Tell Tweini: A Multi-Period Harbour Town at the Syrian Coast

The Tale of Wenamun is known from a single papyrus reportedly recovered from el-Hiba in Middle Egypt more than a century ago. The literary composition takes the form of an official report which relates the journey of an Egyptian bureaucrat Wenamun and his unfortunate robbery at Dor. By means of a legal analysis of the composition, drawing on Ancient Near Eastern legal principles known from the Amarna letters and elsewhere, this study identifies the source of Wenamun's misfortune specifically as a lack of Egyptian ships and crews in the Mediterranean at the time of the tale's composition. It furthermore supports recent hypotheses that the text was meant to convey an implicit political argument for Egyptian unification.