This account describes the trip of the Egyptian official Wenamun to purchase Lebanese wood to make a large ceremonial boat named Amen-user-he for the god Amen-Ra. It is unknown whether this text describes a real mission, but the text reflects the political and economic situation in the decade from 1190 to 1180 B.C.E. Wenamun negotiated with the prince of Byblos, a Phoenician city-state in present-day Lebanon, for the timber, encountering great frustrations.

When morning came, he [the prince of Byblos] sent and brought me up…. Then he spoke to me, saying: “On what business have you come?” I said to him: “I have come in quest of timber for the great noble bark of Amen-Ra, King of Gods. What your father did, what the father of your father did, you too will do it.” So I said to him. He said to me: “True, they did it. If you pay me for doing it, I will do it. My relations carried out this business after Pharaoh had sent six ships laden with the goods of Egypt, and they had been unloaded into their storehouses. You, what have you brought for me? … What are these foolish travels they made you do?”

I said to him: “Wrong! These are not foolish travels that I am doing. There is no ship on the river that does not belong to [the god] Amun. His is the sea and his the Lebanon of which you say, ‘It is mine.’ It is a growing ground for [the ceremonial ship called] Amen-user-he, the lord of every ship…. You are prepared to haggle over the Lebanon with Amun, its lord? As to your saying, the former kings sent silver and gold: If they had owned life and health, they would not have sent these things. It was in place of life and health that they sent these things to your fathers! But Amen-Ra, King of Gods, he is the lord of life and health, and he was the lord of your fathers! They passed their lifetimes [making] offering to Amun. You too, you are the servant of Amun!” …

He placed my letter in the hand of his messenger; and he loaded the keel, the prow-piece, and the stern-piece, together with four other hewn logs, seven in all, and sent them to Egypt. His messenger who had gone to Egypt returned to me in Syria in the first month of winter, Smendes and Tentamun [the pharaoh and queen of the northern half of Egypt, Wenamun’s employers] having sent: four jars and one kakmen-vessel of gold; five jars of silver; ten garments of royal linen; ten … garments of fine linen; five-hundred smooth linen mats; five-hundred ox-hides; five-hundred ropes; twenty sacks of lentils; and thirty baskets of fish….

The prince rejoiced. He assigned three hundred men and three hundred oxen, and he set supervisors over them to have them fell the timbers. They were felled and they lay there during the winter. In the third month of summer they dragged them to the shore of the sea. The prince came out and stood by them, and he sent to me, saying: “Come!” … As I stood before him, he addressed me, saying: “Look, the business my fathers did in the past, I have done it, although you did not do for me what your fathers did for mine. Look, the last of your timber has arrived and is ready. Do as I wish, and come to load it.

Source: Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. II, The New Kingdom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 226–228. © 2006 by the Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press.

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