Robert Ritner & Theo van den Hout | The Battle of Kadesh: A Debate

we are speaking tonight of the Battle of Kadesh but Kadesh is far more than a single battle this is actually a century long conflict of which the battle was a primary but by no means the only or even necessarily the major event we will be discussing both things before and after the aspects of the Kadesh battle itself in order to determine who is the winner if there is a winner now the interesting thing about Kadesh as a battle is that it is the earliest battle in recorded history for which we can give extraordinarily detailed discussion of logistics we know exactly what took place when where we have earlier Egyptian records of battles and certainly their battles from many cultures but this is really the first one that we can be very specific about books on military history and Egypt this one shows Libyans and Egyptians fighting nonetheless give a large portion of the discussion to the Battle of Kadesh and this military series includes in fact a separate book dedicated exclusively to the Battle of Kadesh moreover in general studies of military histories battles of the ancient world you will notice the very first battle to be discussed is Kaddish so if we are going to talk about how this took place and ultimately what came from it I need to set the stage for you from of course the very biased Egyptian perspective which is very true it is worth noting that there are a number of Egyptian terms in modern English ivory ebony Adobe and perhaps gold surviving in the word for Nubia what is notable however is there is no term that's translatable for usable lumber since Egypt had none thus since early dynastic times there was a need for trade with northern Levant Lebanon and Syria for critical wood and minerals this is the primary economic motivation for northern colonisation by Egyptians because the question might well be raised what does Egypt care about Kadesh economic reason number one reason number two the experience of a Hyksos invasion coming out of the Levant into Egypt and the ultimate expulsion of those hick tites those Hyksos and by the way the Egyptians equated the two in certain contexts this expulsion of leaven teens actually began the New Kingdom there was the need to create a geographic buffer zone to prevent any further infiltration of Egypt militarily or otherwise by eleventeen polity this was expressed in a constant New Kingdom Royal refrain where Kings went out to campaign to quote extend the boundaries of Egypt this was the primary strategic motivation for northern colonialism now it is also worth noting that there was no desire on the part of Egyptians for a win expanded world Empire they didn't want it they never cared for such a thing unlike the Assyrians the Persians Alexander the Great or Rome Kaddish had been subdued by the warrior King Tut Moses the third four times these are examples of his campaigns and in one of those campaigns we have our first Egyptian reference the Hittites he like his grandfather tough Moses the first actually crossed the Euphrates River he defeated the nation of Mitanni but then he returned beyond the river and went back there was no desire to incorporate that area into Egypt it wasn't worth it his son amenhotep ii defeated Mitani and created a warm peace with his former enemies including the Hittites his grandson taught Moses the fourth and his fat man's son Amenhotep 2/3 accepted Mitani princesses as secondary wives so there was a warm peace that developed between Egypt and its former enemies this pattern of a truce and dynastic marriages would be repeated by ramses ii in the events of Kadesh the real reason for the immediate conflict with Kadesh is the disastrous results of the Amarna revolution and the lost of northern territory because of this unfortunate successor of Amenhotep 2/3 he was a religious fundamentalist whose interest was entirely on his own religious revolution within Egypt itself and as a result there was a withdrawal of the military from the frontier in the north and where you might wonder were they we know something about what's going on from the Amarna correspondence where individuals especially rulers in the northern part of the Levant ammoru will be a place that be some of much conflict back and forth between the Egyptian the Hittites talk about requesting troops from the king and the Egyptian troops never come where were they well here is that area of ammoru this is the contested area and eventually the Hittites under shoe peel Illuma would go through Kadesh and all the way down here here's where the Egyptian troops were this is a representation of Egyptian troops marching through akka Totten tell el-amarna because what Iike what the King did was to withdraw Egyptian troops from the north and used them to hack up the temples and monuments searching pre private individuals names grandparents names to remove the name of Amman wherever they could find it going through private individuals funerary documents and that's where the troops were so there were none just defend the border in the north please read that so the disastrous effects of the Amarna revolution the loss of the northern territory was the immediate motivation for the post Amarna conflict with the Hittites so then you get a new commoner military dynasty 19 which had a need to project legitimacy and to restore internal royal authority after the disgrace of the earth not in heresy that Egypt had been preparing for years assuming that there would be a threat coming from the north to attack its boundaries and instead the threat was from the supposed defender of the state itself it was an internal problem not an external one so as a result there was a need to re-establish royal authority which had sunk to an all-time low there were campaigns by hora mob who immediately succeeded after I who briefly existed Tutankhamun and then SETI the first the father of Ramses the great in years five and six SETI concurred Kadesh in the second campaign this was after thatl territory had been lost to the Hittites for over a century it was recaptured by SETI he fights the MU Attali and his fourth campaign perhaps ending with a treaty despite the victory Kadesh was abandoned by SETI even though he won the fight which suggests that the town itself was not actually important what is important is the title here of the studied by Bill Murnane of the city war reliefs because even in this period the father of Ramses the great everything that's going on is essentially establishing the road to Kaddish the Hittites ended up respecting the Egyptian control of the southern Phoenician seaports with the cedar which is what the Egyptians cared about Egypt abandoned Kadesh and the much disputed omoro ramses ii had played a junior role in the hit in the seti battles but when he came to the throne he had a need to prove his own might to continue the restoration of the very fledgling dynasty nineteen proving his valor and might and worthiness to be king so he had something invested in this war this then is the Hittite territory now vastly expanded Kadesh is right there and what's the much-discussed Palmira by the way from contemporary news you see over here Aleppo in Syria is way up there there will be some reason for me to mention that in future section so this was where the Egyptians began in the time of Ramses - thanks Robert and thank you ladies and gentlemen for coming tonight it is my task to present the Hittite sight so I will exclusively use Hittites sources with one very small exception that I will mention when I get there it will be heavily text-oriented up to the Battle of Kadesh because when the Battle of Kadesh happens then suddenly the Hittites source has become extremely silent and that is a question that I will address at the very end of my talk it will be heavily tax oriented because we only have texts it eidart is not as famous as Egyptian art has the colors it has the beautiful monuments there is nothing like it on the on the Hittite side but that doesn't make it less interesting they were not that he generates that you saw at the domes buried cartoon um so I have a split in three sections first I will talk about everything that leads up to the Battle of Kadesh to the eve of the battle again exclusively from the Hittites sources in a second part we will talk about what the hittite texts have to say about the battle itself and then in a final section I will talk about the after math especially the logistics of getting through the Trinity and I will address what I think is the most interesting question at least from the hittites side is why don't the Hittites talk about Kaddish or hardly okay fess Ritter has already shown several maps we're talking about central Syria Kadesh is in Syria but we haven't yet talked about why Syria Hittite armies never reached Egypt Egyptian armies never invaded Anatolia so why did they meet there well then as now Syria was throughout the history of the ancient East a much contested area it was for commerce as a reckoner already mentioned that a very important area of the ancient Near East and for and it was the gateway for any travel from east to west or west to east for the ancient Near East but for the Hittites it had a an extra importance because controlling northern Syria a lot there and karkemish right there although it's not on the map meant controlling access or the main access route into Anatolia from Mesopotamia so they guarded their own Anatolia for access from the outside and so it's no surprise that the Hittites in there wish to have a buffer state there in northern Syria came into contact with the Egyptians already quite early and the name stuck Moses the third and amenhotep ii in about the second half of the 15th century the late 1400s have already been mentioned by professor ritenour and it is in that period that we have references to already an existing first treaty between kotti the Hittites and Egypt the treaty itself is not preserved but we have some references to it that gives us at least and that give us at least an idea of what it was all about the treaty the main you see by the way that fossil record slides were all black lettering on white this was not arranged beforehand the main or one of the main issues of that treaty that early treaty which again we don't have was apparently a local and Italian population that we had resettle door was to be resettled in the Syrian area and they were called the people of kurushima as you've seen there the town of course Tana and at some point around 1300 King more she was going through his tablet collections he was looking for something and he found the second tablet which is about the town of Cortana and it tells us how the storm got of haughty the Hittites brought the people of Cortana to Egypt and how the storm got of haughty made a treaty for them with the people of haughty and it tells us how they were then put under oath by the storm god of haughty and this this oath imposed by the storm god of haughty that is the key term for the existence of a treaty so that must have been one of the main issues but there are some more references to it that show that part of the treaty must also have been the establishing of a mutual non-aggression pact and probably there were also some border regulations in there which centered right around Amuro and Kurdish then around about a hundred years later almost we find kingship in ramadi hittite king campaigning again in Syria the Hittites had a difficult time behind them and kingship in Roma wanted to restore northern Syria for the Hittites and the or let me go back once more and the gather crowning achievement of his work the last piece of the puzzle to restore hit I power was the that's the wrong one was the CH there at the age of Allah there at the at the bend of the Euphrates River his siege of the city of car commish and then something or yeah something strange happened but to paluma made a big mistake it summer she later tells us what happened while my father was down in the land of karkemish besieging this city he sent his generals lapaki enter whom dad's alma to the land of umka which is right around ammulu thereupon they attacked on Khan and brought back to my father prisoners of war cattle and sheep and by doing so by moving deep into Egyptian control Syrian territory shukran ummah transgressed the oath of that court on a treaty that we just read about and he didn't just do it once he kept going martially continues now while the people of haughty and Egypt were put under oath by the storm God so there was this tree it happened that the people of hoti turned away and suddenly broke the divine oath the oath sworn before the gods because my father sent troops and chariots and they attacked Egyptian territory the land of Anka and again he sent them and again they attacked note that this is Marshall II the hittite king ii successor to shukru superior man who clearly acknowledges here that the Hittites were in the wrong they broke the divine oath that was part of the treaty while Shubin looma was at karkemish laying siege to be a city and while he was sending out these generals of his on that rate something very strange and unique happened more chili continues now when the people of Egypt heard of the attack on um can they became afraid since their Lord Nibiru Rhea had recently died the queen of Egypt who was the royal consort sent an envoy to my father and she wrote to him as follows my husband has died and I have no son but they say that you have many sons so why don't you give me one son of yours and I want him to become my husband I don't want to pick a subject of mine and make him my husband I'm mmm-hmm afraid the hmmm is a word which we can read but we don't know what it means it may be gyptian loanword it is unclear the Pharaoh hid hiding behind Nibiru Leah by the way that is still a matter of much debate which exact pharaoh Amarna Pharaoh that was I always like to think it's King Tut because it's so romantic but there is no certainty the Queen the himangshu as she appears in the Hittites sources actually wrote twice to sugar uma and we have a piece of the second letter from Kapoor Shaad was found there you see on the left the obverse of the tablet and on the right the reverse of that tablet that those envoys from Egypt brought to the Hittite capital to superhuman as you can imagine sugar uma was extremely surprised he knew that he was in the wrong that he shouldn't have invaded and here the throne of Egypt was handed to him on a silver platter as if to reward him so more chili goes on when my father hurt is he summoned his Grandy's to discuss the matter saying Wow such a thing has never happened to me before and thereupon my father sent her to GD is Chamberlain to Egypt telling him okay you go and bring me back a reliable report because perhaps they are setting a trap for me perhaps they do have a son of their Lord so bring me back a reliable report and that was his suspicion makes clear that he knew that he was that he had violated the earlier existing treaty and therefore he was suspicious that the Hittites by asking a son might get that in that way a very high level hostage hit I prints that they could use as leverage in ongoing negotiations by the time these own voice reached superhuman at car commission northern Syria it was already fall winter was slowly coming so it was time to finish the siege which should do my did successfully and to get back to Anatolia before the mountains became impassable for letting the troops go back because of that same circumstance and because it was a long journey that chamber Chamberlain of superhuman whom he asked to go and assess the Egyptian situation of course had to wait for the winter to become spring again so he didn't return until the the spring of the next year and he came back with good news everything is okay become Egyptians are completely trustworthy do send a son and we have a Hittite on the Egyptian throw that was not the Sun but then something else happened when my father had given them a son of his and when they had asked or at him away they killed him the Egyptians my father burst out understandably in rage he went to Egypt of course the Egyptian controlled Syrian territory attacked it and destroyed Egypt's troops and chariots even then says Marshall II the storm got of haughty my lord let my father prevail in the lawsuit because he defeated Egypt's troops and chariots and destroyed them when they brought back home to haughty land the prisoners of war they had captured however a plague developed among the prisoners and they started to die so the gods were very clever they first gave superhuman all the success that he had hoped for finally to slap him on the wrist with a an epidemic which raged through the hit islands for about twenty years Shaboom I was among the victims of this epidemic as was his first successor who may have reigned only for a year and then Marshall II whom we have already met as the author of most of the passages comes to the throne and the epidemic drives him to despair and he directs several prayers to the gods and he apologizes that is not to the Egyptians but to the gods and he says Oh storm god of Hawking my lord God's my Lords I know as it happens people sin my father too sinned he broke his word to the storm God of having he violated that treaty I on the other hand I didn't sin at all as it happens but the father sin passes down to his son and so to me to my father's sin passed down so now before the storm got a haughty my lord and before the Lord the gods my Lords okay I have confessed it here it is it is true we have done it since I have now confessed my father sin let the storm God my Lords and the gods my Lords mind be satisfied again have mercy on me again and Bend the plague from haughty land again do not let those few remaining in haughty land who take care of the bread offerings and libations die on me more she is being very subtle about it we did it he cannot bring himself to say I because he says he stresses I had nothing to do with it and at the end of the prayer he also puts in a touch of blackmail saying if you got if you go on letting all those people die because of the epidemic there will nobody left to bring you offering so you better stop it because of the Egyptian situation Pharaoh just died there was temporarily a loosening grip on the Syria on Syria in that period but that is soon restored when the in Egypt the nineteenth dynasty comes to the throne Ramses the first and then SETI the first Marshall II dies in Anatolia and his son mu Batali comes to the throne and almost immediately there is a confrontation in Syria with SETI the first for the Egyptians wanted to re-establish Egyptian power in Syria and mowett Ali comes down for a first battle which goes out very badly for the Hittites and the result is at this immoral area just west of Kadesh defects from the Hittites we have a later source a Hittites tablet of it's a later treaty with Amaru and there it they recount when vitaliy became king the people of Amul rebelled against him and let him know this we used to be loyal subjects but now we are your subjects no longer and they decided to back the king of Egypt and it may have been right around that moment that moot Ali makes a unique move he abandons the capital the high tide capital Katusha and moves down the moves to capital down to the area around Darcys they're more or less to a place which we have not identified yet which has not been found yet and the in the literature you will in general find two causes for this unprecedented move to let the hit our capital the former hit at capital now be the capital some people say it was religiously inspired because mullet alley starts practicing a kind of a monotheistic like tendency much in the spirit of the Amarna pharaoh some people think that he might even have been inspired by them the other theory is much more practical and says mu Attali the wise man he already knew that after this first confrontation with SETI there would be more and he wants it and he already foresaw that there would be a bigger confrontation with Egypt coming up so it was better to move midnight forces a type hour closer to the future scene of action which was there in southern Anatolia just north of Tarsus or thereabouts and that and with that we have reached the eve of the Battle of condition I hand it over to that's a Ritenour again a couple of quick points the Coryell is almost certainly never kept Aurora the throne name for too long common so your initial explanation is probably fine secondly one of my favorite classes in graduate school was head tied art so never sell it short for reasons that I've explained previously the Battle of Kadesh was extremely important for ramses ii but none of those reasons actually turned on the town of Kadesh itself that was where the events took place but was not actually terribly significant in and of itself we have from the battle from the Egyptian side thirteen textual copies surviving both as a literary record the so called poem of Pinta where and The Bulletin texts which are the more analytic military texts we have nine major relief scenes at Abydos looks or three times Karnak twice the Ramesseum twice Abu Simbel and probably at many other temples that are now lost here is one of the examples at Luxor we'll be returning to this these the events are actually storyboarded on the front pylon of luxor temple with all the little episodes they're in great detail this is Ramses the great mortuary temple the Ramesseum the front over here contains critical scenes on both the front and the back we'll be seeing them we have here a portion from the Ramesseum of the literary texts the so called poem of pinta where we also have the graphic scenes I show you this from an evening setting where you can actually still make out the coloration that survives of the Orontes River here is Kadesh over here completely surrounded by the river with a small canal that have been dug almost as a moat to protect it we also at Abu Simbel have major records again a complete duplicate of what we have everywhere else and if you look carefully when you if you go into the temple here on the side I'd crushed under Ramses feet are none other than Hittite rulers so what happened ramses ii set out in his year for which we can say is circa 1275 and within two months he reached and conquered ammoru the local king been Tichina switched allegiance back to egypt but he warned mowett ali in hot osa in a letter ramses ii then promptly returned in victory to his capital parentheses so what Rameses did was to come up take the city take the area and go home now both sides in this eventual conflict had a unified command structure but large numbers are difficult to control by a single commander the Egyptians had approximately 20,000 soldiers 2,000 chariots 18,000 infantry divided into four divisions under prominent individuals with a stake in the outcome so they guarantee that the generals would fall or win with consequences which they got these four groups were placed under divine patronage Ammon rah rah and Seth there was also a royal unit for the Kings person bodyguard and staff which was organized as a separate mobile unit in a to smoot-hawley made a vow to the gods of hoti for the recapture of omoro in the spring 1274 he gathered a much larger force from 16 different vassal provinces and allies it has been estimated that his soldiers now numbered 39,500 almost twice the Egyptian force 2500 chariots and two groups of infantry 18,000 and 19,000 whether these numbers can actually be trusted I don't know they come from the Egyptian records what's critical to note here is that you now have for the first time in or any world history what is in essence a world war you have armies Imperial armies which are gathering sources from multiple subsidiary nation-states which are coming together at one spot which is part of a campaign that is over a century long this is not just a battle ramses ii leaves egypt by the way this is an example of an egyptian charioteer notice you had only get two people per chariot the Hittites have three here is the Hittite opposing force so the yellow line if you can make it out that is his quick campaign in year four we now have years five five eight eight and ten to talk about some of this now five is what we'll talk about now the others will come later so ramses ii left egypt in the summer of year five with four divisions marching through canaan and south syria there was a separate Asiatic support force the noreen which seems to be a Moabite word because of the plural in in who were sent along the Phoenician coast that's the dot up here they would cut inland in a Moro to join with ramses ii at Kadesh this proved to be a critically wise strategic decision the Hittites never knew these forces existed by late May of 1274 exactly one month from his departure ramses ii was camped on kim wat Hemel ridge a few miles south of Kadesh on the following morning with a royal unit in the first division of amman hastened on the road toward Kadesh that two miles the three other divisions were spaced some distance behind this is a tactical trade-off between access to limited roads and the need for time to refill or replenish the available water sources you're traveling with vast amounts of people 20,000 people the roads are small the water sources are limited you cannot push everybody together you have to string them out now that's tactically based on for the benefit of movement and the need for replenishing but it proves also a problem in that there's a genuine risk of encountering an enemy ambush while still separated and so being destroyed which we will see the speed of the Egyptian force would give an advantage in surprise in preparation for battle but create potential issues with supply and sudden attack the professional noreen soldiers were an asset to Egypt and a pool of talent not available to the Hittites they were a shock force as ramses ii moved through lob we Forrest I'll show you that in just a moment to reach to Ford the Orontes River near the town of sub tuna two Bedouins come out of the woods and offer allegiance of their tribal chiefs to the Egyptians defecting from the Hittites these two bedouin decoys were interrogated about the location of these defecting chiefs and they informed the king and we have this right there on that wall they are where the ruler of hot tea is for the hittite enemy is in the land of aleppo north of Tunip he is too afraid of Pharaoh to come south since he heard that Pharaoh was coming north so according to this report mullah thali was supposedly hiding in northern Syria 120 miles away and afraid to fight as a result ramses ii in the royal unit crossed the fort ord Kadesh the division of amman is trailing behind and they make camp on the north-west of Kadesh at that point the egyptian scouts captured two hittite scouts here is Ramses this is his camp and we will be seeing these scouts right here being investigated this is the same scene but from inside Abu Simbel Ramses at Camp on the evening before the battle and yes we are remarkably lucky that with the Egyptian records are so copious in their information so these Scouts were interrogated which means clubbed and brought before Pharaoh and they said then said his majesty what are you they replied we belong to the ruler kotti he said us to see where your Majesty was his majesty said to them where is he the ruler of kotti see I heard that he was in the land of Aleppo north of Tunip they replied behold the ruler kotti has arrived together with many foreign lands that he brought his allies they are positioned armed and ready to fight just behind Kadesh not 120 miles away just then so there's an emergency war council ramses ii scold his officers for faulty intelligence the division of raw was still crossing the plane before Kadesh here's here is the wood of lob way here is cheb tuna where the fort is so the king has gone up here and camped here the division of Ammon is with him and the division of raw is just coming across and behind the division of Fatah hasn't even crossed the river yet and the division of seth is way down there back in the forest when suddenly there is a chariot charge led by the hittite princes that towards the iran to south of Kadesh and cuts the division of raw in half and scatters them the remnants flee north to the royal camp the Amman division preparing the camp for ramses panics the infantry and chariotry abandoned the king the Hittite surround the royal camp Ramses is left virtually alone with his picked individuals and and in his chariot he rallies his troops he ignores the call to flee by his own shield-bearer Menna he prays to Amman and charges the Hittites six times disrupting them as they stopped to pillage the camp now here is the standard of raw this the group that was cut to ribbons and here is one of I'll show you several of these because this is the remarkable thing about this battle we can actually show you precisely what happened so here is the foreword here this is where the Egyptians were crossing the Hittite suddenly send their chariot force across cutting this one to pieces Ammon goes up here and they all surround and are near the Hittite immediate Egyptian camp here you see the same a different version of the same set of facts the Hittite Army is sitting over here that's important to note because they never really come into play the chariotry had come across here detected the brigade of raw finally Ptah would come up later in the day here is the royal camp where Ramses is fighting essentially alone with a small group of special individuals here is Ramses fighting alone here is a 19th century drawing of the same thing with his favorite royal lion whose diet is apparently Hittite here is the Egyptian royal camp as seen it looks our temple there is the camp and what you see all around here are the Hittites breaking ranks and stopping to plunder the camp rather than killing Rameses and solving the whole problem in a matter of moments so Ramses is able to stave them off to essentially fight those who are to drive off those who while everybody else tries to pillage the fort and then the shock troops arrive over the horizon turning the tide and then the division of table moves up and suddenly there are two Egyptian divisions and a cut to pieces Hittite chariotry which then flees as fast as possible to get back across the river and get out of there leaving Ramses victorious for the battle and controlling all the territory in front of the city so here is the Abu Simbel version of the sacking of the royal camp and here is the fleeing of the Hittites back across here's the city and all of these masts in country this is where the Hittite ruler was with his infantry that never engaged in the battle they just stood there what is interesting to note is that in essence both rulers were without control of the forces in the field with such vast numbers of men it's almost end in no walkie-talkies or cell phones there's only so much you can do to create cohesion among massive forces and matali was unable to control his troops which fell to plundering and the Egyptian troops were cut to ribbons and Ramses was furious at the division of ammon which deserted him as did the division of raw the Hittite attacked and disintegrated it lost its opportunity when the noreen forces arrived from ammoru the Hittites ratite there's a counter-attack by ramses ii who rallied the forces with new arrivals he drove them back into the Arantes river swimming or drowning and one of those dead right in here has a title above him and it says that he is the brother of the hittite ruler the Hittites lost many important individuals in their infrastructure infrastructure and here there's a close-up of that the brother of Andy we can see them fleeing headlong across the river being pulled up and the one of the Egyptian favorite little humorous events this is the prince of aleppo who is being shaken by the Hittites on the other side of the river to get the water out of him because he was virtually drought Egyptians knew how to swim so the exodus of patna count is a very problematic as all the Egyptian soldiers would have swum but apparently Syrians can't the main hittite force never left its position behind kaddish the division of Taro's took prisoners tallying severed hands from each Hittite corpse it was a serious route because the main hittite force never left behind Kadesh muta'ali doesn't count doesn't take part of the account the Egyptian texts describe him as he just stood turning back cringing and fearful the Egyptians will eventually have a better view of the Hittites but it will be a while in come the remnants of the divisions of Raw and Ammon returned to praise the Royal valor a little late ramses ii upbraids them as cowards who left him alone to fight the bulk of the poetic text is actually about his anger at his own divisions and their failure to protect him he casts himself as an unequal an equal to servant to the army he says talking about the soldiers and how he had granted them exemptions for all sorts of taxes as for anyone who requested petitions I'll do it Here I am I said to him daily what Ramses the second who's also kids often consider to be very boastful is actually doing is he's directly quoting from a you Shep tea spell for those of you who don't know what are you Shep tea is it's an answering servant figure who does something for you in the underworld so what Ramses is doing as the massive God on earth is putting himself in the position of a servant to his own troops which is a pretty remarkable statement but he was left abandoned he says not an officer captain our soldier came to me to give a hand as I fought my great chariot steeds it was they whom I found to help not you people the division of seth finally arrived by sunsets the egyptians were left with two intact divisions and their support troops tomb all divisions that he - Hittites have infantry groups intact but chariotry mauled a major loss of newett ali's Hittite leaders included two of mowett Ali's own brothers two of his shield bearers his own personal secretary the chief of his bodyguard for leading charioteers six army chiefs plus general casualties so here it is yet another a German version of exactly what I've described to you here are is the crossing of ammon and then ray where the Hittites come through shatter it but then the Hittites scatter and just in time for the two other divisions to come up and save the day here are two shield bearers for the hittite king here and here slain here are two charioteers for the hittite king slain and this is the hittite king's personal secretary his letter writer so then what are the reasons for the Hittites failure to seize what should have been an easy victory first ramses ii personal valour the undisciplined hittite pillaging the arrival of anarion support troops and the pot in division the inactivity of this Hittite superior infantry they had twice as many soldiers the last-minute capture of spies by the egyptians the hittite reconnaissance failures discover half the Egyptian army was yet to show up from the south and the near infest group coming in from the west it was an opportunity squandered and it became a personal victory for the RAM for Ramses ramses ii took the field of the next dawn he drove back the enemy Matali sued for peace by a letter and handed in his invoice greeting ramses ii as ball in person stating peace is better than war grant us breath this of course is the egyptian version ramses ii summoned his counsel of offers to discuss the words that the vile ruler of haughty had sent to me you'll note the over time the officers speak out in unison excellent adenine is peace o sovereign our Lord there is no dishonor in peace when you make it who shall resist you on the day of your wrath so the battle ends ramses ii returns to egypt many prisoners and spoils were presented to the Egyptian temples and many of these Hittite prisoners were then used to construct Abu Simbel recording their own defeat from the Egyptian perspective as it is suggested here in tiny print that you probably cannot read for the Egyptians this was a tactical victory for the Hittites a strategic victory and perhaps ultimately a draw for Ramses his major needs were met he is now a military hero he has restored the valour of the royal house who cares about Kadesh he's got the territory south of that that he wants so all from his point of view is fine which is why he simply left Hey Oh you're after the wealth of Egyptian sources about the battle I'll now present you with all the Hittites sources that we have for the engagement around carnage at the moment of the battle mover tally is king and his his chief general is his later successor the later king hakushi all told we have four references in all of hit ID literature in the tens of thousands of tablets that we have to this momentous event to this world war but the Hittites just didn't know that it was a world the first one it's all about a muru for the Hittites the first text is the only contemporary reference it's a vow as we call it of the late reckon captioning now still commander the most important general for his brother and it's probably a turd on the eve of the battle and Qadhafi is asking for success in battle and promising the deity to give him or her something wonderful in case the God answers Express and so the text says as far as if campaign that His Majesty is going on is concerned if you oh gods March ahead of me and I will conquer a mall that is either I will conquer it by armed force or it will make peace with me and then the text of course breaks off the next paragraph which is even more fragmentary does mention Egypt so it seems pretty certain that the campaign that His Majesty is going on and where he hopes to conquer Amuro is indeed the battle at Kadesh and this already makes clear that for the Hittites it was all about a more as I told you in the beginning for the Hittites control over northern Syria was of strategic importance in order to control among other things access into Anatolia the only so this is the only contemporary reference the only explicit reference to the battle has to wait for this tablet which was drawn up some 50 years after the fact around 1225 and it says as follows my movie thali and the king of Egypt fought a battle over the people of am world and move Attali defeated him a moral he destroyed by force subjected it and he installed mr. Shapley as king in a more period there are two more references in here at literature but they are very oblique very marginal they their Kadesh is mentioned or the amur campaign is mentioned only to place something else which is far more important in that text in time something happened either before or after the annual campaign one of them is a later text by hakushi the third who tells us that when he returns from Egypt on his return from the battle back home to the capital which is hatake's at that moment a capital again then he picks up his future wife in southern Anatolia so that's it and three words in English which match three words in Hittite Matali defeated him very clearly state the Hittite point of view their objective going into the campaign was to get control over a muru back and that's what they got and a moral would stay in the Hittite fold until the fall of the hittite kingdom or Empire if you will around 1200 what the battle did it's not cleared battle wore out I have to think Stephen wine Gartner who told me a lot about ancient warfare and especially about the Battle of Kadesh the battle the troops just wore out and that was it and none of the two parties had any inclination to do it all over again the next day or in the next year's for the Hittites are more always important and that is what they got when ramses ii departed mowett Ali retained Kadesh he took a Moreau and in addition the Egyptian province of opie despite the warning to the Hittites been Tichina of omoro was not restored to his throne but promptly packed off in exile under the control of matali x' brother how to Seeley about which about whom we will hear more later the result however of this failure to knock out what should have been an easy enemy lastly led to an understanding of Hittite vulnerability in northern Syria and so emboldened the Assyrian a dead Murari the first to claim great king status he sees the Hittite province of Khan Eagle bot which was formerly a province of Mitanni that had been an ally of G gypped before vitani ceased to exist he sent a letter to MU Attali demanding an alliance or threatening to invade Hittite Syria the demand was rebuffed by Matali but the security of Hittite Syria was forever compromised in year 7 that is to say two years later ramses ii pacified a revolt in Palestine he marched north to Damascus and he recaptured the province of opie from the Hittites in years eight to nine that is to say three years in a row of campaigning back in Syria he Ramses moved up the coast he outflanked Kadesh and ammoru he struck inland he seized the mid or aunty's he bisects Amoro he captures Tunip and da poor and cuts cuts Kadesh off from the Hittites in the North he encircled it he took all the territory north and everything south so Kadesh so what from the Egyptian point of view there was no Hittite reaction because metalli was now dead or qetesh up the Sun by a concubine was on the throne now is mostly the third and he was rightfully fearful of his throne at the hands of his uncle a tooshie Lee in the contest between these two rulers Hitoshi Lee wins he exiles mercy Lee and returns vintage Shiina once again to omoro in yer 18 of Ramses however were surely flees to the Egyptian Court Ramsay so he is now the Pretender to the Hittite throne Rd legitimate heir to the Hittite throne is now living in Egypt at the Egyptian kort ramses ii conducts a fifth campaign in canaan and he refuses to extradite more Schiele back to the Hittites Assyria now seizes honey gal bot and is now on Hittites India tight empires border at the Euphrat you Franky's as a result the Hittites face two fronts and the former king who was dangled by Egypt is now resident with ramses ii these events Prower the probable impetus for treaty negotiations in year 21 there is a formal treaty copy's exists in both Egyptian I show you here and Hittite and it is notable that this includes an extradition clause the silver tablet is presented to ramses ii at court egypt keeps all the Phoenicians coasts even up to you garret which had not been controlled by egypt since Amenhotep the third a century before what egypt once is the coast inland and this now there's a non-aggression pact statement of brotherhood mutual defense extradition of fugitives and a promise of no harm to these fugitives should they more surely or or kotecha be sent home he never is that we know the question we have benediction and curses I've got both the gods of Egypt and haughty a detailed description in the Egyptian version of the hittite seal which was fascinating to the Egyptians the question is who authored this almost certainly there was mutual authorship there's no non Egyptian features in the grammar of the Egyptian version but we can't tell from the cuneiform version because the Egyptians were originally trained in cuneiform by none other than the Hittites so such features cannot determine the authorship in the tablet copies now the remarkable thing about this is it leads to a long peace so here by the way is the peace treaty one of several versions of it this is at karnak temple here is a close-up showing you the ruler of the great ruler of the Hittites do you notice something different about this particular figure forgive me just a moment I'm going to go back here is the Hittite ruler on the battle scenes it's actually the word for fallen one defeated subjected dead in the peace treaty he gets to stand up so he's now an ally officially and visually there are 26 letters exchanged between the Egyptian king and hakushi Lee and 13 - Otto Shelley's wife poodle kappa here is the Hittite version or a copy the Hittite version of the peace treaty and this is a personal letter from queen nefertari in egypt - queen poodle kappa at boys koi in Hattusa written in cuneiform again with Hittites drugs one of the 13 - the queen or qetesh up remains in Egypt but Egyptian doctors are sent to the Hittites in year 33 ha - she Lee proposed a marriage of his daughter to ramses ii by the way this is that tablet is in ankara this is the descriptive tablets shot through a glass case but here you can perhaps see what is going on here is the marriage document he the Queen the princess arrives in year 34 she is Nate she's given a new name in Egyptian mod for nephew Rey which means she who sees the Horus beauty of Rey which is me Ramses - there are six copies of this marriage Stila Abu Simbel elephantine II Karnak - in Nubia and Stila in the moat temple near Karnak in the year 36 there's the visit of the crown prince the future took Holly on the 4th to Egypt in year 40 there is a possible visit of cut to Seeley the third we don't know if it actually happened or not and in year 44 ramses marries yet another Hittite princess for which we have two version Egyptian texts when Ramses died and his son Marin ophtho took over we have references to the Egyptian Court sending grain to the Hittites in a time of famine this alliance between Egypt and the Hittites lasted until the collapse of the hittite society here is a close-up of the treaty by the way here is the Hittite King although this has been slightly damaged in those he's still standing in the wedding here is a statue from this Taunus these these statues were moved from Paramus EES this is Ramses the great this is one of his many wives she happens to be MOT horn F rurre she is the princess who is the first marriage and here is our Hittite ruler standing up actually wearing a pretty good approximation of a Hittite crown as we can see also on one of the drawings an early copy of the hit the marriage and here she is again now dressed in Egyptian fashion for her new culture Ramses the second would live a long life he would be remembered as the most famous and impressive of all the Egyptian pharaohs and now I will show you what the Egyptians did with the memory of the Hittites here is the last reference to Hittites in Egyptian records this is from the Roman period it is the outer wall the temple of Colombo this is a prisoner figure with his arms bound behind his back and here's the territory that says cata the Hittites again this is approximately 1,000 years after the peddle of cottage and despite the fact that they had been friends then and Hittites had essentially vanished from the world record they're still known in Egypt as a geographical place to be said to be under Egyptian control so in sum from the egyptian version is the world's first clash of armies of empires not just a raid it results in compromise peace trade and security there was peace between warring international powers that is possible and this is worth stressing even in northern Syria thank you well at least the Hittites made a lasting impression that is pretty clear there are two final points that I would like to address very briefly Mitali dies right after probably right after the battle at Kadesh he is succeeded by his son - who also goes by the name more Schiele mercy the third named after his uncle of whom we saw all these texts and as as a written ur said Puccini may well have been the instigator of the peace it is very interesting to see how the process went that led up to the to the peace treaty and if you think of nowadays treaties negotiating teams from two parties or multiple parties get together they work on it for months or years even until they can agree on a text and it didn't and it went in the same way in before 1259 the peace dates to 1259 this is the only point where I have had to rely on hit on Egyptian sources because it's the Egyptian sources that tell us that Ramses send some negotiators to cut off Shah which was again as I already mentioned the Hittite capital they work there with people on the on the Hittites ITA that officials and they indeed agreed on a text which was then lay down on a silver tablet that was usual among the Hittites to make of very important texts metal copies we have references in the sooo gold silver bronze and iron tablets only one copy one such metal tablet has been preserved so far which is a detail which is a bronze tablet of which you see a detail here so this is not the Egyptian treaty but it gives you a good impression of what they might have looked like and the this silver tablet which was then brought by the two teams the Egyptians in the Hittites to Egypt was what we call a typical parity treaty which means that it that every paragraph that was that contained a stipulation for the Hittites for Hasini had a matching paragraph mentioning ramasees with a few interesting exceptions that I won't go into tonight and it was phrased a silver tablet that was agreed on by both teams it was phrased in the name formulated in the name of Kapoor Shammi so it starts out with this is the treaty that hakushi Lee hero son of Mercia lead great king of haughty etc etc more titles follow concluded with Ramses great king of Egypt hero etc etc that is the tablet brought to Egypt it is then apparently approved by ramasees and another silver tablet is then made with ramses mentioned in the first base so that has this is the treaty the drama scenes etc etc that tablet is then brought to kedusha so that now both partners have a silver treaty tablet Kapoor Shammi has the one with Ramses in the first place Ramses has the one with hakushi Lee in the first place so an exchange of copies signed so to speak by the other party the silver tablets of course have been lost in all likelihood melted down in antiquity but the in Katusha we have found two clay copies one you can see in Berlin and Museum and the other a in Istanbul and the Egyptian silver tablet in the name of Hitachi Lee is can now be found back on the walls at Karnak as vessel ritenour showed and as Philistine mentioned you can see a replica in New York at the United Nations Security Council the piece held and two marriages were concluded in 1245 and 1234 the latter one two 1234 probably early in the reign of totally a successor of hakushi Lee in order to secure or to yeah to indicate to the Egyptians the intentions of the Hittites to maintain to continue to relations as they were and now the final point that I want to make tonight personal rettner mentioned the thirteen texts and all the reliefs and and all those sources on the Egyptian side which allowed him to sketch in wonderful detail how the battle went why do we have so little data aside I told you we have in total four references there the first thing you could say is well they were there but they have been lost and actually that's not a bad idea in the sense that if we look at the rain of norcia me who was the reigning king during the battle we have compared to its predecessor King martially and his successor second successor how to shape the third we have relatively few sources out of from his time and that is due very probably to the fact that he moved the capital and we haven't found its capital yet so somewhere in southern Anatole yeah something like a REM Essene might still be awaiting us and tablets glorifying MOA tally single-handedly slaying thousands of Egyptians yet somehow I don't expect those records and reliefs to be there it is only in the Old Kingdom around let's say 1600 in the hit islands that Kings are portrayed in a way similar to Ramses as Ramses does with himself we see there in old hittite king being compared to a lion trampling down on cities and people and it's very likely from that time then that we have the single relief in hittite art depicting something of a war scene if it's a very badly preserved and abraded relief there are sort of two registers on the upper register we see a king probably on a chariot drawn by a horse and he is having a spear here and stabbing some of the lying under the chariot and below that we see a person standing either a king or it could also be a god likewise stabbing with a spear at a person are lying down but then around the middle of the 16th century 16 1550 1500 something seems to happen in hittite society a court of law is being drawn up in which in many cases capital punishment is turned into a fine many fines are reduced by half there is a royal decree saying that if somebody is killed the guilty of a crime then his family should not be implicated or be punished just that person before 1550 we see a chain of killings of vicious circle of healings in the royal house that then the king who issues this degree wants to break and he says no more killing let's now on banish people rather than killing them trying to stop this vicious cycle and if we look at later historiographical texts in which Kings he tied Kings tell about battles there is an interest about the things leading to the battle there is some telling about what happened after the battle but the battle itself is seems to be of complete disinterest what we find is a formula that says the sounders of arena milady the mighty stormed out my lord the belt Missoula and all the gods marched ahead of me and I defeated person and any X and that is it as far as interest in a battle is concerned now I have no illusion that Hittite Kings were any less ruthless than their peers in Mesopotamia and Egypt or modern societies for that matter the routine mentions of the second and burning of cities albeit as I said never in any detail and the deportations of large numbers tens of thousands of people must I enormous sufferings on the inhabitants of those countries but the point is that heat I think don't dwell on it they don't seem to relish those tales and they apparently never exploited it for propagandistic reasons and that's now you could say yeah but those are Hittite tablets they were only for the administration they were not for the wider dissemination well even if we look at the few large publicly displayed monuments that we have in the head capital and elsewhere that recount something of battles they are difficult to read admittedly but they seem to use that same formula that we see here and there is no display of royal valiance or or or power the hit high King's row fees and Venus people was one of he was the embodiment of nature he was the guarantor of fertility and productivity of the land of flora and fauna we have an elaborate description of the funeral rites for a Hittites King and in the second half of that there are every day is devoted to a certain theme the day of agriculture the day of viticulture a day of hunting things important to the hittite population but there is no day devoted to the hittite king as the commander the military commander in chief so in the end I think it was the ideology of he tied kingship that was so very different from the Egyptian one that I think is responsible responsible in the end for the huge discrepancy between the enormous wealth fortunately of the Egyptian sources and the scarce nosov Hittites sources thank you you you

Channel: The Oriental Institute

Views: 80,606

Rating: 4.833992 out of 5

Keywords: Hittie, Egypt, Ancient, Uchicago, OrientalInstitute, History

Id: A1AGe2V0qHo

Length: 76min 50sec (4610 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/alllie]

From /r/LDQ

The Battle of Kadesh: A Debate between the Egyptian and Hittite Perspectives

The Oriental Institute Lecture Series organized by the University of Chicago brings notable scholars from around the country and abroad as they present on new breakthroughs, unique perspectives, and innovative research applications related to the Ancient Middle East.

The Battle of Kadesh, ca. 1285 BC, is the earliest military encounter that can be analyzed in detail. This conflict between the Egyptian forces of Ramses II and the Hittite army of Muwatalli was celebrated as a personal victory by Ramses, but is often treated by modern scholars as an Egyptian defeat or as a stalemate. In any case, the battle had profound impact on international politics of the age, with unexpected results. Join us for a lively debate presented from the two sides of the ancient conflict, provided by noted Oriental Institute scholars Robert Ritner, for the Egyptian side, and Theo van den Hout, for the Hittites.

[u/Uncle_Charnia]

I was at that debate. The place was packed, and they had a party afterwards. There was abundant food and hooch. Those history nerds are balls out.

[u/anathemas]

Awesome lecture! I haven't been to this sub in a while, thanks for contributing so much great content. :)