the two lands". At the right of Nyuserre is a dedication to "Thoth, lord of the foreign lands, who has made pure libations". This expedition departed Egypt from the port of Ain Sukhna, on the western shore of the Gulf of Suez, as revealed by seal impressions bearing Nyuserre's name found on the site. The port comprised large galleries carved into the sandstone serving as living quarters and storage places. The wall of one such gallery was inscribed with a text in ink mentioning the expedition to Sinai and dating it to the year of the second cattle countpossibly Nyuserre's fourth year on the throne. To the south of Egypt, in Lower Nubia, Nyuserre exploited the gneiss quarries of Gebel el-Asr near Aswan, which provided material for buildings and statues, as shown by a fragmentary stone stela inscribed with Nyuserre's Horus name that was discovered in a settlement adjacent to the quarries. Military activity There is little evidence for military action during Nyuserre's reign. William C. Hayes proposed that a few fragmentary limestone statues of kneeling and bound prisoners of war discovered in his mortuary temple possibly attest to punitive raids in Libya to the west or the Sinai and Palestine to the east during his reign. The art historian William Stevenson Smith has pointed out, that such statues were customary elements of the decoration of royal temples and mastabas, suggesting that they may not be immediately related to actual military campaigns. Similar statues and small wooden figures of kneeling captives were discovered in the mortuary complexes of Neferefre, Djedkare Isesi, Unas, Teti, Pepi I and Pepi II as well as in the tomb of vizier Senedjemib Mehi. Main building activities Assuming Verner's reconstruction of the Fifth Dynasty royal family, Nyuserre Ini faced an enormous task when he ascended the throne: his father, mother and brother had all left their pyramids unfinished, his father's and brother's sun temples were unfinished too and he had to construct his own pyramid as well as those of his queens. Nyuserre met this challenge by placing his pyramid in the immediate vicinity of the unfinished ones, on the north-eastern corner of that of Neferirkare Kakai and next to that of Sahure, thereby concentrating all pyramid building activities in South Abusir, in an area of . This meant that his pyramid was out of the alignment formed by the preceding ones, limited its size and