LIBU. Ethnic group, one of the major tribes of the Libyans. The Libu first appear in texts of the 18th Dynasty, but are first prominent as opponents of Egypt in the reign of Merenptah. They were the major element in the Libyan invasion of year 5 of Merenptah and a lesser one in the Libyan invasions of years 5 and 11 of Ramesses III. In the Third Intermediate Period, the Libu appear to have been settled in the western Delta, notably around the city of Sau (Sais). The rulers of Sau were entitled Chiefs of the Libu as well as Chiefs of the Meshwesh (Ma).
LIBYA. A term used for the desert regions west of the Nile Valley and the Mediterranean littoral as far as Cyrenaica. One of the traditional enemies of Egypt. Egyptian terminology for the Libyans changes over time, with some archaic terms such as Tjehenu continuing alongside contemporary names of ethnic or tribal groups, such as Libu and Meshwesh. The early peoples of Libya were nomadic or seminomadic, probably pastoralists. Our archaeological knowledge of Libya in the Bronze Age is still very limited. In the Iron Age, Phoenician and Greek colonies were established on the north African coast. In Libya, the most important of these was Cyrene. Wahibre is reported to have aided a native Libyan attack on Cyrene, which failed and resulted in a rebellion of the Egyptian troops, the proclamation of Ahmose II, and the dethronement of Wahibre. Ahmose II had the support of Cyrene and concluded a diplomatic marriage with the royal family. In the reign of Darius I, the satrap Aryandes sent an expedition against Barca, which involved a nine-month siege. Ptolemy I gained control of Cyrenaica, which with some phases of independence remained a part of the Ptolemaic kingdom until Ptolemy Apion bequeathed it to Rome in 96 BC.
LIBYA PALETTE. Also called the “Towns Palette.” Fragmentary ceremonial slate palette of the Predynastic Period or early First Dynasty now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. One side shows “heraldic” animals, including a lion, falcon, and scorpion using hoes to destroy fortified enclosures. There are also two standards with falcons. Seven enclosures are shown, square in form with bastioned walls. Inside the enclosures are hieroglyphic groups. It is assumed that the animals represent “clan” or “tribal” groups, and that the whole is a record of one part of the unification process recorded on other near-contemporary votive objects, such as the Gebel el-Arak Knife, the Scorpion Macehead, and the Narmer Palette.
LIBYANS. “Libyans” were one of the traditional enemies of Egypt and appear to have been almost any desert-dwelling, nomadic or seminomadic population, which lived to the west of the Nile valley. Conflict between Egypt and Libyans is suggested (if not fully attested) by the “Libya Palette,” the reliefs in the pyramid temple of Sahure, and of Menthuhotep II at Deir el-Bahari. The archaic names Tjemeh and Tjehenu are used throughout the dynastic period, but, from the 19th Dynasty onward, specific tribal groups are named: the Seped, the Libu, and the Meshwesh. These groups became a grave threat to Egypt. Sety I included scenes of his Libyan Wars in the cycle of his campaigns depicted at Karnak (Thebes). A string of fortresses to control Libyan movements toward Egypt was built in the reign of Ramesses II. Stretching westward from Memphis along the western edge of the Delta to Rakote and on through Karm Abu-Girg, el-Gharbaniyat, and Alamein to Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham, the forts seem to have lasted only for this reign. Perhaps forced by famine to find new grazing lands, Libyan groups invaded Egypt in the reign of Merenptah and Ramesses III.
Ramesses III settled Libyan soldiers in garrison towns, probably around Bubastis. The text of a stela from Deir el-Medina also refers to the victories of these years and suggests that Ramesses might have forced assimilation.
Later in the 20th Dynasty, there were Libyan incursions into Upper Egypt particularly around Thebes. A statue of Ramesses VI shows him leading a Libyan captive. The Libyans dominated Egypt during the Third Intermediate Period, with the dynasty founded by Sheshonq I. The Libyan dynasts of the Delta presented a major source of opposition to the attempts of the kings of Kush and Assyria to control Egypt. Psamtik I, probably a descendant of Libyan dynasts, led campaigns against the “Libyans” early in his reign. Later references are more specific about locations.
The principal weapon of the Libyans was the bow. Only one Libyan in the battle reliefs of Sety I carries a sword (of non-Egyptian type), but the battle reliefs of Ramesses III show other weapons and chariots. These weapons were clearly the result of the arms trade and are probably to be associated with the presence of small groups of the Sea Peoples, probably mercenary soldiers, who fought alongside the Libyans.
LIBYAN WAR OF MERENPTAH (year 5 c. 1208/1207 BC). The principal records are the text of the Israel Stela from the pharaoh’s temple on the west bank at Thebes, the stela from Karnak with a duplicate text, and the record on the east wall of the Cour de la Cachette between the main temple and the Seventh Pylon. The Libyans were dominated by the Libu, led by Mariyu, son of Didi. They had penetrated Egypt, along the western fringe of the Delta and a battle, lasting six hours, was fought. The invasion was apparently meant to have been synchronized with a rebellion in Nubia and was allied with groups of the Sea Peoples. The casualties of the specified groups are relatively small, compared with Libyan casualties of 6,359: Ekwesh (2,201), Teresh (742), Shekelesh (222), Lukka and Sherden (200?). This suggests that the Sea Peoples are, in this case, mercenary troops. The Libyan movement is specifically stated to have been caused by famine in Libya.
LIBYAN WAR OF SETY I. Although conflict with Libyans is documented from earliest times, the major Libyan Wars occurred in 19th Dynasty. The first to be recorded by prominent battle scenes is that of Sety I, forming part of the cycle of reliefs on the north outer wall of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak (Thebes). There are four scenes. The first shows Sety in his chariot, his forward foot on the chariot pole, the reins tied around his waist, charging and about to kill the large figure of a Libyan chief. Sety wears the khepresh and grasps his strung bow, wielding the khepesh-sword for close combat. The chief, possibly of the Meshwesh, wears the feather and phallus sheath. The royal chariot charges into the melee of wounded soldiers who carry bows, only one has a sharp sword. In the second scene, the pharaoh has descended from his chariot and, trampling over fallen Libyans, grasps the chief and is about to kill him with a short stabbing spear. Sety wears the lappeted wig. The third scene shows the triumphant return. The pharaoh, wearing the khepresh, drives his chariot, holding the reins along with his bow, khepesh, and whip. The chariot is decorated with the heads of Libyans. Before him, the pharaoh drives two lines of captives, their arms tied at the elbows. The final scene shows the presentation of captives to the Theban gods, along with booty of elaborate vessels and two tusk rhyta, all of typically Asiatic type. The texts use only the generalized term Tehenu and are otherwise uninformative about locale and enemy. The pharaoh is likened to Monthu and Horus and is described as “like Baal when he treads the mountains.”
LIBYAN WARS OF RAMESSES III (year 5 c. 1180 BC; year 11 c. 1174 BC). The Libyan Wars of Ramesses III are recorded by reliefs on the north exterior wall and in the first courtyard of the pharaoh’s temple at Medinet Habu on the west bank at Thebes. The first invasion was an alliance of the Meshwesh, the Libu, and the Seped. The scenes show the pharaoh setting out, with heralds and musicians (trumpeters), and, in its own chariot, the standard of Amun. The Egyptian army includes Egyptians with khepesh and shields; Nubians with throw sticks (or cudgels), spear and axe; Nubian archers; mercenaries from Asia and the Sea Peoples (mixed contingents of Shardana and Peleset). The battle scene includes the typical mêlée and a fortress called “the town of Ramesses who has repulsed the Temeh.” The aftermath includes the military bureaucracy counting the severed hands and phalluses of the enemy. In one scene, the pile of genitals shows penis and testicles, rather than the phallus alone.
The second Libyan War of year 11 (c. 1174 BC) was led by Meshesher, chief of the Meshwesh. The scenes show the battle, in the western Delta, in which the Libyans use chariots and foreign weapons. The chariots, notably, have wheels with four spokes. The Libyans were defeated and routed. Pursued by the Egyptian army, they fled past two fortresses, one called the “Castle in the Sand.” The inscriptions state that, in this pursuit, 2,275 Libyans were killed. The scenes of the presentation of captures to Ramesses III include the severed hands and phalluses, captives, and a large array of weaponry, including long, sharp swords of Asiatic type.
LITERATURE. A wide variety of literary sources can be used for the study of warfare, military matters, and civil unrest in Egypt.
Egyptian Pharaonic. Historical Texts. Earlier Egyptologists generally treated historical texts as basically factual accounts, but acknowledged they were prejudiced through being written by the victor. Occasionally, this led to the text being read as meaning the opposite of what was said. So, for example, in the Dream Stela of Tanwetamani, where it is stated that when the pharaoh ascended the throne “none stood up against (him),” it was understood that he actually faced serious opposition. A more sophisticated text criticism now sees all official royal stelae as part of the literary genre of ideal kingship and royal self-justification in which the ideal merges with the historical moment. It is also recognized that the date at the beginning of a text does not necessarily have any bearing on the date of the production of the monument or, unless stated, of the events recorded. However, such inscriptions do contain historical “facts” and have value for the reconstruction of events.
Historical texts are, in fact, surprisingly few. Hardly anything survives from the Old Kingdom that deals with military matters—a few references, not all of which can be assigned to specific reigns, are to be found in the Palermo Stone, otherwise there are only brief texts on labels and stelae. The Middle Kingdom is equally scant in official documents. The documentation from the New Kingdom is far richer with the Stelae of Kamose and other complementary texts: the Tumbos Stela of Thutmose I; inscriptions of Thutmose II; the Annals of Thutmose III; the Amada Stela of Amenhotep II; the Sphinx Stela of Amenhotep II is more concerned with ethos; fragmentary inscriptions of Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III relate to actions in Nubia; the fragmentary stela from Buhen records Akhenaten’s campaign against Ikayta; the battle scenes of Sety I carry some textual information; the Amara Stela and its parallel texts record Sety I’s war with Irem; the richest array of material relates to Ramesses II and the battle of Qadesh; the Israel Stela and its parallel texts record the Libyan War of Merenptah; and the Libyan Wars of Ramesses III are recorded by inscriptions at Medinet Habu. Relatively few comparable royal “historical” inscriptions exist from the post-New Kingdom. The triumphal relief of Sheshonq I at Karnak shows the pharaoh presenting captured cities to Amun but lacks any accompanying narrative text. The stelae of the Kushite kings Piye, Tanwetamani, Harsiyotef, and Nastasen are modeled on New Kingdom types and couched in the same terminology. The stelae recording the campaign of Psamtik II into Nubia also belong to the genre of historical inscriptions.
Private inscriptions, often referred to as “autobiographical,” are another valuable source but, like royal texts, are formed within a specific context, usually funerary. They act as justification, and placing the individual in relation to the ruler, and also emphasize social rank. Nevertheless, the inscriptions of Ahmose son of Ebana, Ahmosepen-Nekhbet, Amenemhab, and others provide information on military activities that is otherwise lost. The texts accompanying tomb scenes of military officials such as Tjanuni and Horemheb give some information on military organization.
Poems and hymns. The local pharaoh, Peftjauawybast of Herakleopolis, sang a paean in honor of the Kushite pharaoh, Piye, after his besieged town was relieved in the war against Tefnakht. Hymns in honor of Senusret III have allusions to military conquest and might but are couched within the typical phraseology of royal justification. The Poetical Stela of Thutmose III and the “Poem of Pentawere” on the battle of Qadesh are similarly nonspecific in terms of detail.
Letters and administrative documents. The Semna Despatches is a collection of detailed reports of 12th Dynasty date, recording activities in the region of the Second Cataract forts. The best single source from the New Kingdom is a collection of papyrus documents known as the Anastasi Papyri and Sallier Papyri. Some of these are scribal exercises in the form of letters from various military officials. They are assumed to be copies of, or modeled on, actual texts. They are thus subject to the usual problems of interpretation. There are letters about the Madjoy and their employment in building works at Memphis, details of equipment and supplies for a campaign in Syria, and complaints about boredom from garrison officers in Syria. The archive of letters of the scribe Dhutmose-Tjaroy and his son Butehamun from Thebes are important in reconstructing the events of the civil war in the time of Ramesses XI. The archive includes letters written while Dhutmose was accompanying a military expedition in Nubia against the Viceroy Panehesy. The Wilbour Papyrus details the landholdings of mercenary soldiers in Middle Egypt and the entrance to the Fayum in the 20th Dynasty. From the Persian period, there is an extensive archive in Aramaic recording the activities of the garrison in Aswan made up of mercenaries, mainly Jews and other Syro-Palestinians.
Graffiti and rock inscriptions. These are some of the most informative sources because they are situated in the places where the army and officials went. Graffiti and inscriptions vary enormously in the amount and type of information they contain. Some are lengthy, perhaps taking the form of a stela with a scene at the top, usually showing the pharaoh smiting an enemy, and with a narrative text. Others are simply a personal name, or group of names and titles, scratched onto the rocks. Some sites have a large number of graffiti indicating their religious and strategic importance: the island of Sehel, near Aswan, in the First Cataract, has hundreds of rock inscriptions. Many of these were written by local priests, but there is a significant group carved for the viceroys of Kush and their subordinates on their way into Nubia. One set of 19th Dynasty graffiti relates to a single tour of inspection, and the individuals named left further inscriptions elsewhere in Nubia. Also on Sehel are records of the clearance of the canal through the cataract. On the mainland close by, the military road from Aswan to the port near Shellal has records of the army going south. A number of points at the end of desert patrol routes in Nubia carry inscriptions. At Tangur near the Dal Cataract, graffiti record the military expeditions of Senusret III and Thutmose III. The island of Tumbos in the Third Cataract, and Hagar el-Merwa beyond the Fifth Cataract, were other places where officials left graffiti and kings carved boundary inscriptions. Fewer sites in Asia are so far known to carry Egyptian texts. Thutmose I and Thutmose III state that they left boundary inscriptions near the Euphrates, but these have never been identified. The narrow pass at the Nahr el-Kelb in Lebanon is one place where inscriptions are preserved. Here, Ramesses II left two inscriptions (of year 4 and perhaps year 8). Similar monuments were carved later for Esarhaddon (recording his defeat of Taharqo), Nebuchadnezzar, and the Roman emperor Caracalla.
Literary texts. Some stories have a specifically military context, whereas others include references and allusions to actual (presumably) events or to military ethos. The story of Sinuhe begins with allusion to the murder of Amenemhat I and later details Sinuhe’s hand-to-hand combat and the weapons he used. The “Instruction of Amenemhat I” begins with a prologue detailing the pharaoh’s murder and includes advice on the construction of fortresses. The narrative of the capture of Joppa by a general of Thutmose III is assumed to have some basis in reality. Another small fragment of a literary text describes King Thutmose III in the midst of battle (perhaps Megiddo). The Pedubast Cycle is set in the late Libyan period, although it cannot be used as a historical source, and has strong influences from Greek literature.
Western Asiatic texts. From the New Kingdom, the principal foreign texts are the Amarna Letters, mostly written in the Akkadian language, recording events in western Asia in the reigns of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, and Tutankhamun. A similar group of letters and historical narratives was preserved in the archives of the Hittites at Hattusas. Some other historical material comes from the archives of Ugarit in Syria, notably relating to the Sea Peoples. The texts from the royal palaces of Assyria are a valuable source for detail about relations with Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period and 26th Dynasty. They suffer from the usual problems of ancient “historical” texts. The Royal Annals from the palaces were carved on reliefs, and stone slabs in various editions, and also on clay prisms. As the reign advanced, the events of the earlier years could be epitomized and drastically abbreviated. In some cases events recorded by one text are completely omitted in later versions. In addition to the annals, a mass of other clay tablets including oracles and prayers to the sun god have been preserved. Many of these allude to the conflicts with Egypt in the reign of Taharqo and the actions of Assyrian officials figure prominently. A large number of Vassal Treaties with the rulers of western Asia also survive. A similar group of material survives for the activities of the Kings of Babylon, adding some detail to their relations with Egypt in the 26th Dynasty. Egypt also appears in some texts from Persia, but the events and conflicts of the Persian period in Egypt are more fully documented by inscriptions and archives from Egypt itself and by the Greek narrative histories.
Greek and Roman texts. The narrative histories in Greek provide a large amount of information on Egypt, although this has to be treated with considerable caution. The earliest and most famous, although not necessarily the most reliable, is the account of Herodotos, which has stimulated a huge critical literature. Herodotos includes accounts of the machimoi; the invasion of Nubia by Psamtik II; the expedition of Wahibre against Cyrene; the Persian conquest of Egypt by Cambyses; and the rebellion of Inaros. Other Greek histories, such as that of Thucydides, include further incidents in the relations between Egypt and the Persian Empire. The encyclopedic works of the Hellenistic and Roman periods—many written in Greek, by Diodoros, Strabo, and Pliny, among others—extract fragments from other writers. Although subject to numerous errors of transmission, these sources can add detail and alert to us to events that are otherwise undocumented.
Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. The royal inscriptions that survive from Ptolemaic Egypt are of traditional types, written variously in hieroglyphic, Greek, and demotic (a late cursive script used for writing the Egyptian language). Some inscriptions, such as the decree of the priests of Memphis of the reign of Ptolemy V (the “Rosetta Stone”), are written in all three scripts. The Rosetta Stone and the Decree of Philae allude to the suppression of the rebellion of Upper Egypt led by Chaonnophris and Haronnophris. The “Satrap Stela” of Ptolemy I quotes from a document of the reign of Khabbash referring to the invasion of Artaxerxes III.
The principal sources for reconstructing the events of the Ptolemaic period are the histories written by Greek and Roman authors, notably that of Polybius. Although Polybius’s subject is specifically the rise of Rome, his work contains information on Ptolemaic dynastic affairs and wars, including a detailed account of the battle of Raphia. Ptolemaic Egypt also figures prominently in the works of the Roman historian, Livy. Plutarch’s lives of various Hellenistic rulers and Roman generals, notably Marcus Antonius (and hence Kleopatra VII), were compiled from earlier sources. Arrian wrote the best-preserved (and generally considered most reliable) narrative of Alexander the Great’s campaigns. He compiled his account from a number of early Hellenistic works, including one written by Ptolemy I. There are contemporary accounts of events in Egypt, although with authorial bias, written by Romans who took part. Iulius Caesar’s “Civil War” gives an account of the events leading up to the Alexandrian War, and an account of the war itself was apparently written by one of Caesar’s generals. Strabo narrates the conflict between Rome and Meroe in the early years of the reign of Augustus.
Archives of papyrus documents are very rich in information on individual soldiers and their role in Ptolemaic Egypt. Such documents from the Fayum detail the lives and landholdings of cleruchs, and similar material is known from Upper Egypt, notably Pathyris. Some literary works, such as those of Theokritos in praise of Ptolemy II, are not strictly historical. For the later Roman period, there are fewer inscriptions, although the representations of Roman emperors in temples continue the pharaonic traditions of the universal ruler. Most information on events comes from literary sources, histories, and papyrus documents, and the evidence of coins. Imperial biography, in the form of the notoriously unreliable Historia Augusta, continues to the time of Constantine. Of more value is the history written by Ammianus Marcellinus (the surviving books covering 354–378 AD) and the Notitia Dignitatum, detailing the Roman garrisons throughout Egypt.
LUKKA. In Egyptian texts, the name appears as Ruku but should probably be vocalized as Lukka. They are to be identified with the inhabitants of the “Lukka lands” of Hittite texts and those of classical Lycia in southwestern Asia Minor. Some served in the Hittite army in the battle of Qadesh and they appear as Libyan allies (probably mercenaries) in the record of Merenptah’s Libyan War of year 5. They are therefore included in the “Sea Peoples.” The name Pa-Luka occurs as that of an official of the reign of Ramesses III.