Dr. Campbell Price

So it talks about, you know, these informants are captured and these non-Egyptian informants and they say, oh, the Hittite ruler is 120.

Yeah.

He's far away.

League's off.

And so the Egyptians are okay with that.

So they kind of become a little complacent, maybe, when they're marching to make camp near Kadesh.

Then they get hold of better intelligence, which says that the Hittites are much closer.

And the Hittites, surprise, surprise, attack the Egyptians when they're unprepared.

And so there's this extraordinary episode

in which the attack comes and it's really the king is said to be alone.

He finds himself alone.

And so the drama is, and of course you can see how Ramesses spins this, basically the greatness of the king comes at the expense of the soldiers, who are usually said to be pretty good and pretty effective.

No, no, they're deserters or they're disorganized.

And so Ramesses personally has to fight Ramesses

off the the Hittites pursues them into the river and so manages to to win a kind of stalemate so it's less bad than it could have been I mean imagine the king could have been captured or killed or much worse could have happened

The Egyptians suffer, it is acknowledged, some heavy losses, but they are able to maintain this status quo.

So it's a draw, basically.

The Battle of Kadesh, in the Hittite eyes, is a success for them, but in the Egyptian eyes, it's a success for the Egyptians.

And Ramesses, at least early on, spins this as...

Better to kind of keep it as it is and then later we'll go back and regroup and in a couple of years we'll... So he snatches a jaw from the jaws of defeat.