Counting hands at Medinet Habu - a Soldiers Payment

Ramses 111 fought the Sea people, a group of foreign people that arrived at the delta of Egypt, they consisted of Philistines Sardinians Cretans and the Danu, his battles and defeated prisoners are shown on all the walls at his mortuary Temple of Medinet Habu, the reliefs symbolically show the ancient Egyptian people that Ramses has defeated the sea peoples invasion of Egypt, and brought order back to his country

Unlike the armies we have today Ramses would pay his soldiers after a battle according to how many men they had killed , so they would brutally chop off the hands or penises of their enemies, these grisly trophies would ensure their reward from the king. On the inner wall behind the round columns, rows of scribes calmly and methodically count and record these grisly spoils of war, from the baskets of blood dripping hands that are  pilled high waiting to be emptied.