Open AccessThe Ramses III's inscription and the Trojan War: towards the historiography of the discussion
Author(s) -
А.В. Сафронов
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
orientalistica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2687-0738
pISSN - 2618-7043
DOI - 10.31696/2618-7043-2020-3-3-644-661
Subject(s) - historiography , trojan , interpretation (philosophy) , epic , context (archaeology) , argument (complex analysis) , reign , history , literature , classics , ancient history , philosophy , politics , art , law , political science , archaeology , linguistics , biochemistry , chemistry , computer security , computer science
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.