The battle Kadesh
For two-hundred years, the two powerful nations engaged at war for control of the region now known as Palestine. By this time, the Egyptians were a militaristic nation. Her boarders were naturally protected by deserts on her west and south, the Sinai Peninsula to her east, and the Mediterranean Sea to her north. The armies that were drafted were done so for a short time, usually during the spring, and then sent home. Engagements never required more than two corps of troops...Kadesh was different.
Rameses needed to prove his reign had legitimacy and that he could defend Egypt's boarders. Rameses set out to show that he could take Kadesh, as his Father Seti I did. Rameses II was an extremely over confidant man, by today's standards. He made his plans for the re-capture of Kadesh known. He led about 20,000 soldiers, in 4 corps of about 5,000 men each, on a month's march to the city of Kadesh. This battle is important because it is the first battle that modern historians can actually re-constructed using reenactments and accounts from the battle itself. Also, interestingly enough, Egyptian kings would always lead military campaigns in the spring as to ensure that there would be enough grain to go around for his or her troops. In spring of 1274 B.C.E. quater of his force set up camp outside of Kadesh. There follows an envisaged account of Kadesh:
Rameses men captured 2 Bedouin nomads and queried them as to the whereabouts of the Hittite army. They said that they had no idea of any army in the area. Rameses went to bed that night relieved. He thought he could march into Kadesh and simply take it. His euphoria was dashed when his men captured two Hittite scouts the next day. Badly beaten and brought before the king they revealed that there was in fact a Hittite army on a nearby hill, they claimed that the army was "more numerous then the sands of the river bank.
Rameses was terrified to say the least, but he referred to the Hittite army as the "a feminine ones" because of their long hair. He sent messengers to his other corps of troops. The next day, his second corps but was massacred by the heavy Hittite chariots. The Hittite chariots then descended on the camp and were overwhelmed. The Egyptian archers had one important technological advance: the Composite Bow. This weapon could place an arrow through a solid plate of bronze.
The Hittite charioteers decided it would be a good idea to attack Rameses' camp. Their attack turned into organized chaos. There was looting as well as fighting going on. See, Egyptian artifacts were the most prized things in the ancient Near East during that time. The Egyptian foot soldiers used tactics to dispense of their enemies. They would pull the Hittites from there chariots as they were looting the camp and slit their throats. With the aid of the Egyptian archers, they massacred the Hittite charioteers. The Hittites had some 40,000 infantry that never saw the battle. Rameses and the Hittite general fought two completely separate battles. Needless to say, the battle, in Rameses mind, was a victory. He never wanted his people to forget that so he painted it on his temple, The Ramesseim, at Thebes. What if he would have lost the battle or hi "Today there is fraternity between the Great King of Egypt and the king of Hatti, between Ra and Teshub."s forces were totally annihilated? The new masters of the Sinai, The Hittites, might have removed the parts of the Bible dealing with Egypt, such as the Exodus. Furthermore, it most likely would not have been written for.
Nevertheless, the treaty was bred during a time of change in the region surrounding Kadesh. Egypt was taking on a huge slave population from its skirmishes with the "Sea Peoples," the Haberu people were finding that they couldn't live peacefully in their land anymore, and the Hittites were finding that they needed the cedar trees in the Sinai, as did the Egyptians, which probably brought about Kadesh. They, the Haberu, needed to seek refuge with a superpower in the area. Most of them chose Egypt.
It is followed some years later by a treaty and the marriage of the daughter of the Hittite king (Hattusilis III) to the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. This girl's mother was Puduhepa (Pudu-Kheba), the daughter of a Kizzuwadnian priest, whom Hattusilis had married. Puduhepa was evidently a woman of strong character who governed alongside her husband; together they reoccupied and rebuilt the old capital city at Hattusas, ordered the recopying of the national archives, and instituted constitutional reforms. Among the many surviving texts from this reign, one appears to be the king's personal apologia justifying his seizure of the throne and his displacement of Urhi-Teshub, the legitimate heir.
In the 12th century the Hittite empire suddenly collapses - overwhelmed, it is thought, by the onrush of the Sea Peoples. These terrifying intruders are described in Egyptian chronicles as raging down the coast to threaten the frontiers of Egypt in about 1218 and again in 1182 BC.
