Battle of Kadesh between Egypt and the Hittites
- Date
- c. 1274 BCE
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Syria (Kadesh, Orontes River)
- Era
- Ancient Civilizations
- Significance
Ramesses II led an Egyptian army of around 20,000 men, organised into four divisions (Amun, Ra, Ptah, Seth), against the Hittite king Muwatalli II near Kadesh on the Orontes River in Syria.
Misled by enemy informants, the Egyptian columns were ambushed and nearly routed before Ramesses rallied his forces. With perhaps 5,000 chariots engaged on both sides, Kadesh is one of the largest chariot battles in recorded history and the earliest battle whose tactics and formations are known in detail from both sides. The outcome was effectively a stalemate: Ramesses failed to take the city, though his monuments across Egypt proclaimed a great personal victory. The clash defined the limits of Egyptian and Hittite power in the Levant and set the stage, some fifteen years later, for a formal peace treaty between the two empires.
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Empires active in c. 1274 BCE
- New Kingdom of Egypt1550 BCE – 1077 BCE
- Shang Dynasty1600 BCE – 1046 BCE
- Hittite Empire1650 BCE – 1178 BCE
- Elamite Kingdom2700 BCE – 539 BCE
Related military & conflict events
- Late Bronze-Age Collapse and the Sea Peoplesc. 1177 BCE
- Battle of Muye and the Zhou Conquest of Shangc. 1046 BCE
- Battle of Megiddo under Thutmose IIIc. 1457 BCE
- Thutmose I Conquers Kush and Destroys Kermac. 1500 BCE
- Hittite sack of Babylon ends the Old Babylonian dynastyc. 1595 BCE
- Battle of Mingtiao and the Founding of the Shang Dynastyc. 1600 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
The Kingdom of the Hittites
The standard readable narrative history of the Hittite state.
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