The smiting of the enemies scenes in the mortuary temple of Ramses III at medinet Habu

The ritual scenes of smiting the enemies are a topos of the Egyptian ico-nography of military nature which goes through Egyptian history almost in its entirety, from the 4th millennium BC until the 2nd century AD. Regarding to the New Kingdom there are innumerable known and sig-nificant cases that we can evoke as examples. There is, however, one ex-traordinary example, by the profusion of that kind of scenes in almost every room and its components, which arises a noteworthy emphasis: the mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, built for Ramses III (c. 1182 – 1151 BC), second pharaoh of the 20th Dynasty and for many scholars the last great pharaoh of the New Kingdom. In this text we will pass in detailed review these scenes, explaining and interpreting the underlying ideological message as the function of its recur-rent and appealing iconographic utilization, as in the function of the space-architectural localization where they are to be found at the Medinet Habu complex.As cenas rituais de massacre dos inimigos são um topos da iconografia egípcia de cariz militar que atravessa quase toda a história egípcia, do IV milénio a.C. ao séc. II d.C. No que ao Império Novo diz respeito, são inú-meros os casos conhecidos e significativos que se podem evocar a título de exemplo. Há, porém, um caso extraordinário, pela profusão deste tipo de cenas praticamente em todas as suas divisões e componentes, que suscita um merecido destaque: o templo funerário de Medinet Habu, edificado para Ramsés III (c. 1182-1151 a.C.), segundo faraó da XX dinastia e para muitos estudiosos o último grande faraó do Império Novo