Page 353 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

have closed their gates to the advancing army. But these stories
are discounted, for surely no mere Canaanite princeling would

dare to oppose the embattled might of the main army of Egypt
Then comes news that the Grand Army has passed the frontier
and is advancing on the great city of Cadesh, on the Orontes.
And then for two days there is no news.

But the next day a courier chariot, its occupants dusty
and sweat-soaked, comes in along the highway, and while the
horses are changed and the couriers snatch a hasty meal, they
give the news from the north. A great battle has been fought,

they say, by Cadesh, and the main army of the Hittites has
been held and penned within the city. It was only by the grace
of the gods and the personal courage of the pharaoh that the day
did not end disastrously.

Captured Hittite scouts had reported that the Hittite army
had withdrawn northward to Aleppo, and Barneses, leaving the
Sutek regiment on the frontier, had pushed on with Amon and Ra,

and with the Ptah regiment some miles to the rear. He had left
Cadesh behind on his left and encamped for the night a little to
the north by the river. But his information had been false. The
whole Hittite army lay concealed on the blind side of Cadesh,

and it now marched out and fell upon the rear of the regiment
of Ra, which was approaching the camp. Ra, taken by surprise,
had been routed, and the panic might well have spread to

Amon, had not Rameses gathered his household troops and
sallied out, rallying his demoralized soldiers as he went and
breaking through the right wing of the Hittites.
Though he had had to abandon his camp, he succeeded

thereby in making junction with his free companies of merce­
naries who were following Ra, and, with his combined force, he
turned and attacked the Hittites as they were plundering the

camp.
Battle was now joined in earnest, and for some time wage
indecisively. Then Muwatallis threw in his reserves, a thousan
heavy three-man chariots. And the situation had been desperate.

But Rameses had also a trump to play. At the first signs of the am
bush he had sent a messenger back along the road to warn e
regiment of Ptah coming up behind him. And now Ptah came,