insignificant state.

The Hittites had grown at the expense of Mitanni, but their glory too
was of no long duration. In the days of Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the
Oppression, their power was at its height. From their southern capital
at Kadesh on the Orontes their armies had gone forth to contend on equal
terms with the forces of the Nile, and after twenty-one years of
warfare, peace was made between the two combatants, neither side having
gained an advantage in the long struggle. The text of the treaty is
engraved on the walls of Karnak. There we may read how the two rivals
swore henceforth to be friends and allies, how the existing boundaries
of their respective territories in Syria were to remain unchanged for
ever, and how a general amnesty was to be granted to the political
fugitives on either side. It was only the criminal to whom the right of
asylum in the dominions of the other was denied.

In the war they had waged with Egypt the Hittite princes of Kadesh had
summoned their vassal allies from the distant coasts of Asia Minor.
Lycians and Dardanians had come from the far west; and were joined by
the troops of Aram-Naharaim from the east. The extension of Hittite
supremacy to the shores of the Ægean Sea is testified by the monuments
it has left behind. Hittite inscriptions have been found near Smyrna
engraved on the rocks, as well as the figures of Hittite warriors
guarding the westernmost pass of the ancient road. The summer residences
of the Hittite princes were on the eastern bank of the Halys. Here the
roads of Asia Minor converged, and here we still see the sculptured
bas-reliefs of a Hittite palace and long rows of Hittite deities.

The Hittite empire broke up into a multitude of small principalities. Of
these Carchemish, now Jerablûs, on the Euphrates, was perhaps the most