Treaty of Kadesh
Ramesses II and Hattusili III concluded a peace treaty around 1259 BC, and it is the earliest international agreement whose text survives from both sides. The two empires had fought at Kadesh sixteen years earlier and neither had won. Egypt had not taken the city; the Hittites had not driven Egypt out of Canaan; and the frontier had settled roughly where it had been. What made peace attractive was Assyria. Adad-nirari I had destroyed Mitanni and was pressing the Hittite eastern frontier, and Hattusili had his own problem of legitimacy — he had deposed his nephew and needed recognition. The Egyptian version is carved in hieroglyphs on temple walls at Karnak and the Ramesseum. The Hittite version is on clay tablets in Akkadian, the diplomatic language, found at Hattusa. They correspond closely, and each presents the other side as having asked for terms. The provisions are recognisably modern: a permanent end to hostilities, mutual non-aggression, a defensive alliance obliging each to help the other if attacked, recognition of the legitimate succession in both houses, and — at length — the extradition of fugitives, with a clause requiring that returned refugees not be punished, their families, households and property protected. A thousand gods of each land were called to witness. It held. Hattusili's daughter married Ramesses thirteen years later, and the two courts corresponded for decades; letters between the queens survive. A copy hangs at the United Nations headquarters. Both empires were destroyed within eighty years by the Bronze Age collapse, and the peace held to the end.
- Year: 1259 BCE
- Category: Political
