Though Muwatallish had halted Egyptian expansion and defined a peaceful border of the Hittite Empire, this battle had serious consequences for the Hittites. While Hittites had been concentrating on Egyptian affairs, they were hardly prepared when Assyria defeated Mitanni to the east making it an Assyrian vassal state. No longer had the Hittites a buffer against Assyrian aggression. Muwatallish died about one year after the Battle of Kadesh. His son, Urkhi-Teshub, succeeded him. After taking one too many territories away from his uncle, supreme commander Hattusilis III declared war on the young king. They competed for power as western lands took advantage of internal disputes and declared independence from Hittite control (Macqueen 49). For his seven year rule, Urkhi-Teshub was more interested in keeping his position than keeping his empire, as the Assyrians pressed against the Euphrates. Perhaps Urkhi-Teshub was so set against his uncle coming to the throne because of his uncle's alleged treason in the Battle of Kadesh.
Ramesses was having many problems of his own. Part of the reason for his hasty retreat after Kadesh was probably the sore condition of his own territories. All of Canaan flared into a revolt shortly after the battle, seeing that the mighty Egyptian Empire could be beaten, that the strong armies of Egypt were not infallible as they had feared (Redford 185). Soon the Egyptian Empire could barely lay claim to anything beyond the Sinai Peninsula; although in year eight of his reign, three years after Kadesh, Ramesses did lead an army into the northern coastal area at Tripolis (Schmidt 174). A few years after that he made a treaty with Muwattalish, which is cited in a later document. It was a statement of non-aggression, so that Muwatallish could concentrate on Assyria and Ramesses could concentrate on his own empire (Schmidt 115).
In the Hittite Empire Hattusilis III finally took over the throne and exiled the son of Muwatallish, who was very unpopular at the time. When Hattusilis evaluated the condition of his empire and that of Assyria, he became increasingly friendly with Egypt. In the twenty-first year of Ramesses’ reign, ca. 1259, Hattusilis and Ramesses created a diplomatic treaty, the first document of its kind. A copy of it is on the wall of the United Nations headquarters. Hattusilis sealed this deal by marrying his daughter to Ramesses. It contained four important conditions:
1) The continuation of the treaty concluded between Ramesses and Muwatallish, concerning non-aggression.
2) Mutual assistance in the form of military aid.
3) Security in the problem of Hattusilis’ succession
4) Mutual extradition of fugitives.
This pact, reflected in the reliefs of Abu Simbel, gave the people of the Near East the blessing of nearly seventy years of peace. The remaining annals of Hattusilis describe necessary military action in the west. The exiled Urkhi-Teshub supposedly influenced Babylonia in a way as to strain their relations with the Hittites, then proceeded to incite the Assyrians to lay assault to the Hittite capital. After this happened, Hattusilis moved his exiled nephew to an island, probably Cyprus (Gurney 37). Slowly, the Hittite Empire was declining and weakening. The greatest threat the Mediterranean had ever seen came in the form of massive expedition of the Sea Peoples, from whom no one, Greek, Egyptian, or Hittite, was safe. The Hittite Empire was destroyed by the Sea People in 1200 B.C. The capital of the Hittite Empire was sacked and burned.
Ramesses continued to have monuments built for himself, draining Egypt of wealth and resources. The throne went to Merenptah in 1212 B.C. upon the death of Ramesses II. Because of incessant invasions by the Sea People and the great military effort it took to ward them off, Egypt's role in the Mediterranean greatly diminished. The once-mighty kingdom was consistantly lost more and more holdings, and by the middle of the eleventh century had shrunk to the territorial core along the Nile River. It never again assumed its great imperial role in the world. Was the peace or the war between the Egyptians or the Hittites more responsible for the decline of the great Mediterranean civilizations? Or should we perhaps look inward for other causes?
The events following the Battle of Kadesh were perhaps indicative of a wider phenomena which swept across the Eastern Mediterranean. We can see it both in the archaeology of Greece and Turkey as well as in the ancient epics: around 1200 B.C. the Great Powers in the Eastern Mediterranean fell apart. It has been traditionally explained by invasions ("Dorians" and "Sea Peoples"), but perhaps we may look internally for a better explanation. While Ramesses and Muwatallish were away on their campaigns for expansion, many of their lands revolted or switched camps of their own volition. In the Odyssey we have a literary clue to a parallel phenomenon in Greece. While Odysseus and Agamemnon are away fighting the Trojans (who were within the Hittite sphere of influence) their own kingdoms were falling apart. Odysseus returned home to find his house in tatters; Agamemnon returned to a betrayal by the very ones who he believed were loyal to him. Whatever the cause, Greece experienced more or less simultaneous destructions of her palatial civilizations at around the same time the Egyptian and Hittite power structures fell apart.
Regardless of the causes of collapse in the Greek experience, it is clear that internal disputes in the case of the Hittites, and a preoccupation with foreign conquest and propoganda in the case of the Egyptians, were the harbingers of demise for the first Great Powers following the Battle of Kadesh. When client kings and artistocracy began to doubt in their leaders and the existing power structures, the door was left open for invaders to finish off the job. It was a lesson that would not be remembered by the next Great Powers of the region, the Assyrians, the Persians, nor even the Macedonian Greeks.
