The Sebek-khu Stele, also known as the Stele of Khu-sobek, is an inscription in honour of a man named Sebek-khu (Khu-sobek), who lived during the reign of

Senusret III Khakaure Senusret III (also written as Senwosret III or the hellenised form, Sesostris III) was a pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, Egypt. He ruled from 1878 BC to 1839 BC during a time of great power and prosperity, and was the fifth king of the Twelfth ...

(reign: 1878 – 1839 BC) discovered by

John Garstang John Garstang (5 May 1876 – 12 September 1956) was a British archaeologist of the Ancient Near East, especially Egypt, Sudan, Anatolia and the southern Levant. He was the younger brother of Professor Walter Garstang, FRS, a marine biol ...

in 1901 outside Khu-sobek's tomb at

Abydos, Egypt Abydos ( or ; Sahidic ') is one of the oldest cities of ancient Egypt, and also of the Ta-wer, eighth Nome (Egypt), nome in Upper Egypt. It is located about west of the Nile at latitude 26° 10' N, near the modern Egyptian towns of El Araba ...

, and now housed in the

Manchester Museum Manchester Museum is a museum displaying works of archaeology, anthropology and natural history and is owned by the University of Manchester, in England. Sited on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road (A34 road, A34) at the heart of the university's group ...

. The text is largely about Khu-sobek's life, and is historically important because it records the earliest known Egyptian military campaign in

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

(or elsewhere in Asia). The text reads "His Majesty proceeded northward to overthrow the Asiatics. His Majesty reached a foreign country of which the name was Sekmem (...) Then Sekmem fell, together with the wretched Retenu", where Sekmem (s-k-m-m) is thought to be

Shechem Shechem ( ; , ; ), also spelled Sichem ( ; ) and other variants, was an ancient city in the southern Levant. Mentioned as a Canaanite city in the Amarna Letters, it later appears in the Hebrew Bible as the first capital of the Kingdom of Israe ...

References

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External links

The stela of Sebek-khu, the earliest record of an Egyptian campaign in Asia (1914)
19th century BC in Egypt 19th-century BC steles 1901 archaeological discoveries Ancient Egyptian stelas Shechem Abydos, Egypt Archaeological discoveries in Egypt