Kadesh on the Orontes River, originally a…

Kadesh on the Orontes River, originally a Cananite city and an Egyptian vassal for approximately one hundred and fifty years, had eventually defected to Hittite suzerainty, thereby placing the city on the contested frontier between the two rival empires.

The Hittites under Muwatallis, answering Ramesses II’s first campaigns against them, meet the Egyptians around 1275 in a major, and violent, battle, one of the best documented of the ancient world.

Ramesses’ twenty thousand infantry troops include Numidian mercenaries and are superior in number, but Muwatalli’s sixteen thousand-strong force includes twenty-five hundred three-man chariots.

Initially surprised and surrounded by a Hittite pincer movement, the Egyptians, rallied by Ramesses’ personal courage, hold out and escape defeat, counterattacking the Hittite forces when they stop to loot their fallen enemies.

Ramesses, who himself narrowly escapes capture, unsuccessfully besieges Kadesh, then withdraws, incorrectly calling the battle an Egyptian victory instead of the draw it is in fact.