The Battle of Kadesh ended in a stalemate, with both sides declaring victory, but it led to the first written peace treaty in history.
The narrator recounts how Ramesses II's campaign to capture Kadesh fell into a Hittite trap, and despite his heroic self-account, the battle was a draw — ultimately producing the first recorded peace treaty between the two empires. ✦ AI generated
Paul Cooper · Fall of Civilizations · 2024-04-30 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 159:40
Despite the overflowing praise of Ramesses and his glorious victory in the Kadesh poem, the war actually ended with a stalemate, and the question of the city remained unresolved. ... The war was finally brought to an end with what has gone down in history as the first written peace treaty, the text of which has survived.
verbatim transcript · starts at 159:40
159:42Majesty. Ramesses' aim was to capture the strong fortress city of Kadesh, situated along the sandy banks on a fork of the Orontes River. For years now, Kadesh had been playing the Hittites and Egypt off against one another, allying first with one, then the other. Now, Ramesses was determined to finally seize Kadesh for Egypt. He marched north with four of his divisions, named after the gods Amun, Ra,
160:20Seth, and Ptah. With him he brought thousands of chariots, and one unit of elite chariot riders he sent by sea, telling them to land on the coast and ride inland to meet him on the day that he arrived at Kadesh. At first, everything seemed to be going well. On his way, the pharaoh's scouts captured a pair of tribesmen from the Shasu people, who told him that the
160:50Hittite king was cowering further to the north. He was afraid of the might of Egypt, they said. He had left Kadesh defenseless. Excited by this news, Ramesses threw all caution to the wind and hastened northward to seize the city with only one of his four divisions, his prided Amun troops, but this would prove to be a fatal mistake. Ramesses didn't know it yet, but these Shasu tribesmen were actually agents of the Hittite king sent to lure
161:25him into a trap. When he arrived at Kadesh, Ramesses set up his camp beside a stony brook, and his scouts set out into the surrounding landscape to detect any threats. Some of these scouts ran into a pair of Hittite soldiers who had been lying low in the undergrowth, watching them. They skirmished and the Egyptians managed to capture the Hittites. After perhaps a stern beating, these men revealed what lay waiting for the Egyptians nearby, the full might of