between the Hittite and Egyptian royal courts concerning the
whereabouts and eventual fate of Urhi-Teshub. The tone of these
letters is acrimonious. Ramesses claimed that he couldn’t deliver up
Urhi-Teshub because he didn’t know where he was. Hattusili and
Puduhepa didn’t believe him. But what made the pharaoh’s
responses to their demands particularly galling was his claim that
Urhi-Teshub had actually left Egypt, and returned to Hittite
territory. Hattusili strenuously denied this:‘Urhi-Teshub isnotin
Aleppo or Qadesh or Kizzuwatna,’he declared.‘Otherwise my own
subjects would have told me!’‘Your subjects are not to be trusted,’
sniffed the pharaoh in reply.
PEACE AT LAST!
The Urhi-Teshub affair seems to have dragged on for many years.
But despite their acrimonious exchanges about it and other
matters, Ramesses and Hattusili came to a mutual understanding
that the greater good would be served if they settled their
differences by concluding a peace treaty. And so they did, in the
year 1259, 15 years after the battle of Qadesh. It is called the Eternal
Treaty because the treaty-partners pledged‘great peace and great
brotherhood between themselves forever’. Two independent
versions were composed, one in Hattusa, the other in Pi-Ramesse.
Each presented its author’s own perspective on what was agreed to,
though generally the variations between the two are minor.
The Hittite version was originally written in Akkadian, from a
first Hittite draft, inscribed on a silver tablet and then sent to Egypt
where it was translated into Egyptian. Copies of this version were
carved on the walls of the temple of Amun at Karnak, and the
temple of Ramesses called the Ramesseum, which lay across the
Nile from modern Luxor. Correspondingly, the Egyptian version
wasfirst composed in Egyptian, and then translated into Akkadian
on a silver tablet before being sent to the Hittite court.^3 (Thus the
version of the treaty written in Egyptian represents the original
Hittite version, and the version in Akkadian the original Egyptian
version.) Seen as an inspiration for peace and harmony throughout
the world for all time, a translation of the treaty has been mounted
190 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA