Image Details

Medinet Habu Temple. Ramesses III’s mortuary temple contains reliefs showing the naval battle scene between the Egyptians and the Sea Peoples (see photo and drawing) and reliefs of captured Sea Peoples (photo). The battle took place in about 1177 B.C. and pitted the Sea Peoples, who were arriving en masse in the eastern Mediterranean from the Aegean, against the dominant Egyptian empire. In the hieroglyphic text accompanying the Medinet Habu reliefs and in a document known as Papyrus Harris I, Ramesses III claims to have repulsed the Sea Peoples and, according to some scholars, to have settled them, under his tutelage, in Canaan.