section_path: Military campaigns/Syrian campaigns/Later Syrian campaigns
section_name: Later Syrian campaigns
paragraph_text: Later Syrian campaigns
  
  Ramesses extended his military successes in his eighth and ninth years. He crossed the Dog River (Nahr al-Kalb) and pushed north into Amurru. His armies managed to march as far north as Dapur, where he had a statue of himself erected. The Egyptian pharaoh thus found himself in northern Amurru, well past Kadesh, in Tunip, where no Egyptian soldier had been seen since the time of Thutmose III, almost 120 years earlier. He laid siege to Dapur before capturing it, and returning to Egypt. By November 1272 BC, Ramesses was back in Egypt, at Heliopolis. His victory in the north proved ephemeral. After having reasserted his power over Canaan, Ramesses led his army north. A mostly illegible stele at the Dog River near Beirut, which appears to be dated to the king's second year, was probably set up there in his tenth (1269 BC). The thin strip of territory pinched between Amurru and Kadesh did not make for a stable possession. Within a year, they had returned to the Hittite fold, so that Ramesses had to march against Dapur once more in his tenth year. This time he claimed to have fought the battle without even bothering to put on his corslet, until two hours after the fighting began. Six of Ramesses's youthful sons, still wearing their side locks, took part in this conquest. He took towns in Retjenu, and Tunip in Naharin, later recorded on the walls of the Ramesseum. This second success at the location was equally as meaningless as his first, as neither power could decisively defeat the other in battle. In year eighteen, Ramesses erected a stele at Beth Shean, on 19 January, 1261 BC.