ABSTRACT
Egypt and Nubia are united by the Nile River much more decisively than they are divided by the outcrops of rock impeding river travel, as at the Upper Egypt/Lower Nubia boundary at the First Cataract, or at the Second Cataract, which formed the border during the Middle Kingdom. In the mid-eighteenth Dynasty, the time of Egypt's greatest power, few if any officials involved in the operation of that empire seem to have been concerned with the Libyans. The presence of various Libyan groups within the oases is occasionally mentioned in Egyptian sources, and the oases provide a series of watering/trading points for anyone in the desert. The Egyptian record, in both texts and pictorial depictions, is rich in attestations of Libyans. Low-intensity contact between Egyptians and Tjemehu/Tjehenu typifies Egypto- Libyan relations from the beginning of the dynastic period to the late eighteenth Dynasty.
