OCR
alone."? At the same time, Brand is not convinced of the dating of the stele under the coregency, and he suggests that it was made during the first year of Ramesses II when he sought to link himself with the memory of his deceased father.“ Brand builds his theory upon the figures of Ashahebused below and the man on the right above facing left, towards the man on the left, as he would be the subject of the offering, which in fact is also supported by the orientation of the lotus flowers facing left on the offering table in the upper register. In addition, although Ramesses II is also mentioned in the inscription below, it mainly praises Sety I. The simple form of the prenomen of Ramesses II, appearing only as Usermaatre, implies that the stele was made during his 2" year at the latest, when, from a certain but undeterminable point of this year, he started to use his prenomen in its compound form as Usermaatre Setepenre.‘# Based on this fact, during this time between the 8" year of Sety I and the making of the stele No. 250, Ramessesashahebused advanced in his career and besides his title ‘valiant troop commander’, he acquired another functional title: wdpw nswt ‘royal wdpw’. Based on the uncertainties of the date of the stele, it cannot be ascertained for certain which king appointed him to this position. The third stele, No. 252, is very close in date to the previous one, dated to the 2" year of Ramesses II, definitely under his sole reign. In the lunette of the stele, the king is presented making an offering to Re-Harakhti, with nine lines of inscription below containing praise to the ruler. At the bottom of the monument a double scene took place with the figures of Ashahebused and Amenemope on the left and the right respectively, adoring the cartouches of the king in the middle. In this case, however, the depiction of Amenemope is not a later addition, but was rather carved at the same time as the whole decoration, thus, the stele was erected conjointly by the two officials. Ashahebused bore the same titles as on stele No. 250, with only a small addition to his ‘royal wdpw’ title, namely wdpw nswt n hm=f royal wdpw of His Majesty’. Amenemope also appears in the function as earlier: hrj-pd.t 3 hnm.t R‘-ms-sw mrj-Jmn ‘troop commander of the Well of Ramesses II’. The last monument from Serabit el-Khadim is a fragment of a stele again, No. 260, depicting the feet of two figures: son of the king, Prince Meriatum, and Ashahebused. Spalinger also dates this fragment to the first two regnal years of Ramesses II based on the spelling of his nomen,“ however, the representation of Meriatum, the sixteenth son 42 Spalinger, 1980, 218; Kitchen, 1993c, 59. For a detailed discussion on the activities of Ramesses II during the reign of his father, see Murnane, 1975; Spalinger, 1979. 68 Brand, 2000, 126-127. 4 Spalinger, 1980, 218-219. For a detailed discussion on the praenomen of Ramesses II, see Murnane, 1975, 158-161. 445 Spalinger, 1980, 220.