The Battle of Kadesh: Two Empires, Two Versions (EVA0065)

The Battle of Kadesh: the first battle we have from both sides

A vast mêlée, and on the left the thing that explains it: a Hittite chariot with three men aboard — a driver, a shield-bearer holding a great wicker shield, and a third pushing a long spear forward. On the right, massed archers. On the hill behind, the fortress of Kadesh, which is what the whole day was about. Ramesses II called this his greatest victory. The Hittite records call it something else, and we have both.

The chariot on the left is the Hittite answer

Three men change everything: the shield-bearer means the crew can close and stay, and the spearman means the vehicle is meant to strike rather than shoot. Against the two-man Egyptian shooting platform of EVA0059, this is a different theory of the same weapon, and Kadesh is where the two theories were tested against each other for a whole afternoon.

The fortress on the hill stayed Hittite

This is the fact that settles the argument. Ramesses extracted his army from a trap, fought the Hittite chariotry to a standstill and marched home — but he did not take Kadesh, and Egypt did not keep northern Syria. Whatever happened tactically, the strategic aim failed. The city is right there in the painting, untouched.

He had it carved across five temples

Back in Egypt, the battle became a building programme. The Poem and the Bulletin, with reliefs, were cut at Abu Simbel, Karnak, Luxor, Abydos and the Ramesseum: the same story, in the same words, on half the monumental walls of the country. In an age when almost nobody could read them, repetition on stone was the medium — and the version they carry has Ramesses fighting alone and winning.

Then the Hittite archives were dug up

Hattusa gave up thousands of clay tablets, and among them the other side’s account. Muwatalli’s version has the Egyptians driven off and Kadesh held. This is why the battle matters far beyond its result: it is the earliest event in human history for which we can set two official narratives side by side and watch them disagree.

The treaty exists twice, and the two copies do not match

Sixteen years later the two empires signed peace — the oldest surviving international treaty. We have the Egyptian version on temple walls and the Akkadian version on a tablet from Hattusa, and each states that the other side asked for terms first. A reproduction hangs at the United Nations. The distance between what happened and what was inscribed is the subject of this plate, and it is the same subject as the Marengo bulletin in NAP0229, three thousand years earlier.