A Fortaleza de Buhen: um ponto estratégico para o Egipto do Império Médio

Abstract

One of the main challenges presented to the Egyptian pharaohs of the Middle Empire was to hold the incursions of the nomad tribes (the sand runners) through the oriental border of the Delta, which had, in previous periods, disturbed the social and administrative order of the Egyptian state. In order to do so, they built a defensive line of fortresses near Sinai (the so called Wall of the Prince) and the military expeditions multiplied in the region. Down South, the Lower Nubia was integrated in the Egyptian territory and in the area of the second cataract of the Nile and there were also built several fortresses throughout the region. These, however, seem to have overpassed the strictly military purposes. The analysis of these structures seems to indicate that there was, in fact, a different kind of concerns and objectives: the fortress line of Kush (designation of Nubia in Egyptian language), area of a great concentration of fortresses, had a double purpose: to control the goods coming from the Nubian mines and from the South (jewelry, leopard fur, ivory, etc.) and to mark the effectiveness of the Egyptian power over the Nubians and Nubia. In this sense, the old fortress of Buhen – the first one to be built in the Dynasty XII, in the reign of Senuseret III, around 1860 B.C., on the left bank of the Nile – is a good example, of an enormous strategic value, that facilitated the control of the caravans and the vessels of goods transport, due to the narrow width of the river in that area, that allows us to characterize the action of the pharaohs of the period.