Siege of Dapur 1271 BC
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
About the battle
The siege of Dapur occurred as part of Pharaoh Ramesses II's campaign to suppress Galilee and conquer Syria in 1269 BC. He described his campaign on the wall of his mortuary temple, the Ramesseum in Thebes, Egypt. The inscriptions say that Dapur was "in the land of Hatti". Although Dapur has often been identified with Tabor in Canaan, Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen argues that this identification is incorrect and that the Dapur in question was in Syria, north of Kadesh.
Egyptian reliefs depict Dapur as a heavily fortified settlement with both inner and outer walls and situated on a rocky hill, which was usual for Bronze Age settlements in Syria and abroad, Egypt was also fortified.
Contemporary illustrations of the siege show the use of ladders, chariots, and mounted cavalry with Egyptian soldiers climbing scale ladders supported by archers. Six of the sons of Ramesses, still wearing their sidelocks of youth, also appear on those depictions of the siege. Those include:
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of Dapur (revision 1376047116), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
Nearby battles
- Battle of Kadesh 1274 BC · 2 km
- Second Battle of al-Qusayr 2013 · 7 km
- First Battle of al-Qusayr 2012 · 7 km
- Battle of Emesa 272 · 25 km
- Siege of Emesa 635 · 26 km
- Second Battle of Homs 1281 · 26 km
Browse more: battles in Syria · Asia · Ancient battles