Greek traditions of Sesostris, Senwosret I. is shown by the monuments to have been the first Egyptian conqueror of Nubia. Sethe (p. 17) places the southern limit of his conquest at Wadi Haifa, just below the second cataract, his triumphal tablet[1] having been found at that place. But it was at least 40 miles further south than this, for the list of conquered districts on the above tablet contains the name Sha't (Š’t). Now Shat is mentioned some 500 years later by Thutmose (Thotmes) III. on the walls of his temple at Kummeh (40 miles above Wadi Haifa) as the place where the stone for this temple was obtained. Hence Sha't is in the vicinity of this temple, and of course above it on the river.[2] As Kummeh on the east shore, and its pendant fort on the west shore, formed the extreme southern frontier of Nubia afterward, permanently maintained by Senwosret I.'s family (the Twelfth Dynasty), the interesting fact appears that he himself conquered to the extreme limit all the territory afterward held by his dynasty. This fact is quite sufficient to account for the initial fame of his achievements, which ultimately made him the hero of tradition, absorbing not merely the reputations of the other Senwosrets of his dynasty, but also much of the glory of the Asiatic conquests which culminated 500 years later.
Sethe's results therefore add not a little lustre to the name of Senwosret I., the conqueror of Nubia, nearly 2000 B. C, and lend new dignity to the great Twelfth Dynasty. He is also to be congratulated on a brilliant and solid contribution to the study of Greek sources, and he has incidentally again illustrated how nearly useless for early Egyptian history such sources are, unless controlled by contemporary monuments.
f{sc|Histories}} of the Apostolic Age of the Christian Church vary somewhat painfully with the country in which they are written. Weizsacker in Germany, McGiffert in America, Bartlet in England present diverse pictures according to their measure of scientific spirit and their critical judgments as to the date and value of the sources. The comfort which perplexed students have felt in the growing consensus of German critics respecting the chronology of early Christian documents will be disturbed by this work of Professor Bartlet, whose canon of apostolicity is more confident even than that of the early Church, and whose chronological distribution of the documents is sadly at variance with modern German and
- ↑ The writer is about to publish the first complete copy of this tablet in the next number of the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, London. ("The Wadi Halfa Stela of Senwosret I.")
- ↑ The second cataract extends below the temple, hence the Sha't quarries must have been above the temple, for it is impossible to drag stone boats up the cataract.
