.
However, as stated before, these annals were created as records of the king by a royal scribe and are very boastful and extravagant. Of a battle against the Mitanni it is recorded that, " many troops were overthrown in the completion of an hour, quite gone, as if they had never come into being- While, of course, this could have been true, the "many troops" must have been a small number compared to the Egyptian army, if they had defeated them in one hour, illustrating to the historian the sense of arrogance in these annals. Another example of this exaggeration is the account of the king fighting and killing elephants, " in a herd of 120." Although the scribe claims this to have, "said this without boasting therein, and without equivocation," it is very hard to believe and therefore allows the historian to question the integrity of the rest of the records, as they too lend themselves to be rather highly coloured. .
While the lists of rewards and booty collected from the different towns seem long, a closer look reveals the towns to be of small sizes with small numbers of people, indicating a rather easy conquest for the Egyptians - no wonder Thut-mose III carried out so many campaigns, they must have been fairly easy to undertake. So while, on the one hand, the many campaigns show the strength and determination of Thut-mose III, the army usually only conquered small towns so they only seemed to be big conquests. Again, this makes it hard for the historian to judge the full extent of the annals legitimacy. Also, the problem would be that these annals, inscribed in the temple at Karnak, were meant for the gods to read and so therefore would make the king seem as great as he could, in order for the gods to reward him in his after-life. .
However, while the annals may have only been intended for the gods at the time, they have enabled Thut-mose III's reputation and his reign over Egypt to be remembered and revered.