The Treatment of Foreigners in Seti's Battle Reliefs *

Abstract

In Seti I's Karnak battle reliefs, each of the four complete campaigns describes the defeated foreigners as bringing ‘tribute on their backs’. The depictions of these foreigners, however, portray them as captives of the king, bound and unable to carry anything at all. This article compares these textual and pictorial portrayals with examples from the Eighteenth Dynasty, and argues that the texts convey the foreigners' submission to the king, while the images of contorted and struggling bodies evoke their ‘not knowing Egypt’, a reference to their lack of accord with maat which is contrained only by the bindings that the king controls.