Treaty of Kadesh

The peace treaty that Ramses II of Egypt and the Hittite king Hattusili III concluded in Ramses' twenty-first year (c. 1259 BCE), some fifteen years after their armies met at Kadesh. Ramses' text survives in Akkadian on clay tablets from the Hittite capital at Hattusa, and Hattusili's in an Egyptian translation carved at Karnak and the Ramesseum. The treaty renounces further conquest, binds each king to send troops when the other is attacked, and obliges each to return fugitives on condition that a returned man is not punished and his house, wives and children are left unharmed. The Akkadian text given here breaks off before the provisions on fugitives. The English text of the Egyptian version is based on James Henry Breasted's 1906 translation, and that of the Akkadian version on Stephen Langdon's 1920 translation, with archaic language lightly modernized.