Dr. Campbell Price

And a peace treaty is not a type of text, it's not a genre of monumental inscription that was common to the ancient Egyptians to make a treaty with other people.

But in this case, it is sealed by a diplomatic marriage.

There's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about the content of dowries.

But the princess comes in and becomes a wife of Ramses II.

And it's interesting that this must have quite a cultural impact, the coming of this lady into the royal court.

So there is the first marriage and then there is a second marriage a few years later.

But even, gosh, a thousand years later into the Ptolemaic period,

There is a fascinating document, it's now in Paris, called the Bentresch Stela, which describes the sending of a statue of an Egyptian god into the Levant to cure a relative of one of the vassal kingdoms.

And that seems to be a genuine reflection on the great esteem with which Egyptian doctors are viewed.

So it's not just a military thing of, I'll beat you up or we'll have a peace treaty.

If there's a peace treaty, the Egyptian pharaoh might send one of his effective physicians or might send a healing statue of a god.

And so there are real, to ancient people, real palpable benefits, which we might think of as being quite superstitious.

yeah that's that's a nice analogy yeah so so the courts are yeah clearly in communication and they do send gifts between the two of them and that's some kind of assurance and indeed this peace treaty text makes clear that they will you know mutually assure the succession of each kingdom

and help against a third party attacker so that there is that sense of what we would recognize as a modern treaty what started the civil war what ended the conflict in vietnam who was paul revere and did the vikings ever reach america

Yes, yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah, impressive.

Yeah, I mean, it must be something also to do with physicality.

So approaching his 30th year on the throne.

So he maybe is approaching 50 by this point, years of age.

he's maybe less inclined to be going out into battle he can still send sons and he's got plenty of sons up to 50 sons but we'll also come back to the sons but in the ancient world if you have been on the throne for 30 years you are a pretty big deal