Ancient The Egyptian and Hittite wars in Syria
The Battle of Kadesh, 1274 BC
| Battle | Kadesh |
|---|---|
| Date | 1274 BC (the day is not fixed, and the year itself depends on which Egyptian chronology you follow) |
| War | The Egyptian and Hittite wars in Syria |
| Location | On the Orontes, before the city of Kadesh, in what is now western Syria |
| Belligerents | The Egyptian Empire under Ramesses II vs the Hittite Empire under Muwatalli II |
| Commanders | Ramesses II (Egypt) vs Muwatalli II (Hatti) |
| Strength | Ramesses marched with over 20,000 men in four divisions, Amun, Re, Ptah and Set, with a separate force called the Ne'arin arriving late; the Hittite army is put at some 40,000 foot and 3,000 chariots. Together the largest chariot engagement known |
| Outcome | Inconclusive. Both kings went home and carved the day as a victory on their own monuments |
| Egyptian losses | Never recorded. The Egyptian account is a royal monument and does not count its dead |
| Hittite losses | Never recorded. The Hittite account is a royal record and does not count its dead either |
The Account
This is the oldest fight I can show you in any detail, and the reason I can show it to you is also the reason you should not believe it.
Kadesh is the first battle in human history recorded well enough to reconstruct. Not the first battle. The first one written down at length, by people who were there, with a narrative and a sequence and names. Everything before it I hold alone.
In the spring of 1274 BC Ramesses, king of Egypt, came north out of the delta with something over twenty thousand men in four divisions, and he named them after gods: Amun, Re, Ptah, Set. He was not yet thirty and had been on the throne four years and he wanted Syria back from the Hittite empire that held it. His road ended at Kadesh, a walled city on the Orontes river in what is now western Syria, where Muwatalli, the Hittite king, was bringing his own army to meet him.
Near the river his scouts brought in two Bedouin who said they had deserted from the Hittite army, and who said that Muwatalli was frightened and had gone north to Aleppo, days away. Ramesses believed them because it was what he had come to hear. He rode ahead with Amun division alone and pitched camp north-west of Kadesh with his other three divisions strung out for miles behind him on the road.
The two men were not deserters. They had been sent to be captured, and they had done exactly what they were sent to do, and the entire Hittite army was sitting on the far side of the city, out of sight.
Muwatalli let Amun division settle. Then he sent two and a half thousand chariots across the Orontes into the flank of Re division, which was strung out on the march with no line formed, and cut it in half. The survivors ran north into their own camp, and the Hittite chariots came in behind them, and Ramesses was suddenly inside a broken camp with a fraction of his army and nothing between him and the end of his reign.
What he did next is where the record and I disagree least. He got into a chariot and charged, repeatedly, with his household guard, into a mass of enemy chariots, and he held the camp long enough for two things to arrive: the Ne’arin force coming up from the west, and Ptah division coming up from the south. And the Hittite chariotry, which was heavy and carried three men and had already spent its shock, was caught between them and driven back into the river.
By dusk neither side held anything the other wanted. Muwatalli still had Kadesh. Ramesses had a camp, an army in pieces, and a story.
He went home and put that story on every wall he could reach. Abydos, Karnak, Luxor, Abu Simbel, the Ramesseum. In the reliefs he is enormous and alone and the Hittites are drowning. He had it written in verse. It is one of the most widely reproduced accounts of anything from the ancient world, and it is propaganda, and it worked so thoroughly that it is still the version most people carry.
The Hittites, in their own archives, recorded that they had won.
Fifteen or sixteen years later the same two empires signed a treaty. Both copies survive, one in Egyptian on a temple wall and one in Akkadian on clay tablets from the Hittite capital, and they are the earliest surviving peace agreement between two states anywhere. A reproduction of it hangs at the headquarters of the United Nations.
I have no opinion about the treaty. I want to point at one thing only.
Two kings wrote long, detailed, contradictory accounts of that afternoon, and between them they described the terrain, the deception, the river crossing, the divisions, the chariot counts, the timing, and their own courage at length. Neither of them recorded a single one of their own dead.
Not a name. Not a number. The first war anyone wrote down, and both accounts found room for the king and no room at all for the people the king spent.
The charioteer I walked with had bronze in his chest and he was somebody’s son and he is on no wall in Egypt or Hatti. That is where the record starts, and that is the shape it has kept for three thousand years, and it is why I keep my own.
Behind the Song
The Song
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Why Kadesh opens the record
The working note on this track is the whole argument in one line: the oldest recorded battle in history, and the first one humans lied about.
Those two facts arriving together is the reason this song sits at the front of the Ancient album, immediately after the intro. History and the falsification of history begin in the same document. Ramesses covered half of Egypt with an account in which he personally saved the day, the Hittites filed a contradictory account in their own archives, and both survive, and comparing them is the beginning of the discipline of reading a source against its author.
For a project whose whole subject is who gets written down, that is the right place to start. The archive opens by telling you the archive lies.
The song, against the history
Verse 1 is the deception, and it is accurate in every particular. “Four divisions marched from the delta through the heat, named for gods who could not save them from deceit” is Amun, Re, Ptah and Set. “Two men knelt before the pharaoh, kissed the sand, said the Hittites cowered north in a distant land” is the two captured Bedouin who were planted to be taken, who reported that Muwatalli was far off near Aleppo. “Ramesses believed the lie because it fed his pride” is the historians’ consensus reading of why it worked, and “I watched him pitch his camp with the enemy beside” is literally true: the Hittite army was concealed on the other side of the city.
The chorus names the song’s real subject in its first line. “At Kadesh by the river where the first lie met the stone.” Not where the first battle was fought. Where the first lie was carved.
Verse 2 is the ambush. “They struck the Re division on the open marching road, the column split like kindling” is exactly what happened: Re division was caught strung out on the march, not in formation, and broken in half.
Verse 3 is the recovery, and the two rescues are in the right order. “The Ne’arin struck from the west and the Ptah came from the south” is the Ne’arin force arriving from the west and Ptah division coming up from the south, which is what saved Ramesses. “Neither king could claim the ground” is the outcome.
The bridge is where the song stops narrating and makes its case. “He went home and carved his victory on every temple wall” is the Ramesseum, Karnak, Luxor, Abydos and Abu Simbel. “The Hittites carved their own account and claimed the day was theirs” is the Hittite archive. And then: “the first war anyone recorded and they carved down every king, but the dead who filled that river, they were not worth mentioning.”
That is verifiable and it is the fact this whole website exists to point at. Both accounts are detailed, both are long, both name their king constantly, and neither records its own casualties at all.
The outro is the treaty. “Fifteen years they fought before they laid their weapons down” is close: the battle is dated 1274 BC and the treaty about 1258, so sixteen years, and the song rounds down. “A copy sits behind the glass where all the nations meet” is the reproduction displayed at the United Nations. And the last three lines refuse to let that land as a happy ending: the treaty is the thing the world kept, and she kept the other thing.
Lyrics
[Verse 1] I walked a thousand battles that no hand has ever carved, I was ancient before the chisel learned to write, Four divisions marched from the delta through the heat, Named for gods who could not save them from deceit, Two men knelt before the pharaoh, kissed the sand, Said the Hittites cowered north in a distant land, Ramesses believed the lie because it fed his pride, And I watched him pitch his camp with the enemy beside,
[Pre-Chorus] I have walked this ground a thousand times before, And I will walk it still when there is nothing more,
[Chorus] At Kadesh by the river where the first lie met the stone, Five thousand chariots ground the morning into bone, At Kadesh where I walked before the world grew old, The pharaoh carved his glory on the temple wall alone, At Kadesh where the bronze lies buried in the sand, And the carvings still remain though the blood has long grown cold,
[Verse 2] The Hittites crossed the river in a thunder-line of war, The greatest chariot force the world had ever seen before, They struck the Re division on the open marching road, The column split like kindling underneath a crushing load, I walked beside a charioteer who never saw them come, His horses screamed and stumbled and his shield arm had gone numb,
[Pre-Chorus] I have walked this ground a thousand times before, And I will walk it still when there is nothing more,
[Chorus] At Kadesh by the river where the first lie met the stone, Five thousand chariots ground the morning into bone, At Kadesh where I walked before the world grew old, The pharaoh carved his glory on the temple wall alone, At Kadesh where the bronze lies buried in the sand, And the carvings still remain though the blood has long grown cold,
[Verse 3] He rallied his guard around him and he drove into the mass, Bronze and leather, gold and fury through a wall of Hittite brass, The Ne’arin struck from the west and the Ptah came from the south, The Hittites broke their footing at the river’s burning mouth, By dusk the field was silent and the Orontes ran with red, And neither king could claim the ground they’d carpeted with dead,
[Pre-Chorus] I have walked this ground a thousand times before, And I will walk it still when there is nothing more,
[Chorus] At Kadesh by the river where the first lie met the stone, Five thousand chariots ground the morning into bone, At Kadesh where I walked before the world grew old, The pharaoh carved his glory on the temple wall alone, At Kadesh where the bronze lies buried in the sand, And the carvings still remain though the blood has long grown cold,
[Bridge] He went home and carved his victory on every temple wall, He painted himself towering and divine above them all, The Hittites carved their own account and claimed the day was theirs, Two kingdoms writing triumph over ten thousand vacant stares, The charioteer I followed had the bronze still in his chest, His name appears on nothing and he earned no seal or crest, The first war anyone recorded and they carved down every king, But the dead who filled that river, they were not worth mentioning,
[Final Chorus] At Kadesh by the river where the first lie met the stone, Five thousand chariots ground the morning into bone, At Kadesh where I walked before the world grew old, The pharaoh carved his glory on the temple wall alone, At Kadesh where the bronze lies buried in the sand, And the carvings still remain though the blood has long grown cold,
[Outro] Fifteen years they fought before they laid their weapons down, They signed a treaty carved in silver for the world’s first common ground, A copy sits behind the glass where all the nations meet, Two empires swore to peace because the dead piled at their feet, They wrote of lasting friendship pressed in silver and in clay, But I keep the names they never carved and I will keep them past the day, The clay has turned to powder and the silver’s worn away,
Part of Ancient The Ancient Chronicles All battles, in order