The Ramses III's inscription and the Trojan War: towards the historiography of the discussion
Abstract
The article discusses the translation and interpretation of lines 51-52 from the Medinet Abu inscription, which dates to the 5th year of the reign of Pharaoh Ramses III. For the first time, this inscription drew the attention of the Soviet classicist Vadim Tsymbursky (1957-2009). In 1994 he suggested that lines 51-52 comprise a mention of the Trojan War. However, Tsymbursky did not read Ancient Egyptian and therefore he was not in a position to bring forward a sufficient argument to confirm his suggestion. Russian scholars in the recent years have produced a series of expert studies regarding the topic in question, which, however, have neither confirmed nor rejected the Tsymbursky hypothesis. In 2006, and subsequently in 2019, the author of the present article examined de visu the inscription in question and offered a new interpretation: “(51) Northern foreign lands trembled in their bodies, namely: peleset, teker [and tursha], (52) whose own land was ravaged. Their souls approached their end”. The author puts the Egyptian message into a clear historical context and justifies the possibility to compare the contents of these lines with the Greek epic tradition of the Trojan War.
About the Author
A. V. Safronov
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Alexander V. Safronov - Ph. D. (Hist.), Senior Research fellow, Department of Ancient Orient, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Moscow.
References
1. Tsymbursky V. L. 1994: The Greeks in the campaigns of the Sea Peoples? Vostok (Oriens). 1994;(1):39-58. (In Russ.)
2. Safronov А. One unusual example of the sentence with impersonal subject in Ramses' III 5th year inscription. Lingua Aegyptia. Journal of Egyptian Language Studies. 2008;16:311-318.
3. Nemirovsky A. A. Once again about Calchas, Amphilochus and migrants in Cilicia in 12 century B C. Studia historica. 2018;16:3-33. (In Russ.)
4. Gindin L. A., Tsymbursky V. L. Homer and the history of the Eastern Mediterranean. Moscow: Vostochnaya literatura; 1996. (In Russ.) Available at: https://bulgari-istoria-2010.com/booksRu/L_Gindin_Zymburgskiy_gomer_Troja.pdf
5. Breasted J. H. et al. Medinet Habu. Vol. I: Earlier Historical Records of Ramses III. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1930. Available at: https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/oip8.pdf
6. Kitchen K. A. Ramesside inscriptions, historical and biographical. Vol. 5. Oxford: B. H. Blackwell Ltd.; 1983.
7. Kitchen K. A. Ramesside inscriptions translated & annotated: translations. Vol. 5. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing; 2008.
8. Edgerton W. Wilson J. Historical records of Ramses III: The texts in Medinet Habu. Vols. I-II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1936. Available at: https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/saoc12.pdf
9. Safronov A. V. Does the Ramses III's inscription mention the Trojan war? Indoevropeiskoe yazykoznanie i klassicheskaya filologiya = Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology. 2019;23(2):939-949. (In Russ.) DOI: 10.30842/ielcp230690152369.
10. Nemirovsky A. A. On the reflection of the Anatolian ethnopolitical changes of the beginning of the XII century B.C. E. in the Greek tradition. In: Gabelko O. L. (ed.). Antiquity: society and ideas. Kazan: Master Line; 2001, pp. 6-19. (In Russ.)
11. Cerny J., Groll S. I. A Late Egyptian grammar. Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico; 1993.
12. Vernus P. La non representation segmentale du (premier) participant direct (“sujet”) et la notion de 0. In: Grossman E. et al. (eds). Lingua Aegyptia, Studia Monographica. Bd. 15: On Forms and Functions: Studies in Ancient Egyptian Grammar. Hamburg: Widmaier Verlag; 2014, pp. 257-308.
13. Breasted J. H. Ancient records of Egypt. Vol. 4: The Twentieth to the Twenty-Sixth dynasties. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1906. Available at: https://archive.org/details/BreastedJ.H.AncientRecordsEgyptAll5Vols1906/page/n1133/mode/2up
14. Peden A. Egyptian historical inscriptions of the Twentieth Dynasty. Jonsered: Paul Astroms forlag; 1994.
15. Helck W. Nochmals zu Ramses III. Seevolkerberricht. Studien zur altagyptischen Kultur. 1987:14:129-145. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44322893
16. Redford D. The Medinet Habu records of the foreign wars of Ramses III. Leiden, Boston: Brill; 2018.
17. Safronov A. V. Essays on the history of the Eastern Mediterranean in the 14th and 12th centuries B C. Moscow: Institute of Oriental Studies; 2018. (In Russ.)
18. Carpenter Rh. Discontinuity in Greek civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1966.
19. Drews R. The end of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1993.
20. Safronov A. V. Mention of the war in the north-western Anatolia in the inscriptions of Ramesses III. Vestnik drevnei istorii = Journal of Ancient History. 2006;(4):124-139. (In Russ.) Available at: http://vdi.igh.ru/issues/59/articles/933?locale=en
21. Safronov A. V. To the interpretation of lines 51-52 of Ramses' III 5th year inscription from his mortuary temple in Medinet Habu. Vestnik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo oblastnogo universiteta. Seriya: Istoriya i politicheskie nauki = Bulletin MSRU. Series: History and Political Science. 2009;(1):144-152. (In Russ.) Available at: https://vestnik-mgou.ru/Articles/Doc/508
22. Karlova K. F., Safronov A. V. Rhetorical stela of Ramses III: translation and annotation. Vestnik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo oblastnogo universiteta. Seriya: Istoriya i politicheskie nauki = Bulletin MSRU. Series: History and Political Science. 2019;(4):121-132. (In Russ.) DOI: 10.18384/2310-676X-2019-4-121-132.
23. Safronov A. V. The Greek tradition about Tyrsenians and Pelasgians in Anatolia and its Egyptian counterparts. Indoevropeiskoe yazykoznanie i klassicheskaya filologiya = Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology. 2015;19:803-810. (In Russ.) Available at: https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=23924235
24. Benson D. S. Ancient Egypt's warfare. A survey of armed conflict in the chronology of Ancient Egypt 1600-30 BC. Chicago: D. S. Benson; 1995.
25. Gauthier H. Dictionnaire des noms geographiques contenus dans les textes hieroglyphiques. Tom 6. Le Caire; Societe royale de geographie d’Egypte; 1929. Available at: https://archive.org/details/Gauthier1929/mode/2up
For citation:
Safronov A.V. The Ramses III's inscription and the Trojan War: towards the historiography of the discussion. Orientalistica. 2020;3(3):644-661. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.31696/2618-7043-2020-3-3-644-661
Views: 437
Email this article 