The Battle of Kadesh (Classic Reprint): A Study in the Earliest Known Military Strategy

by James Henry Breasted

Excerpt from The Battle of Kadesh

Megiddo and Kadesh. At Megiddo, already in the sixteenth century before Christ, we find Thutmose III., disposing his troops as in modern times, with a center and two wings, or horns as he calls them, of each of which he gives the exact location. His enemy also was drawn up in the same way. But Kadesh is still more instructive, because here we can follow the shrewd maneuvers of the Asiatics, which preceded the battle. No incident in Eygptian history is so impressed upon the mind of the traveler in Egypt as this battle between the forces of Ramses II. And those of the Hittites at Kadesh on the Orontes, in the fourteenth century before Christ. The young king's supreme effort to save himself and his army from destruction is so often depicted and in such graphic pictures upon the walls of the great temples, that no visitor, not even the most blasé globe-trotter can ever forget it. Yet this dramatic event, so prominent that it attracts the attention of even the most casual visitor over and over again, has never received any exhaustive study. It is the earliest battle in history, the strategic of which can be largely determined in detail; and yet this has never been done.

67 pages, Paperback

First published August 8, 2015

About the author

James Henry Breasted was an American archaeologist, Egyptologist, and historian. After completing his PhD at the University of Berlin in 1894, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. In 1901 he became director of the Haskell Oriental Museum at the University of Chicago, where he continued to concentrate on Egypt. In 1905 Breasted was promoted to professor, and was the first chair in Egyptology and Oriental History in the United States. In 1919 he became the founder of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.
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