These catalogues enable us to form some estimate of the degree of perfection in art and refinement which had been arrived at in Northern Palestine and Syria before the Israelitish invasion. Lists are also given of the towns conquered and the peoples made to submit. Remarking upon these, Brugsch justly says that what gives the highest importance to the catalogue is the undisputed fact that more than three hundred years before the entrance of the Jews into the land of Canaan, a great league of peoples of the same race existed in Palestine under little kings, who dwelt in the same towns and fortresses as we find stated on the monuments, and who for the greater part fell by conquest into the hands of the Jewish immigrants. Among these the King of Kadesh, on the Orontes, in the land of the Amorites--as the inscriptions expressly state--played the first part, since there obeyed him, as their chief leader, all the kings and their peoples from the water of Egypt (which is the same as the Biblical brook which flowed as the boundary of Egypt) to the rivers of Naharain, afterwards called Mesopotamia.
After the death of Thothmes III. the Hittites recovered their independence, and their importance grew from year to year, in such a way that even the Egyptian inscriptions mention the names of their kings in a conspicuous manner, and speak of their gods with reverence. Seti I. came to the throne of Egypt about two centuries after the death of Thothmes, and with him the martial spirit of Egypt revived. Seti drove back the Syrians who had invaded his frontier, and pursued them as far as Phœnicia, where he overthrew with great slaughter “the kings of the land of Phœnicia.” He probably suspected the Hittites of abetting his enemies, for, from the overthrow of the Phœnicians, he advanced against Kadesh, professedly as “the avenger of broken treaties.” The battle scene is represented on the north side of the great temple of Karnak, where Pharaoh is shown as having thrown to the ground the Hittites, and slain their princes.
Rameses II. was first associated with his father on the throne, and afterwards succeeded him. The great battle of his reign was fought against the Hittites at Kadesh, and was an event of first-class importance. The King of the Hittites had brought together his forces from the remotest parts of his empire, and was aided by allies and satraps from Mesopotamia to Mysia, and from Arvad in the sea. The Egyptian advance followed the coast line, through Joppa, Tyre, Sidon, and Beyrout. On the cliff by the Dog River, Rameses cut his bas-reliefs, and then appears to have advanced up the valley of the Eleutherus. Bringing his army before Kadesh, a great battle was fought, in which the Egyptians claim to be the victors; but at one point of the struggle the Pharaoh was surrounded and in the greatest danger, and at the close of the fighting a treaty was signed as between equals.