And it’s a hello to the Tjehenu: the Early Libyans

Three weeks in the bright sunshine of Cyprus and I`ve finally finished the Libyans.  The “Extroverts” need a dip in Army-painter but I`m quite happy with them.  The zebra skin cloaks on some of these boys were a joy to paint.

I intermingled some javelinmen among the swordsmen, mainly because of parsimony, but I`m quite pleased with them.  I`ve also been hitting the books, trying to find out more about the history and culture of this somewhat enigmatic people.  There's not much to find, because there seems to be an Early Libyan shaped hole in history.

The Egyptians called the Western-Desert the “Red Land.”  This part of Libya is a vast featureless expanse of sand and stone-plateaus with a hyper-arid climate. The coastal-plain (the littoral) is partially protected from the desert’s extremes but it could never compare with the fertility of the Nile Valley.   If the climate change that dried the Sahara was linked to the Sea peoples invasions and the end of the Bronze age, the nomadic tribes must have been increasingly desperate to move into the Nile Delta.
 

Of course the very name “Libya” is a misnomer.  The Libu tribe isn’t recorded until the reign of Merenptah, when they headed the coalition from Western-Cyrenaica,  It was Greek authors who named this harsh environment Libya.  The Egyptian inscriptions are precise and spell out the name of the desert tribesmen phonetically as “Tjehenu.” The temple inscriptions of Seti-I, Merenptah, and Ramesses III all agree on this name.  

My Egyptian civilians.

Among the Greek writers who did look at these people Diodorus scathingly wrote that the Libyans were “nomads who had neither rulers nor laws and lived by raiding and rapine.”  Most conflict involving Egypt and Libya was identified as raids, counter-raids, and petty-revolts.    There is a strong resonance of this in the Tuareg, the Berber tribes who still inhabit parts of the Saharan interior as nomadic pastoralists,  Harshly judged by the colonial powers as “mendacious and masters of surprise tactics” these descendants of the Tjehenu provide a good parallel for their ancestors conflict with Egypt, another colonial power.

The archaeology of the area of the western desert has been understandably neglected.  There were no tombs filled with gold, no heroic poems to follow.  That the tribes finally succeeded and Egypt saw a Libyan dynasty is largely forgotten.   

Oddly enough it is among wargamers that the Early Libyans saw something of a resurgence.  The army was quite popular under DBM as a sort of masochistic counterbalance to the gamery of "perfect army" tournament players.  With the best will in the world an army of the Tjehenu is a bit of a loser.  On the other hand mendacious ... masters of surprise tactics," raiders and petty revolts sound like excellent skirmish material to me.  

My only Egyptian so far, a chariot runner off to warn the Pharaoh. 

So it's on to the Egyptians.  Now I have one army done the "colonial power" needs sorting out and painting up.  Can`t wait to get some games in with these.