years.

We have no reason to doubt that the campaigns of Ramses III. in Asia
were equally historical. The great confederacy of northern barbarians
and Asiatic invaders which had poured down upon Egypt had been utterly
annihilated; the Egyptian army was flushed with victory, and Syria,
overrun as it had been by the invaders from the north, was in no
position to resist a fresh attack. Moreover, the safety of Egypt
required that Ramses should follow up the destruction of his assailants
by carrying the war into Asia. But it is noticeable that the places he
claims to have conquered, whether in Canaan or further north, lay along
the lines of two high-roads, and that the names of the great towns even
on these high-roads are for the most part conspicuously absent. The
names, however, are practically those already enumerated by Ramses II.,
and they occur in the same order. But the list given by Ramses III.
could not have been copied from the older list of Ramses II. for a very
sufficient reason. In some instances the names as given by the earlier
monarch are mis-spelt, letters having been omitted in them or wrong
letters having been written in place of the right ones, while in the
list of Ramses III. the same names are correctly written.

Seti I., the father of Ramses II., seems to have been too fully engaged
in his wars in Northern Syria, and in securing the road along the coast
of the Mediterranean, to attempt the re-conquest of Palestine. At
Qurnah, however, we find the names of 'Aka or Acre, Zamith, Pella,
Beth-el (Beth-sha-il), Inuam, Kimham (Jer. xli. 17), Kamdu, Tyre, Usu,
Beth-Anath, and Carmel among those of the cities he had vanquished, but
there is no trace of any occupation of Southern Canaan. That seems to
have come later with the beginning of his son's reign.