Treaty Between Ramses II and Khitasir of Khita

The increasing movements of the nations, and the growing troubles in Canaan, the pushing forward of whole races in Western Asia, owing to the immigration of warlike tribes of foreign origin, seem to have attracted the serious attention of the kings of Khita, as well as of the Egyptian Pharaoh. The then lord of Khita, Khitasir, was the first to make to his Egyptian friend the proposal, written on a tablet of silver, for an offensive and defensive alliance. Ramses II was prudent enough not to refuse such a proposal, and a treaty was made, which laid the foundation of the intimate friendship, so often mentioned by the chroniclers of the time, between the two great empires of Asia and Africa. The historical account of this treaty has been handed down to us in a clear and intelligible manner, although with some breaks. The inscription concerning it, the translation of which we now give, will make our readers acquainted with the contents of this remarkable document better than any further explanation. 

 

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Wars of Ramses II With Tunep and Canaan

After peace had been made with the Khita, their frontiers were henceforth spared, although several cities could not prevail upon themselves to acknowledge the Egyptian supremacy. In one of these, “Tunep, in the land of Naharain”, where Ramses had set up his statues as visible memorials of his campaigns against Khita, the opposition of the population assumed such a serious aspect, that Ramses saw himself obliged to lead his army and his chariots in person against Tunep. The memorial inscription preserved in the Ramesseum at Thebes, unfortunately destroyed in its upper part, describes this campaign in the following terms: "his warriors, and of his (chariots. His) armour was upon him. And the king came again to take his armour, and to put it on. And he utterly smote the hostile Khita, who were in the neighbourhood of the city of Tunep in the land of Naharain. After that he no more put on his armour". In the eighth year we again find the king on the soil of the land of Canaan, where, in the territory of what was afterwards Galilee, as well as in the neighbourhood of that ill-famed country, the inhabitants mocked at Pharaoh's highness, and at length tired out his patience. They were punished by the capture of their fortresses ; and their kings and elders, together with the men capable of bearing arms, were carried away to the land of Kemi, after the Egyptian warriors had grossly insulted them, beaten them, and, in token of shame, had plucked out the long beards of the Canaanites. The representation of the conquest of the fortresses had its place on the northern flanking-tower at the corner of the west side of the temple of Ramses on the west side of Thebes. An inscription was annexed to every fortress, beginning with the words, “This is the city which the king took in the eighth year”, to which the particular designation of the place was added. In what has been preserved we can make out the names: Shalama (that is the town of peace), the place Salem, or Saleim, to the south of Scythopolis; Maroma, that is Merom; 'Ain-'Anamim, that is, Anim or Engannim; “Dapur: in the land of the Amorites”, the well-known fortress on Mount Tabor; “the town Kalopu, on the mountain of Beitha-Antha”, that is, the Bethanath of Scripture, in the land of Cabul. 

 

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Previous Campaigns of Ramses II Against Kadesh

Thus did the poet on the banks of the holy river sing the heroic deed of King Ramses II before Kadesh. We are indebted to the Egyptian Homer for full information about this historical event, the knowledge of which was never transmitted by tradition to the memory of men. The wars of the king in Syria and Canaan did not certainly begin in the fifth year of his reign, in which the great battle of Kadesh took place ; but as early as the preceding years Earases had extended his first campaign as far as these countries. The three celebrated rock tablets in the neighbourhood of Beyrout, which were as well known to the Greek travelers in the fifth century before our era, (they are the columns of Sesostris mentioned by Herodotus), as they are still in our own day the goal of enquiring pilgrims in the land of Palestine, testify to the presence of King Ramses II at this very place in the second year and first campaign, and in the fifth year and second campaign, of his reign. 

 

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