Page Content (OCR)
71 deemed her to be "something lovely granted him by the god Ptah" and a sign of Hittite acknowledgment of his "victory." What all this diplomatic maneuvering had entailed was clarified by other parts of the inscription: thirteen years earlier, Hattusilish had sent to the Pharaoh the text of a Peace Treaty; but Ramses II, still brooding over his near-fatal experience in the battle of Kadesh, ig- nored it. "The great Chief of Hatti then wrote appeasingly to His Majesty year after year; but the King Ramses paid no attention." Finally, the King of Hatti, instead of sending messages inscribed on tablets, "sent his eldest daughter, preceded by precious tribute" and accompanied by Hittite nobles. Wondering what all these gifts meant, Ramses sent an Egyptian escort to meet and accompany the Hittites. And, as related above, he succumbed to the beauty of the Hittite princess, made her a queen, and named her Maat-Neferu-Ra ("The Beauty Which Ra Sees"). Our knowledge of history and antiquity has also profited by that love at first sight, for the Pharaoh then accepted the lingering Peace Treaty, and proceeded to inscribe it, too, at Kamak, not far from where the tale of the Battle of Kadesh and the Tale of the Beautiful Hittite Princess had been commemorated. Two copies, one almost complete, the other fragmentary, have been discovered, deciphered, and translated by Egyptologists. As a result we not only have the full text of the Treaty but also know that the Hittite king wrote down the treaty in the Akkadian language, which was then (as French was a century and two ago) the common language of international relations. To the Pharaoh he sent a copy of the Akkadian original written on a silver tablet, which the Egyptian inscription at Karnak de- scribed thus: What is in the middle of the tablet of silver, on the front side: Figures consisting of an image of Seth, embracing an image of the Great Prince of Hatti, surrounded by a border with the words "the seal of Seth, ruler of the sky; the seal of the regula- tion which Hattusilish made". . . What is within that which surrounds the image of the seal of Seth on the other side: Figures consisting of a female image of the goddess of Hatti embracing a female image of the Princess of Hatti, surrounded by a border with the words "the seal of the Ra of the town of Arinna, the lord of the land"... What is within the [frame) surrounding the figures: the seal of Ra of Arinna, the lord of every land. The Earth Chronicles