Battle of Kadesh - Documentation and Disagreements

Documentation and Disagreements

Although there is more evidence in the form of texts and wall reliefs for this battle than for any other battle in the Ancient Near East, almost all of it is from an Egyptian perspective, and indeed the first scholarly report on the battle, by James Henry Breasted in 1903, took the Egyptian evidence literally and assumed a great Egyptian victory. He was convinced that these sources allowed us to reconstruct "with certainty" the battle. This has been replaced by a situation in which there are varying opinions on almost every aspect of the battle.

Some historians regard Rameses's claims of a great victory with some skepticism and argue that the battle was a draw at best. His later campaigns in Syria-Palestine only reached points farther south, and Egyptian influence over Amurru and Qadesh seems to have been lost forever.