Past Perfect: On a Mission from God

It’s not easy being a messenger of the gods. Consider, for example, the trials of the ancient Egyptian Wenamun. Around 1100 B.C., Wenamun, a high-ranking official at the Temple of Amun at Karnak, undertook a holy mission to Phoenicia to purchase lumber for the ceremonial barge of the god Amun. Egyptian priests and temple officials had been obtaining supplies from Phoenicia for generations, but Wenamun’s journey was complicated by a shifting political landscape: The once mighty Egyptian empire was entering a period of economic and military decline. Many of the territories formerly controlled by Egypt had become small independent states. As Wenamun traveled from Egypt to the Levantine coastal city of Dor to Byblos in Phoenicia, he was plagued with financial woes, uncooperative government officials and hostile locals. When our long-suffering temple official finally returned to his native land, he set down a lively and picaresque narrative of his misadventures. Preserved on a tattered fragment of 3,000-year-old papyrus, Wenamun’s chronicle provides one of the few informal, first-person accounts of life in this period. It also offers readers a rare and haunting glimpse of a powerful empire in its autumnal years.—Ed.