The World

Fording the Orontes, the Egyptians set up a new forward camp to begin the siege. Just five years on the throne, Rameses, slim, fit, aquiline, was energetic and confident like his father. The family were new: Tutankhamun’s general Horemheb had had no children: he appointed a commoner as King’s Deputy, Paramessu, a general, whom he then promoted to King’s Son. Paramessu took the regnant name Rameses, but it was his son Seti, another tough, athletic general – still impressive as a mummy – who restored the empire with parvenu vigour. Even while his father was still alive, Seti was storming up the coast of Canaan, where he forced the rulers of Lebanon to cut timber for his navy then seized Kadesh. But the Hattians, now under the impressive team of Muwatalli and his brother, Hattusili, grandsons of Suppiluliuma, seized it back.

When Rameses II succeeded his father – taking the throne name Usermaatra (Ozymandias) – Kadesh was his first priority. Rameses was flamboyant and narcissistic, engraving his name on more monuments than anyone else. He had already begun to build a capital, Per-Rameses – House of Rameses. His tomb builders lived in a workers’ village at Deir el-Medina, proud of their speciality – ‘I am a craftsman,’ wrote one, ‘who excels in his art at the forefront of knowledge.’ In his works, Rameses would define the very word pharaonic.

Maestro of bow and chariot, Rameses first defeated the fleets of the Sherden, raiders of the eastern Mediterranean. Then he turned to Kadesh.

As Rameses set up camp, Muwatalli’s spies were watching, but they were spotted, captured and tortured to reveal alarming news: the Hattians were very close, poised to attack. Rameses was outraged by his generals’ incompetence. He took personal charge, sending the royal princes out of the battle zone, dispatching his vizier to bring up the Ptah division. Before they were ready, the Hattians ambushed them, their chariots smashing into the Amun division commanded by Rameses, who sent out the call: ‘His Majesty is all alone.’ Then they hit the Ra division as it crossed the river. Thousands of chariots crashed into each other. Commanded by Muwatalli, Hattian chariots broke the Egyptian lines with their flimsier chariots; the Egyptians fled. It was a desperate fight in which the pharaoh himself, riding his chariot and firing his bow, was almost killed, only rescued by his Greek guards resplendent in horned helmets and hacking swords. There is no reason to doubt Rameses’ claims that his own personality saved the day. He was lucky: the Children of Hatti started plundering the pharaonic camp. As chariot reinforcements arrived in the nick of time, Rameses, shouting orders from his chariot, rallied his forces for Muwatalli’s charge. Rameses’ counter-attack broke the Hattian lines.

Night fell over the battlefield as the last Egyptian divisions arrived to consolidate the line. At dawn the two kings ordered their frayed armies into a savage frontal combat that ended in stalemate. Rameses withdrew his men; Muwatalli offered negotiations. Yet Muwatalli had won: Kadesh remained Hattian. Once he got home, Rameses transformed the desperate pandemonium of the Hattian ambush into a heroic legend. In no fewer than five massive monuments, he recast Kadesh as a triumph.^*

Rameses shared this glory with one person – Great Wife Nefertari, who now played a special role in making peace between enemies,^* just as in China a queen commanded chariot armies in battle.

WAR QUEENS: LADY HAO OF SHANG, PUDEHEPA OF HATTUSA AND NEFERTARI OF EGYPT

As the charioteers of Rameses and Muwatalli clashed in Syria, the new weaponry had reached north-western China, where Wuding had inherited a realm around the Yellow River gradually built by his family, the Shang, over a few hundred years. Legends depict an earlier Chinese king Yu ‘who controlled the flood’ of the Yellow River, but real history starts with the Shang.