When the New Kingdom was on the point of collapse around. 1050 B.C.E., a story was written about an Egyptian envoy who had been sent to Lebanon to purchase timber for some restoration work on the great sacred river barge of the god Amun, Egypt's national god." during this period. Opinions have differed through the years as to whether the account of Wenamun's voyage is a work of fiction or a genuine report produced by Wenamun himself; the balance of opinion today is that, the tale is a literary work, not an administrative document. What is perhaps most surprising about the tale is that it contains unmistakable elements of satire directed at Egypt itself and its loss of influence in Syria-Palestine, an area which for the previous five hundred years had normally been under Egypt's political and...