Egyptian-Hittite Peace Treaty

Context

The Egyptian-Hittite treaty dates to the closing centuries of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600–1100 BCE), when a few great empires dominated the ancient Near East (the modern-day Middle East). These empires controlled many smaller kingdoms called vassal states. Between 1550 and 1100 BCE the Egyptian empire had dominion over the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, including present-day Israel, Lebanon, and parts of western Syria. Hatti was located in the center of Turkey, with its empire extending into western Turkey. At some unknown point before 1353 BCE, Egypt and Hatti made a treaty of peace and friendship. Since they did not share a common border at this time, relations were good. But around 1340 BCE, during the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton, the Hittite emperor Suppiluliumas (or Suppiluliuma) I conquered much of Syria, including Amurru and Kadesh, two of Egypt's vassal provinces. This was not a clear case of Hittite aggression; the vassal king of Amurru voluntarily switched to the Hittite side, and Suppiluliumas claimed that the king of Kadesh had attacked him first. Yet Egypt refused to accept the loss of its northern border territories. Over a number of decades, between 1340 and 1269 BCE, pharaohs tried to recover these provinces by force. Military campaigns against Kadesh by the last pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1550–1292 BCE)—Akhenaton, Tutankhamen, and possibly Horemheb—all failed.

When Tutankhamen died, his widowed queen attempted to negotiate an end to the war by marrying a Hittite prince and making him pharaoh. Historical records of the Hittite emperor Suppiluliumas I report that when the Egyptian ambassadors brought the queen's proposal, he showed them the old treaty tablet between Egypt and Hatti. The emperor was reminding the Egyptian ambassadors that the two countries had peaceful relations and a treaty in the past before the recent war. A Hittite prince was sent to Egypt after further negotiations, but he died mysteriously on the journey. Despite Egyptian denials, a furious Suppiluliumas accused them of murder. He retaliated by attacking Egyptian territory in Lebanon, and the war continued.

In the early Nineteenth Dynasty, around 1285 BCE, Pharaoh Seti I reconquered Kadesh and Amurru, but they soon returned to Hittite control. Some scholars believe that the Hittite emperor Muwatallis II negotiated a new treaty with a pharaoh at about this time, either with Horemheb or Seti I. If so, the Egyptians quickly broke it by assaulting Kadesh again. Other scholars contend that there was no new treaty yet.

The Battle of Kadesh

The Egyptian-Hittite war was not a continuous conflict but a series of battles over many years separated by periods without fighting. In 1274 BCE, the fifth year of Ramses II's sixty-seven-year reign, the largest clash took place, the famous Battle of Kadesh. This was the last of four or five Egyptian offensives against Kadesh. Never before had such huge armies met on the battlefield. The Hittites managed to ambush Egyptian forces, and historians often present the battle as a crushing defeat for Ramses II despite his personal bravery. The result was more of a draw, with no clear victor. Kadesh remained in Hittite control, and no pharaoh would ever lay siege to it again. At home, Ramses II actually immortalized the battle as a personal victory with triumphal war scenes and poetic accounts of his heroism emblazoned on the walls of great temples throughout Egypt. This huge propaganda campaign was an ancient version of mass media. The pharaoh never claimed that he captured Kadesh but instead “spun” events to highlight his own courage under fire.

After Kadesh the war continued. Ramses II twice led his armies back into Syria, bypassing Kadesh to strike deep inside Hittite territory. He captured several enemy towns, but the two empires were deadlocked in a classic military stalemate. The pharaoh could not hold on to territory captured in Syria, but the Hittites could not stop him from trying.

The Egyptian-Hittite Peace Process

In 1259 BCE, fifteen years after the Battle of Kadesh and more than eighty years after the Egyptian-Hittite war began, Ramses II concluded a peace treaty with the Hittite emperor Hattusilis III. One possible impetus for peace at this point in the long, bitter conflict was that Hatti feared a new threat on its eastern border. The Assyrian Empire (in the north of modern-day Iraq) was expanding westward into Syria, where it absorbed a Hittite vassal state. Faced with a two-front war, some scholars argue, the Hittites opted for a deal with their old enemy, Egypt. Yet the Hittites were often surrounded by enemies throughout their history, making fear a dubious motive for the treaty with Egypt. A political crisis in Hatti may be a better explanation for Hattusilis III's peace offer. Several years after the Battle of Kadesh, Hattusilis III became emperor by overthrowing his nephew Urhi-Teshub in a coup d'état. Urhi-Teshub fled to Egypt, where Ramses II gave him refuge. Hattusilis III was considered an illegitimate usurper by many of his own subjects and by the other “Great Kings” of the era, and his attempts to establish friendly diplomatic relations with Assyria and Babylonia failed.

Thus, for Hattusilis III, a peace deal with the pharaoh could solve various political difficulties by giving him diplomatic recognition as a legal ruler and by neutralizing the threat from his deposed nephew, Urhi-Teshub, who remained in Egypt. As for Ramses II, he had fought the Hittites in Syria for two decades, and his kingdom had been at war for eighty years. The pharaoh had won some battles but lost others, such that Egypt's empire was no larger than when the war began; territorial gains were almost nil. Kadesh and Amurru remained in the Hittite camp. But Ramses could not go meekly to the Hittites asking for a truce. In Egyptian ideology, the pharaoh was all conquering, and he ruled the entire world. Peace was acceptable only if a defeated enemy came in submission to beg for the “breath of life.” This supremacist worldview was so deeply rooted in the Egyptian psyche that the pharaoh would have found it hard to accept the reality of military failure.

Since there could be no peace without honor, Ramses had to wait for the Hittites to come to him. Even then, he probably rejected several peace offers before agreeing. One inscription of Ramses II claims that the Hittite emperor sent messages, year after year, to make peace, but the pharaoh refused. While the two sides were political equals in the treaty that was ultimately forged, Ramses presented it to his Egyptian subjects as a Hittite surrender. In reality, Ramses II made a serious and bitter concession, giving up all claims to Amurru and Kadesh. Surprisingly, however, the treaty between Ramses II and Hattusilis III never mentions borders or territory. The two sides chose to neglect the issue in the document, allowing the pharaoh to save face.