Latest / Ramses the Great: Egypt's Most Powerful Pharaoh — Fexingo History / Ramses the Great's Battle of Kadesh Propaganda vs Reality
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've talked a lot about Ramses the Great — his building projects, his wives, his diplomacy. But there's one event that overshadows everything else in his reign, and it's arguably the most famous battle in ancient Egyptian history: the Battle of Kadesh. Luna: Kadesh — that's the one he plastered all over his temples, right? The huge chariot battle? Lucas: Exactly. Ramses had multiple copies of the battle narrative carved at Abu Simbel, the Ramesseum, Luxor, Karnak, Abydos — it's his signature military achievement. But here's the thing: the Egyptian account and the Hittite account don't match up at all. So what really happened? Let's start with the build-up. Lucas: By the fifth year of Ramses's reign, around 1274 BCE, the Hittite Empire under King Muwatalli II had taken control of the Syrian city of Kadesh, which had been a vassal of Egypt under Seti I. Ramses wanted it back. He assembled a massive army of perhaps 20,000 men, divided into four divisions named after gods: Amun, Re, Ptah, and Set. Luna: Four divisions, that's a lot of moving parts. Lucas: It was. And the march itself was probably a logistical nightmare. Ramses led the Amun division himself, and they advanced rapidly toward Kadesh, which is located near the Orontes River in modern-day Syria. But along the way, they captured two Hittite spies who told them that Muwatalli's army was still far away, near Aleppo. Lucas: That was a lie — a deliberate disinformation campaign. Muwatalli's entire army was actually massed behind Kadesh, waiting. Ramses believed the spies, so he rushed ahead with just the Amun division, leaving the other three divisions strung out behind him. He crossed the Orontes and set up camp northwest of Kadesh, thinking he had the element of surprise. Luna: Oh no. So he walked right into a trap. Lucas: Exactly. The Hittites had perhaps 15,000 infantry and 3,500 chariots — a huge force. While Ramses was settling into camp, the Hittite chariotry crossed the river south of the Egyptian position and hit the Re division as it was marching through a forest. They completely smashed it. Survivors fled north toward Ramses's camp, and the Hittites followed, pouring into the Egyptian encampment. Lucas: At that point, Ramses was nearly captured. The Egyptian account — the so-called 'Poem of Pentaur' — says he was surrounded by 2,500 enemy chariots, with only his personal guard and a few officers. And he did something remarkable: he personally led a counterattack. Luna: Just him and his guard against thousands? That's either incredible bravery or desperate storytelling. Lucas: Probably both. The poem says Ramses called on his father Amun-Re, and the god gave him strength. He charged into the Hittite lines, scattering them through sheer force of will. Modern historians think what actually happened was that Ramses's personal chariotry, combined with the sudden arrival of the Ne'arin — Egyptian allies from the coastal region of Amurru — turned the tide. The Ne'arin were probably the elite troops Ramses had left to guard the supply route, and they showed up just in time. Luna: So the Ne'arin saved him. And he still claimed he did it alone. Lucas: Well, the poem does mention the Ne'arin, but it portrays them as arriving after Ramses had already won. Classic pharaonic spin. Anyway, the counterattack drove the Hittites back across the river, but Muwatalli still had fresh infantry and chariots. He launched another assault the next day, but the Egyptian Ptah division had finally arrived, and the battle ended in a stalemate. Lucas: Both sides claimed victory. The Egyptians retreated south, and the Hittites held Kadesh. But Ramses got home and immediately started commissioning the largest propaganda campaign the ancient world had ever seen. He had the battle carved into every major temple, with himself as the lone hero. Luna: It's interesting you mention that, because this is exactly the kind of deep dive we get to do thanks to supporters. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these conversations going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Lucas: Absolutely. And it's that kind of support that lets us spend time on the nitty-gritty. So, where were we? Right — the spin. So Ramses has all these reliefs made, with captions called 'Bulletins' describing his victory. But we also have the Hittite side. They left cuneiform tablets at Hattusa that give a very different picture: they say they defeated the Egyptians and chased them away. Luna: So it's a classic he-said, he-said. But surely archaeology helps settle it? Lucas: To some extent. The Egyptian camp site has been excavated, and it shows signs of a hasty retreat — lots of abandoned equipment. Plus, after Kadesh, the Egyptians didn't hold any territory in Syria. They eventually made peace with the Hittites, and the treaty — the first ever recorded — basically recognized the status quo. Ramses got a Hittite princess as a wife, but he never took Kadesh. Luna: So it was a draw at best, and Ramses turned it into a personal legend. Lucas: Exactly. But we shouldn't dismiss his feat entirely. He did rally his troops, fight personally, and survive an extremely tight spot. The propaganda worked so well that for centuries, the Battle of Kadesh was seen as a great Egyptian victory. It's only in the last hundred years, with Hittite texts and better archaeological methods, that we've gotten a more balanced view. Lucas: The battle also had a huge impact on military technology. The Hittite chariots were heavier, with three-man crews — a driver, a shield-bearer, and a spearman — while Egypt used lighter two-man chariots, faster and more maneuverable. After Kadesh, both sides adapted. But what's really fascinating is how the battle became a template for royal propaganda. Luna: You mean the lone king fighting against impossible odds? Lucas: Yes. That image — the pharaoh as the sole defender of Egypt, empowered by the gods — became a standard trope. Ramses didn't invent it, but he perfected it. The Poem of Pentaur, which was actually composed by a scribe named Pentaur, reads like an epic. It's full of vivid descriptions: 'I shot my arrows to the right and left, I slaughtered them as if they were crocodiles.' It's powerful stuff, even if it's not quite true. Luna: So how do historians decide what to believe? Lucas: We cross-reference multiple sources — the Egyptian reliefs and poems, the Hittite tablets, the geography, the material evidence from the battlefield. For Kadesh, there's a Hittite account that says Muwatalli won, and a later Hittite king, Hattusili III, even wrote to Ramses reminding him that the Hittites had beaten him at Kadesh. So we have to weigh the biases. Lucas: One thing both sides agree on: the battle was huge. The Hittite chariot charge involved thousands of vehicles — it's the largest chariot battle in history. The noise, the dust, the chaos — it must have been terrifying. And at the center of it was a young pharaoh, maybe twenty-five years old, who thought he was about to die. Luna: You can almost see why he'd want to rewrite it. Lucas: Absolutely. And that brings us to the legacy. Ramses's version of Kadesh became the official story, repeated for centuries. It shaped how later Egyptians saw their pharaohs. But the irony is that the real significance of Kadesh isn't the battle itself — it's the peace that followed. The treaty of 1258 BCE, signed fifteen years later, created a stable border and an alliance that lasted. Lucas: So Kadesh, for all its drama, was a strategic failure that Ramses turned into a propaganda win. But that propaganda defined his reign and his image as Ramses the Great. Luna: And it's a good reminder that history is often written by the victors — or at least by the ones with the biggest temples. Lucas: Exactly. Next time, maybe we'll look at another battle where the story doesn't match the evidence — but for now, that's Kadesh, the battle that made Ramses a legend.