Dr. Campbell Price

So you really get that sense of, okay, there is ambition, maybe?

Anxiety is another word.

that you have this city which is essentially an island that you couldn't attack if there was an attack from you know the Hittites you would see the people invading the force some distance away and also you have a kind of standing army waiting

so there is also this feeling of that paramses being like a border frontier town so if the worst were to happen egypt would be prepared so these skirmishes and the the who owns who or who is loyal to who may seem trivial but the bigger political geopolitical military question is

with these rising empires, if something really catastrophic happens and, God forbid, there was an invasion, because this has happened to the Egyptians before and will happen many times in the future, the Egyptians need to be prepared.

So on the eastern front, you have, I mean, Paramus is the one, but we know Ramesses is also building on the western front towards Libya.

And so the westernmost part

like 200 kilometres west of the westernmost branch of the Nile at the time, is a site called Zawiet Amalrakam.

It's a site I've worked at myself as a student.

Very impressive.

We know about the garrison commander.

Was that Professor Stephen Snipes?

That's his excavation.

Yes, Stephen Snipes, Liverpool University Excavations.

uncovered really interesting evidence of kind of local interactions like the local population interacting with the fortress but also prepared in case there was a major influx of libyans from the west and they were right to be suspicious because that's what happens in the reign of ramsay's son which is so interesting that kind of foresight there and but of course you've also got

Yeah, I mean, these have been established probably since the Old Kingdom, but big fortresses built in the Middle Kingdom.

And then we know, yeah, Timur was the first, Timur was the third, really pushed the boundaries there.

So I think it's fair to say there's more general success in beating up the Nubians than there is controlling these people in the Levant.

But...

It doesn't really matter to the ancient Egyptians.