The Battle of Kadesh - A Study in the Earliest Known Military Strategy #264618

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.