Egyptian Hittite Treaty

About 1254 BC, following the Battle of Kadesh, a treaty was drawn up between the Hittite king Khattusili and the Egyptian king Ramses II, engraved on silver plates, one in Egyptian, the other in Akkadian. The originals are missing, but copies in both languages have been found and translated and each mentions the original silver plates. Fragments of the Akkadian original text, copied onto clay tablets, were found at Boghazköy, Turkey (Winckler, MDOG, XXXV, 12 ff.), and the Egyptian translation was carved on the walls of the Temple of Amon at Karnak and at the Ramesseum.[1] (translation in F. S. Harris 101.2; see also translation of an Egyptian text by Breasted on p. 101.2). A translation of the Egyptian text was published by James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, 3:165-74. The closing paragraph of the Egyptian text of the treaty a seal called “What is in the middle of the tablet of silver.” The Hittite copy depicts, in the center, the Egyptian god Sutekh embracing the Hittite king, while the Egyptian monumental inscription includes a drawing of the original silver plate as a rectangle with a ring at the top allowing it to be hung on the wall.

[1] James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 3rd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 199-203. For general discussion and bibliography, see Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 190.