Kadesh Syria

Local rulers in Syria take Hatshepsut’s death as an opportunity to throw off Egyptian hegemony, a revolt with which Thutmose must deal immediately.

The Canaanites unite and ally with the Kingdom of Mitanni.

The driving force behind this revolt is the King of Kadesh, which city’s powerful fortress offers protection to him and the city.

The King of Megiddo, a geographically important city with an equally strong fortress, joins the alliance.

Megiddo, located along the southwestern edge of Jezreel Valley just beyond the Mount Carmel ridge and the Mediterranean, controls the main trade route between Egypt and Mesopotamia.

A Canaanite-Syrian coalition of some three hundred and thirty rebellious princes opposes Thutmose, who gathers an army of chariots and infantry that numbers as many as ten thousand men, large for this time.

Ports on the Phoenician coast are converted into Egyptian supply bases, and Kadesh and other cities in the Beqaa (al-Biqa') Valley are taken in subsequent campaigns of Thutmose, which are less fully described in his annals.

The Hittites, answering an Egyptian campaign against them, win a major, and violent, battle against Egyptian forces at Kadesh on the Orontes River.

It is likely the largest chariot battle ever waged, involving some five thousand chariots.

The Hittites soon dominate Syria, but must almost immediately deal with unrest from vassals in the east, north, and west.

The Hittites answer Egypt’s campaigns against them at Kadesh on the Orontes River.

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

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.

A struggle by Hittite king Muwatalli (who reigns from about 1320 BCE to about 1294 BCE) with resurgent Egypt under Seti I and Ramesses II for the domination of Syria leads to one of the greatest battles of the ancient world, which takes place at Kadesh on the Orontes in about 1299 BCE.

Ramesses II, seeking to recapture the Hittite-held city of Kadesh in Syria,  invades Syria with four divisions and an auxiliary force.

Muwatalli gathers a large alliance among his vassal states.

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.

Muwatalli, hiding his army behind the city mound, sends out false reports that he is at Aleppo, farther north.

Ramesses, falling into the trap, hurries his army toward Kadesh, his units stretched along the Orontes valley road.

Toward evening, the king with the first division reaches Kadesh and sets up camp.

Too late, two captured Hittite scouts confess the actual situation.

The Hittites ford the river and, after routing the second division, storm the Egyptian camp.

His first division destroyed, Ramesses is saved mostly by his auxiliary force that strikes the attacking Hittites in the rear.

Pushing the Ramesses into the river, the mauled Egyptians retain the battlefield.

The next day, after indecisive fighting, Ramesses is compelled to withdraw his battered army; and in the aftermath, …

The Pharaoh, following the easy Egyptian victory over Judah in the Battle of Megiddo, soon captures Kadesh on the Orontes, then moves forward to join forces with the Assyrian ruler Ashur-uballit II.