Roughly 5,000 chariots and tens of thousands of infantry from Egypt and the Hittite Empire fought to a bloody stalemate at Kadesh. Ramesses II, nearly captured after Hittite chariots ambushed his advance division, rallied his troops and avoided disaster. Egyptian temple reliefs proclaimed a great triumph, but the battle's true legacy was the world's first recorded peace treaty, signed roughly fifteen years later.
Ramesses II led four divisions of Egyptian troops north to reclaim Kadesh, a strategic city on the Orontes River that had fallen under Hittite influence. Deceived by two captured spies into believing the Hittite army was far away, Ramesses advanced with only his lead division, walking into an ambush as nearly 2,500 Hittite chariots slammed into his exposed camp.
According to Egyptian accounts, carved in enormous detail on temple walls at Abu Simbel and Karnak, Ramesses fought his way out of encirclement virtually alone, invoking the god Amun and personally driving back the attackers until reinforcements arrived. Modern historians read this as royal propaganda covering what was, at best, a narrow escape from catastrophe and, at worst, a tactical defeat.
Neither side achieved a decisive result, and Kadesh remained in Hittite hands. But the confrontation's lasting significance emerged years later: around 1259 BC, Ramesses and Hittite king Hattusili III signed a treaty, preserved in both Egyptian hieroglyphs and Akkadian cuneiform, establishing mutual non-aggression and extradition terms. It stands as the oldest surviving peace treaty in world history, a copy of which now hangs in the United Nations headquarters.
Key people: Ramesses II, Muwatalli II