Treaty of Kadesh: The World’s First Peace Treaty

On the walls of the Temple of Karnak near Luxor, Egypt, and on the temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II in Thebes, are engravings that describe a great battle against the “Great King of Khatti” and a peace treaty that was forged with them. The hieroglyphics, which were known since antiquity, was first translated by Jean-François Champollion in the early 19th century, triggering a renewed interest among westerns in Ancient Egypt. In 1858, it was identified that the Great King of Khatti were the Hittites which ruled in central Anatolia in modern-day Turkey. Part of the clay tablet of the Kadesh Treaty, circa 1269 BCE. Photo: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin/Wikimedia Eight years later, in 1906, the German archaeologist Hugo Winckler discovered and excavated the capital of the Hittite capital, Hattusa, in the fortified ruins of Boğazkale in Turkey. In the remains of the largest palace, they unearthed 10,000 clay tablets written with cuneiform documenting many of the Hittites' diplomatic activities. The haul also included three tablets on which the text of a treaty was inscribed whose text corresponded to those found on the walls of the Egyptian temples. Winckler immediately grasped the significance of the discovery. He wrote: ...a marvelously preserved tablet which immediately promised to be significant. One glance at it and all the achievement of my life faded into insignificance. Here it was – something I might have jokingly called a gift from the fairies. Here it was: Ramses writing to Hattusilis about their joint treaty ... confirmation that the famous treaty which we knew from the version carved on the temple walls at Karnak might also be illuminated from the otherwise. Ramses is identified by his royal titles and pedigree exactly as in the Karnak text of the treaty; Hattusilis is described in the same way – the content is identical, word for word with parts of the Egyptian version [and] written in beautiful cuneiform and excellent Babylonian ...