# The Other as seen by the Kemite in literature  
It is therefore interesting to compare Kmt's perception of the Western Asiatic within this framework. The hieroglyphic sign for 'highland' and 'desert' was the same; the mountain in Kmt which surrounded the valley was of red soil - desert - and the Western Asian was viewed as coming from the desert. Thus, according to John Wilson (2000, p. 65), 'the Egyptian pictorially grouped the foreigner with the beast of the desert and pictorially denied the foreigner the blessings of fertility and uniformity'. This is not to say, however, that the Kemites denied settlement to these peoples; rather, they restricted them, like they did all foreigners, to certain settlements. Libyans were settled in the western desert and Western Asians, in the delta region and the eastern desert.  
The association of topographical descriptions with human characteristics does not enter a people's consciousness and language without some basis; in Kmt's clear-cut philosophical view of the world, the belligerence and semiimpoverishment of Western Asian peoples were features which conformed to its description of them. The Western Asian was seen as a beast of the desert because of his hostile attacks upon the land of Kmt. (The Amarna Letters illustrate the political validity and consequence of Kmt's relations and the resultant evolution of Kmt's protective colonial policies: royal intermarriage of the Asian king's daughter with Kmt's king in a system of plural wives, and assimilationist colonial policies pursued by Kmt which ultimately terminated in Asian revolt and plunder.)  
Thus with the persistence of these attacks, the desert inhabitant was characterized as beastly. This is reflected in the writings of Merikare, who perceived the Asian as a nomadic plunderer: 'He does not live in a single place, but his feet wander. He has been fighting since the time of Horus, but he conquers not, nor is he conquered [...] He may plunder a lonely settlement, but