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The Battle of
Kadesh took place between the forces of Ramesses II's Egypt
and the Hittites of Muwatalli II at the city of Kadesh, the
modern Tell Nebi Mend,[7] on the Orontes River of modern
Syria. The battle is generally dated to 1274 BC, around Year
5 III Shemu day 9 of Ramesses II's reign when the Pharaoh
arrived in the vicinity of Kadesh[8] (or more precisely May
12, 1274 BC based on Ramesses' commonly accepted accession
date in 1279 BC). It was probably the largest chariot battle
ever fought, involving perhaps 5,000 chariots.
Background
After
expelling the Hyksos 15th dynasty, the native Egyptian New
Kingdom rulers became more aggressive in reclaiming control
of their state's borders. Thutmose I, Thutmose III and his
son and coregent Amenhotep II fought battles from Megiddo
North to the Orontes river, including conflict with Kadesh.
Many of the
Egyptian campaign accounts between c.1400 and 1300 BC
reflect the general destabilization of the region of the
Djahi. The reigns of Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III were
undistinguished except that Egypt continued to lose
territory to Mitanni in northern Syria.
During the
late Egyptian 18th dynasty, the Amarna Letters [9] tell the
story of the decline of Egyptian influence in the region.
The Egyptians showed flagging interest here until almost the
end of the dynasty. Horemheb, the last ruler of this
dynasty, campaigned in this region, finally beginning to
turn Egyptian interest back to this region. This process
continued in the 19th Dynasty. Like his father Ramesses I,
Seti I was a military commander and set out to restore
Egypt's empire to the days of the Tuthmosis kings almost a
century before. Inscriptions on Karnak temple walls record
the details of his campaigns into Canaan and Syria. He took
20,000 men and reoccupied abandoned Egyptian posts and
garrisoned cities. He made an informal peace with the
Hittites, took control of coastal areas along the
Mediterranean, and continued to campaign in Canaan. A second
campaign led him to briefly capture Kadesh where a stela
commemorated his victory and his son and heir Ramesses II
campaigned with him. However, this city would soon lapse
back into Hittite control.
The
immediate antecedents to the Battle of Kadesh were the early
campaigns of Ramesses II into Canaan. In the fourth year of
his reign, he marched north into Syria, capturing the
Hittite vassal state of Amurru.[10] The recovery of Amurru
was Muwatalli's stated motivation for marching south to
confront the Egyptians. Ramesses marched north the 5th year
of his reign, and encountered the Hittites at Kadesh.
Kadesh
Campaign
Ramesses's
army crossed the Egyptian border in the spring of Year five
of his reign and after a month's march reached the area of
Kadesh from the south. The army was divided into four
divisions, Amun, P're, Seth and the apparently newly formed
Ptah division.[11]
The Hittite
king Muwatalli, who had mustered several of his allies
(among them Rimisharrinaa, the king of Aleppo), had
positioned his troops behind "Old Kadesh", but Ramesses,
misled by two spies whom the Egyptians had captured, thought
they were at Aleppo.
Battle
As Ramesses
and the Egyptian advance guard approached the city, two
Shasu Bedouin prisoners were captured and revealed that the
entire Hittite army and their king were actually near to
hand, hidden behind the city to the east. Immediately
Ramesses sent messengers to hasten the coming of the Ptah
and Setekh divisions of his army, which were still on the
far side of the river Orontes. Before Ramesses could
organize his troops, Muwatalli's chariots attacked the P're
division, which was routed, and plundered the Egyptian camp.
In the Egyptian account of the battle, Ramesses describes
himself as being deserted and surrounded by enemies;
"...No
officer was with me, no charioteer, no soldier of the army,
no shield-bearer ..."[12]
Only through the gods did Ramesses personally defeat his
attackers and return to the Egyptian lines;
"...I was
before them like Seth in his monument. I found the mass of
chariots in whose midst I was, scattering them before my
horses..."
Meanwhile a
small group of Egyptian chariotry had formed, made up of
Ramesses, his personal bodyguard and some of the chariots
recovered from the broken divisions of Amon and Re. At this
time a troop contingent from Amurru called Ne'arin, suddenly
arrived, surprising the Hittites. Ramesses reorganized his
forces and drove the Hittites back across the Orontes.
Muwatalli sent an additional 1,000 chariots against the
Egyptians, but the Hittite forces were almost surrounded and
retreated back across the Orontes River to join their
infantry.
Ramesses
recorded the names of the Hittite allies who opposed him;
among them are the following: 1) Pi-da-sa, 2)
Da-ar-d(a)-an-ya, 3) Ma-sa, 4) Qa-r(a)-qi-sa, 5) Ru-ka, and
6) Arzawa. The first name has been associated with Pedasos
in Mysia of the Troad south of Troy, the second with the
Dardanoi of the Troad, the third with southwest Anatolia,
the fourth with Caria, the fifth with Lukka/Lycia, and the
sixth with Arzawa in western Anatolia.[13]
The next morning, a second, inconclusive battle was fought.
Muwatalli is reported by Ramesses to have called for a truce
but this may be propaganda since Hittite records note no
such arrangement. Neither side gained total victory. The
Egyptians had suffered heavy casualties and Kadesh's
defenses remained unbroken. Muwutalli's army, though
bloodied, was intact and posed a formidable force to the
Egyptians.
Aftermath
Ramesses
prudently gathered his troops and retreated south towards
Damascus, and ultimately back to Egypt. Once back in Egypt,
Ramesses proclaimed that he had won a great victory but in
reality all he had managed to do was to rescue his army.[14]
In a sense, however, the Battle of Kadesh was a personal
triumph for Ramesses since after blundering into a
devastating Hittite ambush, the young king had courageously
rallied his scattered troops to fight on the battlefield
while escaping death or capture.
Hittite
records from Boghazkoy tell of a very different conclusion
to the battle where a humiliated Ramesses was forced to
depart from Kadesh in defeat. The Hittite king, Muwatalli
II, continued to successfully campaign as far south as the
Egyptian province of Upi (Apa), which he placed under the
control of his brother Hattusili III.[15] Egypt's sphere of
influence in Asia was now restricted to Canaan.[16] Even
this was threatened for a time and Ramesses was compelled to
embark on a series of campaigns in Canaan in order to uphold
his authority there before he could initiate further
assaults against the Hittite Empire in his Years 8 and 9
when he successfully captured the cities of Dapur and Tunip.[17]
The
conflicts were finally concluded by a peace treaty in 1258
BC, in the 21st year of Ramesses II's reign, with Hattusili
III, the new king of the Hittites.[18] The treaty that was
established was inscribed on a silver tablet, of which a
clay copy survived in the Hittite capital of Hattusa, in
modern Turkey, and is on display at the Istanbul Archaeology
Museum. An enlarged replica of the Kadesh agreement hangs on
a wall at the headquarters of the United Nations, as one of
the earliest international peace treaties. Its text, in the
Hittite version, appears in the links below. An Egyptian
version survives in a papyrus. |
References
-
Lorna
Oakes, Pyramids, Temples & Tombs of Ancient Egypt: An
Illustrated Atlas of the Land of the Pharaohs, Hermes
House: 2003. p.142
-
Mark Healy,
Armies of the Pharaohs, Osprey Publishing, 2000. p.39
-
Joyce
Tyldesley, Ramesses: Egypt's Greatest Pharaoh, Penguin
Books, 2001. p.68
-
The New
Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Vol. 9: Micropaedia, "Ramesses
II", 15th edition: 2003. p.928
-
Tyldesley,
op. cit., p.68
-
Trevor
Bryce, The Kingdom of the Hittites, p.257 Bryce writes
the 3,500 figure may be an exaggeration but notes this
number was from Ramesses's records
-
Kitchen,
K.A, "Ramesside Inscriptions", Volume 2, Blackwell
Publishing Limited, 1996, pp.16-17
BAR III, p.317
-
Moran,
William L., "The Amarna Letters", Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1992
-
Grimal,
Nicolas, A History of Ancient Egypt (1994) pp. 253ff.
-
Gardiner,
Sir Alan (1964). Egypt of the Pharaohs. Oxford
University Press, p. 260.
-
Lichtheim,
Miriam (1976). Ancient Egyptian Literature. Berkeley:
University of California Press, p.65.
-
Barnett
1975, 359-62; Breasted 1906, 3:123ff.; Gardiner 1961,
262ff.
-
Nicholas
Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, Blackwell Books:
1992, p.256
-
Joyce
Tyldesley, Ramesses: Egypt's Greatest Pharaoh, Penguin
Books, 2000. p.73
-
Tyldesley,
op. cit., p.73
-
Tyldesley,
op. cit., p.75
-
Ramses/Hattusili
Treaty.
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