victory for himself and a smashing defeat for the Hittites. He does
so with lots of rhetorical bombast, but even shorn of this, his
account very likely does reflect a major Egyptian victory. We know
that in the wake of the battle, the territories over which the Royal
Brothers were in dispute, Amurru and Qadesh, both reverted to
Egyptian control. But the Seti–Muwattalli clash was just a curtain-
raiser to the main event, the famous battle of Qadesh fought
between Muwattalli and Seti’s son and successor Ramesses II. This
was in 1274, thefifth year of Ramesses’reign.
The pharaoh’s version of events, culminating in the battle itself, is
recorded in both words and pictures (the latter with accompanying
captions) on the walls of no fewer thanfive Egyptian temples.^5
Unfortunately, we have no corresponding Hittite account, to balance
the blatantly biased Egyptian version. But we can sort out some of
the basic facts, reading between the lines of what Ramesses tells us.
You willfind modern accounts of the actual battle and the events
which preceded it in many sources.^6 So let us here just briefly
summarise some of its main features.
Ramesses’army was made up of four divisions, each recruited
from an Egyptian city named after a prominent Egyptian god–
Amun, Re, Ptah and Sutekh. From his capital Pi-Ramesse in the
Egyptian Delta, the expedition set out, with Ramesses commanding
thefirst of these divisions. Muwattalli for his part had recruited an
army 47,500 in number, including some 3,500 chariotry (with three
men per chariot; see next chapter) and 37,000 infantry. This is what
Ramesses’account tells us, the Hittite numbers swelled by many
foreign troops serving as mercenaries; the land of Hatti was
stripped of silver to pay for them, according to Ramesses.^7 As they
travelled northwards, the Egyptian divisions became increasingly
spread out and separated from one another. Ramesses was not
concerned about this, particularly when two apparent defectors
from the Hittite army came to him with the news that Muwattalli
and his forces were at that time still far to the north of Qadesh, in
the land of Aleppo. Incredibly, the pharaoh sought no verification
of their story, but in leisurely fashion started setting up his camp
with the Amun division, across the Orontes and northwest of
Qadesh city.
WAR WITH EGYPT 163