6.2.9 The Eternal Peace Treaty — The Hittite Copy

Description

In the decades after the battle, when new threats had appeared, the Egyptians and Hittites negotiated a peace treaty, one of the oldest in existence. By the fifteenth century BCE, there were several states in the land in and around Mesopotamia, and the Egyptians were moving to claim Canaan, Palestine, and Syria. Competition was so intense among these warring states that they invented new forms of contact, diplomacy, and negotiation. The tone of this source is much more respectful, probably because neither the Hittites nor the Egyptians won a decisive victory at Qadesh.