You really are a dolt. Ancient Egyptians are just like you. They dismiss their defeats and ignore their incongruities.
Ancient Egyptians had a strong tendency to avoid recording major military defeats or national disasters in official monumental inscriptions, focusing instead on glorifying pharaonic victories and divine favor for propaganda, so major losses were often minimized, ignored, or presented favorably, fitting a common pattern in ancient record-keeping. While official accounts omit them, some scholars argue that tactical analyses of defeats might exist in less public documents, but monuments universally celebrate triumphs.
Why Defeats Were Ignored
- Propaganda: Temple walls and stelae were designed to exalt the pharaoh as a divine ruler, so negative events undermined this image.
- Divine Order: A defeat suggested a disruption of the cosmic order (Ma'at), which was contrary to the message official records aimed to convey.
- Historical Norm: This practice wasn't unique to Egypt; many ancient cultures favored recording victories over defeats.
Examples & Nuances
- Merneptah Stele: While praising victories, it mentions conflict with Israel, showing some interaction, but doesn't detail losses.
- Subtlety: While outright admissions of defeat were rare, some evidence suggests they might have analyzed failures in less public, perhaps military, contexts, but this is less common in surviving monumental texts.
In essence, if an event didn't serve the pharaoh's divine image, it often didn't make it into the enduring public record, especially if it was a setback.
