Hello and welcome back to the history of Egypt Podcast, episode 191, Libya minus one.

Today we explore an incident in the reign of Seti I, the King of Egypt and his army, go forth into the West.

There to wage war, take prisoners and plunder all they can.

It is an episode of military conquest, enslavement, The year was 1298 B.C. E. approximately. Reginal year 6, under the majesty of King Men Mahatra.

Seti I, the ruler of Egypt, was now half a decade into his reign.

Previously, the king had led numerous campaigns and wars in the northern

regions of Kanan and Syria. He had attacked, subjugated and battled against numerous foes, and every time he had returned in glorious victory.

At least, that is the image we get from Cettie's Royal Monuments.

The Great Temple of Karnak in the modern city of Luxor contains a full suite of Ceties war reliefs. Here, on the outer walls of the King's hypostyle hall, we find many scenes of the

Pharaoh going to battle. Most of these images seem to focus on the north, The series of campaigns that King Seti led into the lands of

Sinai, Canaan, Lebanon and Syria. Across the wall at Karnak most of Seti's images deal with this region.

But among those scenes, there is one geographic outlier.

A scene in which Seti does not go north, but rather wages war in the west.

Seti's Libyan war is a strange interlude in his Carnac war reliefs.

It's the only scene out of all the surviving areas that shows a campaign somewhere other than the north.

Amidst all his glorious conquests, Seti suddenly makes a detour to attack the Libyans.

The war itself is depicted in four major scenes,

showing Seti attacking the Libyans,

defeating their chieftains,

gathering up prisoners, and then presenting his victory to the gods.

It is a whirlwind of military and religious imagery.

The scene itself is large and quite elaborate and before we begin I should note if you want to see these images and all of cities war reliefs

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