. strata at large sites.
(2) It is clear from the forms of the Egyptian pots that predominate in Palestine that much of this pottery was employed for domestic rather than commercial purposes. As such, a large percentage of it was probably produced from local clays instead of importing the finished products from the Nile Valley. Between the simple shapes, undecorated surfaces, and the use of Palestinian clays, most Egyptian pottery has probably ended up on the archaeologist's sherd dump. Without the distinctive fabrics or decorative techniques so prevalent with Mycenaean and Late Cypriot pottery, locally produced Egyptian pottery does not stand out in
22
JAMES M. WEINSTEIN
BASOR 241
any significant way from the local Palestinian wares.
Because most Egyptian pottery was produced not for commercial but for ordinary daily use, it occurs primarily at those sites where Egyptians actually lived. In particular, garrison towns and administrative centers should be expected to produce the most Egyptian pottery, and this is precisely the situation. Beth-shan has the largest amount of Egyptian pottery known so far (cf. James 1966: 27-28). Egyptian pottery also occurs at Tell el-Farcah (South) (e.g., Macdonald, Starkey, and Harding 1932: pi. 88: types 75 and 94) and Deir el-Balah (T. Dothan 1973:136, pi. 43:A, D, F; 1979: 10-11, 56, ills. 14, 16, 126-27, 133-34), as well as at Tell esh-Sharica (Oren and Netzer 1973b: 55; EAEHL 4: 1065) and Tell Mor (EAEHL 3:889-90). Additional examples of Ramesside-period pottery can be cited from Megiddo, Lachish, Beth-shemesh, Gezer, Ashdod, Tell Deir cAlla, and Tell es-Sacidiyeh. On the other hand, there is hardly any Egyptian pottery so far from Hazor or the sites in the hill country.
In summary, considerable quantities of Egyptian pottery occur in Palestine in the 13th and early 12th centuries B.c. This material is mostly found at sites in southern Palestine, along the coast and coastal plain, in the Shephelah, the Plain of Esdraelon, and the Jordan Valley. Except for the Jordan Valley, these same regions of the country produced all of the examples of Egyptian architecture, stelae, statuary, and other remains of the Egyptian occupation. Thus, while Amiran is probably technically correct in saying that there is a "scarcity of imported Egyptian" pottery in Palestine, substantial amounts of Egyptian pottery were probably locally produced in the country, and this ceramic material reflects quite well the nature and extent of the Egyptian empire in Palestine at this time.
It has been seen in this section that there is a major difference between the Egyptian empire in Palestine in the Ramesside period and that in earlier times. More examples of almost every category of Egyptian antiquity occur in Palestine during the LB IIB-Iron IA period than in any comparable span of time during the entire Bronze Age. Most of the datable royal objects can be ascribed either to the time period from the reign of Sety I to that of Merneptah, or to the reign of Ramesses III in the early 20th Dynasty. Although there is no way to measure precisely the effect which this military occupation and domination had on
Palestine, one can scarcely doubt that it had a deleterious effect on Palestinian urban and agricultural life (Ahituv 1978).
IV. The End of the Empire
The demise of the Egyptian empire in Palestine can now be set in the third quarter of the 12th century B.c. This was in no way a sudden event, since the downfall actually began back in the late 19th Dynasty (Goedicke 1978; 1979), the time of kings Amenmesse, Sety II, Siptah, and Tausert (1202-1185/84 B.c.). Egypt's domestic problems in these reigns (Faulkner 1975:235-39) probably had a very negative impact on the Egyptian empire in Palestine. There are gaps in the royal record at both Timna and Serabit el-Khadim; Amenmesse, Siptah, and Setnakht (the first king of Dynasty 20) are all missing from Timna, while the names of the first two of these three rulers are absent from Serabit el-Khadim. Second, except for ajar handle containing the cartouches of Sety II at Tell el-Farcah (South) (Macdonald, Starkey, and Harding 1932: 28-29, pis. 61:1, 64:74) and afragment of a faience vase of Tausert at Tell Deir cAlla (Yoyotte 1962), the only Egyptian royal names attested in Palestine from Amenmesse until Ramesses III occur on the objects from Timna and on a few scattered scarabs. Also, several of the Egyptian buildings in Palestine—e.g., the "Government House" at Aphek, the "Citadel" at Tell Mor, and the Egyptian occupation of Level VII at Beth-shan—seem to have been destroyed during the time of the late 19th-beginning of the 20th Dynasty, and it seems hard to believe that such destructions would have taken place if the Egyptian empire had been strong at this time.
Ramesses III seems to have done his best to restore a measure of Egyptian control in Palestine. A major garrison was established at Beth-shan, a new "Residency" was built at Tell esh-Sharica, and a migdol at Tell Mor may have been used by Egyptians. Mining expeditions resumed their regular visits to Timna and the western Sinai. But time was working against the Egyptian empire, and there was little Ramesses III could do to stem the decline other than to hold on to militarily and economically strategic spots like Beth-shan and Timna.
The final deterioration of the empire in the 12th century was probably due to a number of factors: new populations settling in the country; the reliance by Egypt on increasing numbers of foreign mercenaries to man the Egyptian garrisons in
1981
THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE IN PALESTINE
23
Palestine; domestic problems back in Egypt (e.g., an inflation in grain prices that reached a peak in the mid 20th Dynasty [Cerny 1934; Janssen 1975: 551-52] and civil strife involving Ramesses V or VI [Cerny 1975: 612-13]); the ever-present corruption of Egyptian administrators in the field; and the destruction of many of the great cities of Palestine in the late 13th and 12th centuries by Egyptians, Sea Peoples, Israelites, and perhaps other Canaanites. These problems must have taken their toll on the Egyptians stationed in Palestine. The failure of the 20th-Dynasty pharaohs to reestablish some of the destroyed garrisons must have resulted in the Egyptian military controlling less and less territory as the 12th century developed.
It seems quite likely that the last significant Egyptian presence in Palestine can be dated to the third quarter of the 12th century B.C., perhaps even to the reign of Ramesses VI (1141-1134 B.C.). The great garrison at Beth-shan seems not to have much outlasted the reign of Ramesses III before it was destroyed and replaced by a non-Egyptian occupa-
tion (James 1966: 150, 178-79). The migdolaX Tell Mor and the "Residency" at Tell esh-Sharica both appear to have been destroyed sometime around the middle of the 12th century B.C. {EAEHL 3:890; EAEHL 4: 1066). (Neithertheendof"PalaceIV"at Tell el-cAjjúl nor that of the "Residency" at Tell el-Farcah [South] can be dated with any confidence.) The last piece of New Kingdom royal sculpture in Palestine is represented by the bronze statue base of Ramesses VI at Megiddo (Breasted, in Loud 1948: 135-36, figs. 374-75). The last royal name at Timna is that of Ramesses V (Rothenberg 1972: fig. 49:7). The last royal name associated with Deir el-Balah may be that of Ramesses VI (Giveon 1977: 66-67, fig. 1:2, pi. 3:2). Finally, the last Egyptian royal name preserved at Serabit el-Khadim is again that of Ramesses VI (Gardiner, Peet, and Černý 1955: 192, nos. 290-93; Giveon 1975b). Thus, in or about the reign of Ramesses VI, the Egyptian empire, much reduced in size and probably no longer able to maintain its few remaining strategic positions in Palestine, finally collapsed.
NOTE
"This article is an expanded version of a paper read at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature-American Academy of Religion in New York, November 1979. Please note that throughout this article the chronology proposed by Wente
and Van Sielen (1976) for the Egyptian New Kingdom has been adopted. For an evaluation of this chronology, see Kitchen (1977-78).
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