The Battle of Kadesh was a battle fought between the Nineteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt and the Hittites for domination of Syria.
Battle of Kadesh
Cause:
In the 14th century B.C., the Hittites took advantage of Egypt's weakened power to occupy many of its possessions in Syria while Egypt was too busy with the Reformation to do so.
Process:
In order to establish supremacy in Western Asia, Pharaoh Ramses II mobilized 2,000 chariots and 16,000 infantry in 1274 BC to join the Hittite king Muwatari II in the city of Kadesh (present-day Syria) on the banks of the Oronte River.
The Hittite army attacked from the flanks with 3,000 chariots and 20,000 infantry, the Egyptian army was routed, and Pharaoh was almost captured.
Later, Egyptian reinforcements arrived in time to rescue Pharaoh and stop the Hittite army from pursuing. The battle was fierce, and the two sides were evenly matched.
For the next sixteen years, the two sides fought a series of wars, small in scale, but without a decisive victory.
Battle of Kadesh
The Battle of Kadesh is one of the earliest recorded battles in ancient military history.
Outcome:
After more than a decade of attrition, the two sides could no longer fight, and around 1269 BC, Ramesses II and the Hittite king Hatusilis III concluded a peace treaty and formed a military alliance against a common enemy.
The full text of the treaty, found on the walls of an Egyptian temple and in the archives of the Hittites, is the earliest documented military treaty that has survived to this day.
Silver Contract
The full text of the treaty was inscribed in hieroglyphic script on the walls of the temples of Karnak and Ramsium in Egypt, and the Hittite was written in Babylonian cuneiform on clay tablets, which were found in the archives of the Hittite capital Hadushash.
After the treaty was signed, the Hittite king married his eldest daughter to Ramses II, further cementing the alliance through a political marriage.
Effect:
Due to the decades-long contest between the two sides, the strength was seriously weakened, Egypt did not achieve its goal, but weakened, and the later pharaohs faced internal and external difficulties, and the "sea people" and Libyan tribal invasions echoed, the rule of the pharaohs was seriously affected, and the new dynasty of ancient Egypt gradually collapsed.
After this war, the Hittite's already unstable economic foundation was even worse.
By the 13th century BCE, the "Sea Peoples" invaded the Hittite, and all the Hittite vassal states rebelled against the Hittite, and the Hittite Empire quickly collapsed. In the 8th century BC, the Hittite Empire was destroyed by the Assyrian Empire.